51

The Utter Destruction of Babylon

¹Thus says the Lord:
“Behold, I will raise up against ⚓Babylon,
Against those who dwell in Leb Kamai,
⚓A destroying wind.
²And I will send ⚓winnowers to Babylon,
Who shall winnow her and empty her land.
⚓For in the day of doom
They shall be against her all around.
³Against her⚓let the archer bend his bow,
And lift himself up against her in his armor.
Do not spare her young men;
⚓Utterly destroy all her army.
⁴Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans,
⚓And those thrust through in her streets.
⁵For Israel is ⚓not forsaken, nor Judah,
By his God, the Lord of hosts,
Though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.”
⁶⚓Flee from the midst of Babylon,
And every one save his life!
Do not be cut off in her iniquity,
For ⚓this is the time of the Lord’s vengeance;
⚓He shall recompense her.
⁷⚓Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord’s hand,
That made all the earth drunk.
⚓The nations drank her wine;
Therefore the nations ⚓are deranged.
⁸Babylon has suddenly ⚓fallen and been destroyed.
⚓Wail for her!
⚓Take balm for her pain;
Perhaps she may be healed.
⁹We would have healed Babylon,
But she is not healed.
Forsake her, and ⚓let us go everyone to his own country;
⚓For her judgment reaches to heaven and is lifted up to the skies.
¹⁰The Lord has ⚓revealed our righteousness.
Come and let us ⚓declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God.
¹¹⚓Make the arrows bright!
Gather the shields!
⚓The Lord has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes.
⚓For His plan is against Babylon to destroy it,
Because it is⚓the vengeance of the Lord,
The vengeance for His temple.
¹²⚓Set up the standard on the walls of Babylon;
Make the guard strong,
Set up the watchmen,
Prepare the ambushes.
For the Lord has both devised and done
What He spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon.
¹³⚓O you who dwell by many waters,
Abundant in treasures,
Your end has come,
The measure of your covetousness.
¹⁴⚓The Lord of hosts has sworn by Himself:
“Surely I will fill you with men, ⚓as with locusts,
And they shall lift ⚓up a shout against you.”
¹⁵⚓He has made the earth by His power;
He has established the world by His wisdom,
And ⚓stretched out the heaven by His understanding.
¹⁶When He utters His voice—
There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:
⚓“He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth;
He makes lightnings for the rain;
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”
¹⁷⚓Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge;
Every metalsmith is put to shame by the carved image;
⚓For his molded image is falsehood,
And there is no breath in them.
¹⁸They are futile, a work of errors;
In the time of their punishment they shall perish.
¹⁹The Portion of Jacob is not like them,
For He is the Maker of all things;
And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance.
The Lord of hosts is His name.
²⁰“You⚓are My battle-ax and weapons of war:
For with you I will break the nation in pieces;
With you I will destroy kingdoms;
²¹With you I will break in pieces the horse and its rider;
With you I will break in pieces the chariot and its rider;
²²With you also I will break in pieces man and woman;
With you I will break in pieces ⚓old and young;
With you I will break in pieces the young man and the maiden;
²³With you also I will break in pieces the shepherd and his flock;
With you I will break in pieces the farmer and his yoke of oxen;
And with you I will break in pieces governors and rulers.
²⁴“And⚓ I will repay Babylon
And all the inhabitants of Chaldea
For all the evil they have done
In Zion in your sight,” says the Lord.
²⁵“Behold, I am against you, ⚓O destroying mountain,
Who destroys all the earth,” says the Lord.
“And I will stretch out My hand against you,
Roll you down from the rocks,
⚓And make you a burnt mountain.
²⁶They shall not take from you a stone for a corner
Nor a stone for a foundation,
⚓But you shall be desolate forever,” says the Lord.
²⁷⚓Set up a banner in the land,
Blow the trumpet among the nations!
⚓Prepare the nations against her,
Call ⚓the kingdoms together against her:
Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz.
Appoint a general against her;
Cause the horses to come up like the bristling locusts.
²⁸Prepare against her the nations,
With the kings of the Medes,
Its governors and all its rulers,
All the land of his dominion.
²⁹And the land will tremble and sorrow;
For every ⚓purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon,
⚓To make the land of Babylon a desolation without inhabitant.
³⁰The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting,
They have remained in their strongholds;
Their might has failed,
⚓They became like women;
They have burned her dwelling places,
⚓The bars of her gate are broken.
³¹⚓One runner will run to meet another,
And one messenger to meet another,
To show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on all sides;
³²⚓The passages are blocked,
The reeds they have burned with fire,
And the men of war are terrified.
³³For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
“The daughter of Babylon is⚓like a threshing floor
When⚓it is time to thresh her;
Yet a little while
⚓And the time of her harvest will come.”
³⁴“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon
Has ⚓devoured me, he has crushed me;
He has made me an ⚓empty vessel,
He has swallowed me up like a monster;
He has filled his stomach with my delicacies,
He has spit me out.
³⁵Let the violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon,”
The inhabitant of Zion will say;
“And my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea!”
Jerusalem will say.
³⁶Therefore thus says the Lord:
“Behold, ⚓I will plead your case and take vengeance for you.
⚓I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry.
³⁷⚓Babylon shall become a heap,
A dwelling place for jackals,
⚓An astonishment and a hissing,
Without an inhabitant.
³⁸They shall roar together like lions,
They shall growl like lions’ whelps.
³⁹In their excitement I will prepare their feasts;
⚓I will make them drunk,
That they may rejoice,
And sleep a perpetual sleep
And not awake,” says the Lord.
⁴⁰“I will bring them down
Like lambs to the slaughter,
Like rams with male goats.
⁴¹“Oh, how ⚓Sheshach is taken!
Oh, how ⚓the praise of the whole earth is seized!
How Babylon has become desolate among the nations!
⁴²⚓The sea has come up over Babylon;
She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
⁴³⚓Her cities are a desolation,
A dry land and a wilderness,
A land where ⚓no one dwells,
Through which no son of man passes.
⁴⁴I will punish ⚓Bel in Babylon,
And I will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed;
And the nations shall not stream to him anymore.
Yes, ⚓the wall of Babylon shall fall.
⁴⁵“My⚓ people, go out of the midst of her!
And let everyone deliver himself from the fierce anger of the Lord.
⁴⁶And lest your heart faint,
And you fear ⚓for the rumor that will be heard in the land
(A rumor will come one year,
And after that, in another year
A rumor will come,
And violence in the land,
Ruler against ruler),
⁴⁷Therefore behold, the days are coming
That I will bring judgment on the carved images of Babylon;
Her whole land shall be ashamed,
And all her slain shall fall in her midst.
⁴⁸Then ⚓the heavens and the earth and all that is in them
Shall sing joyously over Babylon;
⚓For the plunderers shall come to her from the north,” says the Lord.
⁴⁹As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall,
So at Babylon the slain of all the earth shall fall.
⁵⁰⚓You who have escaped the sword,
Get away! Do not stand still!
⚓Remember the Lord afar off,
And let Jerusalem come to your mind.
⁵¹⚓We are ashamed because we have heard reproach.
Shame has covered our faces,
For strangers ⚓have come into the sanctuaries of the Lord’s house.
⁵²“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord,
“That I will bring judgment on her carved images,
And throughout all her land the wounded shall groan.
⁵³⚓Though Babylon were to mount up to heaven,
And though she were to fortify the height of her strength,
Yet from Me plunderers would come to her,” says the Lord.
⁵⁴⚓The sound of a cry comes from Babylon,
And great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans,
⁵⁵Because the Lord is plundering Babylon
And silencing her loud voice,
Though her waves roar like great waters,
And the noise of their voice is uttered,
⁵⁶Because the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon,
And her mighty men are taken.
Every one of their bows is broken;
⚓For the Lordis the God of recompense,
He will surely repay.
⁵⁷“And I will make drunk
Her princes and ⚓wise men,
Her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men.
And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep
And not awake,” says ⚓the King,
Whose name is the Lord of hosts.
⁵⁸Thus says the Lord of hosts:
“The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly ⚓broken,
And her high gates shall be burned with fire;
⚓The people will labor in vain,
And the nations, because of the fire;
And they shall be weary.”

Jeremiah’s Command to Seraiah

⁵⁹The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of ⚓Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And Seraiah was the quartermaster. ⁶⁰So Jeremiah ⚓wrote in a book all the evil that would come upon Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon. ⁶¹And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When you arrive in Babylon and see it, and read all these words, ⁶²then you shall say, ‘O Lord, You have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that ⚓none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but it shall be desolate forever.’ ⁶³Now it shall be, when you have finished reading this book, ⚓that you shall tie a stone to it and throw it out into the Euphrates. ⁶⁴Then you shall say, ‘Thus Babylon shall sink and not rise from the catastrophe that I will bring upon her. And they shall be weary.’ ”
Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

51

再審判巴比倫

¹耶和華如此說：
看哪，我必颳起毀滅的風，
攻擊巴比倫和住在立加米的人。
²我要差陌生人⚓來到巴比倫，
他們要簸揚它，使它的地空無一物。
在它遭禍的日子，
他們要四圍攻擊它。
³不要叫拉弓的拉弓，
不要叫他佩戴盔甲⚓；
不要憐惜巴比倫的壯丁，
要滅盡它的全軍。
⁴他們必在迦勒底人之地被殺仆倒，
在巴比倫的街市上被刺透。
⁵以色列和猶大境內雖然充滿違背以色列聖者的罪，
卻沒有被他的上帝－萬軍之耶和華所遺棄。

⁶你們要奔逃，離開巴比倫，
各救自己的性命！
不要陷在它的罪孽中一同滅亡，
因為這是耶和華報仇的時刻，
他必向巴比倫施行報應。
⁷巴比倫素來是耶和華手中的金杯，
使全地沉醉，
列國喝了它的酒就顛狂。
⁸巴比倫忽然傾覆毀壞；
要為它哀號，
拿乳香來止它的疼痛，
或者可以治好。
⁹我們想醫治巴比倫，
它卻未獲痊癒。
離開它吧！讓我們各人歸回本國，
因為它受的審判通於上天，達到穹蒼。
¹⁰耶和華已經彰顯出我們的義。
來吧！我們要在錫安
傳揚耶和華－我們上帝的作為。

¹¹你們要磨尖箭頭，
抓住盾牌。
論到巴比倫，耶和華定意要毀滅它，所以激起瑪代君王的心；這是耶和華報仇，為他的聖殿報仇。
¹²你們要豎立大旗，
攻擊巴比倫的城牆；
要堅固瞭望臺，
派定守望的設下埋伏；
因為耶和華指着巴比倫居民所說的，
他不但這樣定意，也已成就。
¹³住在眾水之上多有財寶的啊，
你的結局已到！
你貪婪之量已滿盈⚓！
¹⁴萬軍之耶和華指着自己起誓說：
我必使人遍滿各處像蝗蟲一樣，
他們必吶喊攻擊你。

頌讚上帝的詩歌

¹⁵耶和華以能力創造大地，
以智慧建立世界，
以聰明鋪張穹蒼。
¹⁶他一出聲，天上就有眾水澎湃；
他使雲霧從地極上騰，
造電隨雨而閃，
從倉庫中吹出風來。
¹⁷人人都如同畜牲，毫無知識；
銀匠都因偶像羞愧，
他所鑄的偶像本為虛假，
它們裏面並無氣息。
¹⁸它們都是虛無的，
是迷惑人的東西，
到它們受罰的時刻必被除滅。
¹⁹雅各所得的福分不是這樣，
因主⚓是那創造萬有的，
以色列⚓是他產業的支派，
萬軍之耶和華是他的名。

耶和華的大錘

²⁰你是我爭戰的斧子和打仗的兵器。
我要用你打碎列邦，
毀滅列國；
²¹用你打碎馬和騎馬的，
打碎戰車和坐在其上的；
²²用你打碎男人和女人，
打碎老人和少年，
打碎壯丁和少女；
²³用你打碎牧人和他的羊羣，
打碎農夫和他的一對耕牛，
打碎省長和官員。

懲罰巴比倫

²⁴我必在你們眼前報復巴比倫人和迦勒底居民在錫安所做的一切惡事。這是耶和華說的。
²⁵行毀滅的山，看哪，我與你為敵，
你毀滅全地，
我必伸手攻擊你，
將你從山巖滾下去，
使你成為燒燬了的山。
這是耶和華說的。
²⁶人必不從你那裏取石頭為房角石，
也不取石頭來作根基，
因為你必永遠荒廢。
這是耶和華說的。

²⁷你們要在境內豎立大旗，
在列邦中吹角，
使列邦預備攻擊巴比倫。
要招集亞拉臘、米尼、亞實基拿各國前來攻擊它，
派將軍攻擊它，
使馬匹上來如粗暴的蝗蟲；
²⁸使列邦和瑪代君王，省長和官員，
他們所管的全地，都預備攻擊它。
²⁹地必震動而移轉；
因耶和華向巴比倫旨意已確定，
要使巴比倫土地荒涼，無人居住。
³⁰巴比倫的勇士停止爭戰，
躲在堡壘之中。
他們的力氣耗盡，
他們變成與婦女一樣。
巴比倫的住處焚燒，
門閂都折斷了。
³¹通報的彼此相遇，
送信的彼此相遇，
報告巴比倫王，
城的四方都被攻下了，
³²渡口被佔據了，
蘆葦被火焚燒，
戰士都驚慌。
³³萬軍之耶和華－以色列的上帝如此說：
巴比倫⚓好像踹穀的禾場；
再過片時，它收割的時候就到了。

³⁴巴比倫王尼布甲尼撒吞滅我，壓碎我，
使我成為空器皿。
他如大魚將我吞下，
以我的美物充滿他的肚腹，
又把我趕出去。
³⁵錫安的居民要說：
願我和我骨肉之親所受的殘暴
歸給巴比倫。
耶路撒冷人要說：
願我們所流的血
歸給迦勒底的居民。

耶和華要幫助以色列

³⁶所以，耶和華如此說：
看哪，我必為你伸冤，為你報仇；
我必使巴比倫的海枯竭，
使它的泉源乾涸。
³⁷巴比倫必成為廢墟，
為野狗的住處，
令人驚駭、嗤笑，
並且無人居住。
³⁸他們要像少壯獅子一同咆哮，
像小獅子吼叫。
³⁹他們食慾一來的時候，
我必為他們擺設酒席，
使他們沉醉，好叫他們快樂；
他們睡了長覺，永不醒起。
這是耶和華說的。
⁴⁰我必使他們像羔羊、
像公綿羊和公山羊被牽去宰殺。

巴比倫的命運

⁴¹示沙克⚓竟然被攻取！
全地所稱讚的被佔據！
巴比倫在列國中竟然變為荒涼！
⁴²海水漲起，漫過巴比倫；
澎湃的海浪遮蓋了它。
⁴³它的城鎮變廢墟，
地變乾旱，成為沙漠，
成為無人居住、
無人經過之地。
⁴⁴我要懲罰巴比倫的彼勒⚓，
使它吐出所吞之物。
列國必不再流歸到它那裏，
巴比倫的城牆也必坍塌。

⁴⁵我的子民哪，你們要離開巴比倫！
各人逃命，躲避耶和華的烈怒。
⁴⁶不要因境內所聽見的風聲
心驚膽怯或懼怕；
因為這年有風聲傳來，
那年也有風聲傳來；
境內有殘暴的事，
官長攻擊官長。

⁴⁷所以，看哪，日子將到，
我必懲罰巴比倫雕刻的偶像。
它的全地必然抱愧，
它被殺的人必仆倒在其上。
⁴⁸那時，天地和其中所有的，
必因巴比倫歡呼，
因為行毀滅的要從北方來到它那裏。
這是耶和華說的。
⁴⁹巴比倫要因以色列被殺的人而仆倒，
正如全地被刺殺的人是因巴比倫仆倒一般。

給在巴比倫以色列人的信息

⁵⁰你們躲避刀劍的要快走，
不要站住！
要在遠方懷念耶和華，
心中追想耶路撒冷。
⁵¹我們聽見辱罵就蒙羞，滿面慚愧，
因為外邦人進入耶和華殿的聖所。

⁵²所以，看哪，日子將到，
我必懲罰巴比倫雕刻的偶像，
在全境內到處都有刺傷的人在呻吟。
這是耶和華說的。
⁵³巴比倫雖升到天上，
雖使它堅固的高處更堅固，
我也要差毀滅者到它那裏。
這是耶和華說的。

巴比倫滅亡

⁵⁴有哀號的聲音從巴比倫出來，
有大毀滅從迦勒底人之地而來。
⁵⁵耶和華使巴比倫變為廢墟，
使其中喧嘩的大聲滅絕。
仇敵彷彿眾水，
波浪澎湃，發出響聲；
⁵⁶這是行毀滅的臨到巴比倫。
巴比倫的勇士被捉住，
他們的弓折斷了；
因為耶和華是施行報應的上帝，
他必施行報應。
⁵⁷我必使巴比倫的領袖、
智慧人、省長、官員和勇士都喝醉，
使他們永遠沉睡，不再醒起。
這是名為萬軍之耶和華的君王說的。

⁵⁸萬軍之耶和華如此說：
巴比倫寬闊的城牆要夷為平地，
它高大的城門必被火焚燒。
萬民所勞碌的必致虛空，
萬族所勞碌的被火焚燒，
他們都必困乏。

耶利米的信息傳到巴比倫

⁵⁹猶大王西底家在位第四年，瑪西雅的孫子，尼利亞的兒子西萊雅與王同去巴比倫，西萊雅是王宮的大臣，耶利米先知有話吩咐他。 ⁶⁰耶利米把一切要臨到巴比倫的災禍，就是論到巴比倫的這一切話，寫在一書卷上。 ⁶¹耶利米對西萊雅說：「你到了巴比倫，務要宣讀這一切話， ⁶²說：『耶和華啊，你曾論到這地方說：要剪除它，不再有人與牲畜居住此地，必永遠荒涼。』 ⁶³你讀完這書卷，就要把一塊石頭拴在其上，投入幼發拉底河中， ⁶⁴說：『巴比倫因耶和華所要降與它的災禍，必如此沉下去，不再浮起來，百姓也必困乏。』」
耶利米的話到此為止。