56. For a destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon, and her warriors will be captured, their bows broken. For Adonai is a God of restitution, He will fully repay.
57. “I will intoxicate her officials and sages, her governors, deputies, and warriors, and they will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awake.” It is a declaration of the King, whose Name is Adonai-Tzva’ot.
58. Thus says Adonai-Tzva’ot: “Babylon’s thick wall will be totally razed and her high gates burned with fire. So the peoples are toiling for nothing, and nations weary themselves for fire.”
59. The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when he went with King Zedekiah of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was quartermaster.
60. And Jeremiah wrote in a single scroll all the evil that would come upon Babylon, including all these words that were written about Babylon.
61. Then Jeremiah said to Seraiah: “When you arrive in Babylon, then see that you read all these words,
62. and say: ‘Adonai, you have spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that nothing will dwell there, neither man nor beast, but that it will be desolate forever.’
63. “Now when you have finished reading this scroll, you will tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates.
64. Then you will say: ‘Thus will Babylon sink, and not rise again, because of the calamity that I will bring on her. So they will weary themselves.’” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.