Jeremiah 51:1–14

Hurricane Persia

^1–551There’s more. God says more:

“Watch this:

I’m whipping up

A death-dealing hurricane against Babylon—‘Hurricane Persia’—

against all who live in that perverse land.

I’m sending a cleanup crew into Babylon.

They’ll clean the place out from top to bottom.

When they get through there’ll be nothing left of her

worth taking or talking about.

They won’t miss a thing.

A total and final Doomsday!

Fighters will fight with everything they’ve got.

It’s no-holds-barred.

They will spare nothing and no one.

It’s final and wholesale destruction—the end!

Babylon littered with the wounded,

streets piled with corpses.

It turns out that Israel and Judah

are not widowed after all.

As their God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, I am still alive and well,

committed to them even though

They filled their land with sin

against Israel’s most Holy God.

^6–8“Get out of Babylon as fast as you can.

Run for your lives! Save your necks!

Don’t linger and lose your lives to my vengeance on her

as I pay her back for her sins.

Babylon was a fancy gold chalice

held in my hand,

Filled with the wine of my anger

to make the whole world drunk.

The nations drank the wine

and they’ve all gone crazy.

Babylon herself will stagger and crash,

senseless in a drunken stupor—tragic!

Get anointing balm for her wound.

Maybe she can be cured.”

⁹“We did our best, but she can’t be helped.

Babylon is past fixing.

Give her up to her fate.

Go home.

The judgment on her will be vast,

a skyscraper-memorial of vengeance.

Your Lifeline Is Cut

¹⁰“God has set everything right for us.

Come! Let’s tell the good news

Back home in Zion.

Let’s tell what our God did to set things right.

^11–13“Sharpen the arrows!

Fill the quivers!

God has stirred up the kings of the Medes,

infecting them with war fever: ‘Destroy Babylon!’

God’s on the warpath.

He’s out to avenge his Temple.

Give the signal to attack Babylon’s walls.

Station guards around the clock.

Bring in reinforcements.

Set men in ambush.

God will do what he planned,

what he said he’d do to the people of Babylon.

You have more water than you need,

you have more money than you need—

But your life is over,

your lifeline cut.”

¹⁴God-of-the-Angel-Armies has solemnly sworn:

“I’ll fill this place with soldiers.

They’ll swarm through here like locusts

chanting victory songs over you.”