32. All the escape routes are blocked.The marshes have been set aflame,and the army is in a panic.
33. This is what the lord of Heaven’s Armies,the God of Israel, says:“Babylon is like wheat on a threshing floor,about to be trampled.In just a little whileher harvest will begin.”
34. “King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has eaten and crushed usand drained us of strength.He has swallowed us like a great monsterand filled his belly with our riches.He has thrown us out of our own country.
35. Make Babylon suffer as she made us suffer,”say the people of Zion.“Make the people of Babylonia pay for spilling our blood,”says Jerusalem.
36. This is what the lord says to Jerusalem: “I will be your lawyer to plead your case,and I will avenge you.I will dry up her river,as well as her springs,
37. and Babylon will become a heap of ruins,haunted by jackals.She will be an object of horror and contempt,a place where no one lives.
38. Her people will roar together like strong lions.They will growl like lion cubs.
39. And while they lie inflamed with all their wine,I will prepare a different kind of feast for them.I will make them drink until they fall asleep,and they will never wake up again,”says the lord.
40. “I will bring them downlike lambs to the slaughter,like rams and goats to be sacrificed.
41. “How Babylon is fallen—great Babylon, praised throughout the earth!Now she has become an object of horroramong the nations.
42. The sea has risen over Babylon;she is covered by its crashing waves.
43. Her cities now lie in ruins;she is a dry wastelandwhere no one lives or even passes by.
44. And I will punish Bel, the god of Babylon,and make him vomit up all he has eaten.The nations will no longer come and worship him.The wall of Babylon has fallen!