Tanakh & Talmud. Various Authors

might hath failed, they are become as women;Her dwelling-places are set on fire;Her bars are broken.³¹One post runneth to meet another,And one messenger to meet an other,To tell the king of BabylonThat his city is taken on every quarter;³²And the fords are seized,And the castles they have burned with fire,And the men of war are affrighted. ³³For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-floorAt the time when it is trodden;Yet a little while, and the time of harvestShall come for her.³⁴Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me,He hath crushed me,He hath set me down as an empty vessel,He hath swallowed me up like a dragon,He hath filled his maw with my delicacies;He hath washed me clean.³⁵'The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon',Shall the inhabitant of Zion say;And: 'My blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea',Shall Jerusalem say. ³⁶Therefore thus saith the Lord:Behold, I will plead thy cause,And take vengeance for thee;And I will dry up her sea,And make her fountain dry.³⁷And Babylon shall become heaps,A dwelling-place for jackals,An astonishment, and a hissing,Without inhabitant.³⁸They shall roar together like young lions;They shall growl as lions' whelps.³⁹With their poison I will prepare their feast,And I will make them drunken, that they may be convulsed,And sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake,Saith the Lord.⁴⁰I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,Like rams with he-goats.⁴¹How is Sheshach taken!And the praise of the whole earth seized!How is Babylon become an astonishmentAmong the nations!⁴²The sea is come up upon Babylon;She is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.⁴³Her cities are become a desolation,A dry land, and a desert,A land wherein no man dwelleth,Neither doth any son of man pass thereby.⁴⁴And I will punish Bel in Babylon,And I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up,And the nations shall not flow any more unto him;Yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.⁴⁵My people, go ye out of the midst of her,And save yourselves every manFrom the fierce anger of the Lord.⁴⁶And let not your heart faint, neither fear ye,For the rumour that shall be heard in the land;For a rumour shall come one year,And after that in another year a rumour,And violence in the land, ruler against ruler.⁴⁷Therefore behold, the days come,That I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon,And her whole land shall be ashamed;And all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.⁴⁸Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein,Shall sing for joy over Babylon;For the spoilers shall come unto herFrom the north, saith the Lord.⁴⁹As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall,So at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the land.⁵⁰Ye that have escaped the sword,Go ye, stand not still;Remember the Lord from afar,And let Jerusalem come into your mind.⁵¹'We are ashamed, because we have heard reproach,Confusion hath covered our faces;For strangers are comeInto the sanctuaries of the Lord's house.' ⁵²Wherefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord,That I will do judgment upon her graven images;And through all her land the wounded shall groan.⁵³Though Babylon should mount up to heaven,And though she should fortify the height of her strength,Yet from Me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the Lord.⁵⁴Hark! a cry from Babylon,And great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!⁵⁵For the Lord spoileth Babylon,And destroyeth out of her the great voice;And their waves roar like many waters,The noise of their voice is uttered;⁵⁶For the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon,And her mighty men are taken,Their bows are shattered;For the Lord is a God of recompenses,He will surely requite.⁵⁷And I will make drunk her princes and her wise men,Her governors and her deputies, and her mighty men;And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake,Saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts. ⁵⁸Thus saith the Lord of hosts:The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown,And her high gates shall be burned with fire;And the peoples shall labour for vanity,And the nations for the fire;And they shall be weary.

       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. Now Seraiah was quartermaster. ⁶⁰And Jeremiah wrote in one book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written concerning Babylon. ⁶¹And Jeremiah said to Seraiah: 'When thou comest to Babylon, then see that thou read all these words, ⁶²and say: O Lord, Thou hast spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that none shall dwell therein, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever. ⁶³And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates; ⁶⁴and thou shalt say: Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring upon her; and they shall be weary.'

       Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

       52Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. ²And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that Jehoiakim had done. ³For through the anger of the Lord did it come to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, until He had cast them out from His presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. ⁴And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his army, against Jerusalem, and encamped against it; and they built forts against it round about. ⁵So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah. ⁶In the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. ⁷Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war fled, and went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king's garden—now the Chaldeans were against the city round about—and they went by the way of the Arabah. ⁸But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him. ⁹Then they took the king, and carried him up unto the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; and he gave judgment upon him. ¹⁰And the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes; he slew also all the princes of Judah in Riblah. ¹¹And he put out the eyes of Zedekiah; and the king of Babylon bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his death.

      ¹²Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, who stood before the king of Babylon, into Jerusalem; ¹³and he burned the house of the Lord, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man's house, burned he with fire. ¹⁴And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, broke down all the walls of Jerusalem round about. ¹⁵Then Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive of the poorest sort of the people, and the residue of the people that remained in the city, and those that fell away, that fell to the king of Babylon, and the residue of the multitude. ¹⁶But Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard left of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen. ¹⁷And the pillars of brass that were in the house of the Lord, and the bases and the brazen sea that were in the house of the Lord, did the Chaldeans break in pieces, and carried all the brass of them to Babylon. ¹⁸The pots also, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the basins, and the pans, and all the vessels of brass wherewith they ministered, took they away. ¹⁹And the cups, and the fire-pans, and the basins, and the pots, and the candlesticks, and the pans, and the bowls—that which was of gold, in gold, and that which was of silver, in silver—the captain of the guard took away. ²⁰The two pillars, the one sea, and the twelve brazen bulls that were under the bases, which king Solomon had made for the house of the Lord—the brass of all these vessels was without weight. ²¹And as for the pillars, the height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits; and a line of twelve cubits did compass it; and the thickness thereof was four fingers; it was hollow. ²²And a capital of brass was upon it; and the height of the one capital was five cubits, with network and pomegranates upon the capital round about, all of brass; and the second pillar also had like unto these, and pomegranates. ²³And there were ninety and six pomegranates on the outside; all the pomegranates were a hundred upon the network round about.

      ²⁴And the captain of the