31. Messenger races to meet messenger, and herald to meet herald,to announce to the king of Babylonthat his city has been capturedfrom end to end.
32. The fords have been seized, the marshes set on fire,and the soldiers are terrified.
33. For this is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says:Daughter Babylon is like a threshing floorat the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.
34. “Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me;he has crushed me.He has set me aside like an empty dish;he has swallowed me like a sea monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies;he has vomited me out,”
35. says the inhabitant of Zion;“Let the violence done to me and my family be done to Babylon.Let my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea,”says Jerusalem.
36. Therefore, this is what the Lord says:I am about to plead your case and take vengeance on your behalf;I will dry up her sea and make her fountain run dry.
37. Babylon will become a heap of rubble,a jackals’ den,a desolation and an object of scorn, without inhabitant.
38. They will roar together like young lions;they will growl like lion cubs.
39. While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast,and I will make them drunk so that they revel. Then they will fall asleep foreverand never wake up.This is the Lord’s declaration.
40. I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,like rams together with male goats.
41. How Sheshach has been captured, the praise of the whole earth seized.What a horror Babylon has becomeamong the nations!
42. The sea has risen over Babylon; she is covered with its turbulent waves.