31. One courier runs to meet another, And one messenger to meet another, To tell the king of Babylon That his city has been captured from end to end;
32. The fords also have been seized, And they have burned the marshes with fire, And the men of war are terrified.
33. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: "The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor At the time it is stamped firm; Yet in a little while the time of harvest will come for her."
34. "Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me and crushed me, He has set me down like an empty vessel; He has swallowed me like a monster, He has filled his stomach with my delicacies; He has washed me away.
35. "May the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon," The inhabitant of Zion will say; And, "May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea," Jerusalem will say.
36. Therefore thus says the Lord, "Behold, I am going to plead your case And exact full vengeance for you; And I will dry up her sea And make her fountain dry.
37. "Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, An object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants.
38. "They will roar together like young lions, They will growl like lions' cubs.
39. "When they become heated up, I will serve them their banquet And make them drunk, that they may become jubilant And may sleep a perpetual sleep And not wake up," declares the Lord.
40. "I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, Like rams together with male goats.
41. "How Sheshak has been captured, And the praise of the whole earth been seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!
42. "The sea has come up over Babylon; She has been engulfed with its tumultuous waves.
43. "Her cities have become an object of horror, A parched land and a desert, A land in which no man lives And through which no son of man passes.
44. "I will punish Bel in Babylon, And I will make what he has swallowed come out of his mouth; And the nations will no longer stream to him. Even the wall of Babylon has fallen down!
45. "Come forth from her midst, My people, And each of you save yourselves From the fierce anger of the Lord.