There'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!
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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
GOD-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."
Stick-god worshipers look mighty foolish! god-makers embarrassed by their handmade gods! Their gods are frauds, dead sticks-- deadwood gods, tasteless jokes.
"I'm your enemy, Babylon, Mount Destroyer, you ravager of the whole earth. I'll reach out, I'll take you in my hand, and I'll crush you till there's no mountain left. I'll turn you into a gravel pit--
"Raise the signal in the land, blow the shofar-trumpet for the nations. Consecrate the nations for holy work against her. Call kingdoms into service against her. Enlist Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a field marshal against her, and round up horses, locust hordes of horses!
"The very land trembles in terror, writhes in pain, terrorized by my plans against Babylon, Plans to turn the country of Babylon into a lifeless moonscape--a wasteland.
Babylon's soldiers have quit fighting. They hide out in ruins and caves-- Cowards who've given up without a fight, exposed as cowering milksops. Babylon's houses are going up in flames, the city gates torn off their hinges.
I, GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, said it would happen: 'Daughter Babylon is a threshing floor at threshing time. Soon, oh very soon, her harvest will come and then the chaff will fly!'
"Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon chewed up my people and spit out the bones. He wiped his dish clean, pushed back his chair, and belched--a huge gluttonous belch.
Then I, GOD, step in and say, 'I'm on your side, taking up your cause. I'm your Avenger. You'll get your revenge. I'll dry up her rivers, plug up her springs.
I'll fix them a meal, all right--a banquet, in fact. They'll drink themselves falling-down drunk. Dead drunk, they'll sleep--and sleep, and sleep . . . and they'll never wake up." GOD's Decree.
I'll bring doom on the glutton god-Bel in Babylon. I'll make him vomit up all he gulped down. No more visitors stream into this place, admiring and gawking at the wonders of Babylon. The wonders of Babylon are no more.
Don't lose hope. Don't ever give up when the rumors pour in hot and heavy. One year it's this, the next year it's that-- rumors of violence, rumors of war.
Trust me, the time is coming when I'll put the no-gods of Babylon in their place. I'll show up the whole country as a sickening fraud, with dead bodies strewn all over the place.
But you exiles who have escaped a Babylonian death, get out! And fast! Remember GOD in your long and distant exile. Keep Jerusalem alive in your memory."
How we've been humiliated, taunted and abused, kicked around for so long that we hardly know who we are! And we hardly know what to think-- our old Sanctuary, GOD's house, desecrated by strangers.
"I know, but trust me: The time is coming" --GOD's Decree-- "When I will bring doom on her no-god idols, and all over this land her wounded will groan.
Even if Babylon climbed a ladder to the moon and pulled up the ladder so that no one could get to her, That wouldn't stop me. I'd make sure my avengers would reach her." GOD's Decree.
GOD is taking his wrecking bar to Babylon. We'll be hearing the last of her noise-- Death throes like the crashing of waves, death rattles like the roar of cataracts.
The avenging destroyer is about to enter Babylon: Her soldiers are taken, her weapons are trashed. Indeed, GOD is a God who evens things out. All end up with their just deserts.
"I'll get them drunk, the whole lot of them-- princes, sages, governors, soldiers. Dead drunk, they'll sleep--and sleep and sleep . . . and never wake up." The King's Decree. His name? GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies!
GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks: "The city walls of Babylon--those massive walls!-- will be flattened. And those city gates--huge gates!-- will be set on fire. The harder you work at this empty life, the less you are. Nothing comes of ambition like this but ashes."
Jeremiah the prophet gave a job to Seraiah son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when Seraiah went with Zedekiah king of Judah to Babylon. It was in the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign. Seraiah was in charge of travel arrangements.
Read, 'You, O GOD, said that you would destroy this place so that nothing could live here, neither human nor animal--a wasteland to top all wastelands, an eternal nothing.'