Jeremiah 25

¹ The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah (the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon).

² This word the prophet Jeremiah spoke to all the people of Judah and all the citizens of Jerusalem:

³ Since the thirteenth year of Josiah, son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day-these three and twenty years-the word of the LORD has come to me and I spoke to you untiringly, but you would not listen.

⁴ Though you refused to listen or pay heed, the LORD has sent you without fail all his servants the prophets

⁵ with this message: Turn back, each of you, from your evil way and from your evil deeds; then you shall remain in the land which the LORD gave you and your fathers, from of old and forever.

⁶ Do not follow strange gods to serve and adore them, lest you provoke me with your handiwork, and I bring evil upon you.

⁷ But you would not listen to me, says the LORD, and so you provoked me with your handiwork to your own harm.

⁸ Hence, thus says the LORD of hosts: Since you would not listen to my words,

⁹ lo! I will send for and fetch all the tribes of the north, says the LORD (and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant); I will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against all these neighboring nations. I will doom them, making them an object of horror, of ridicule, of everlasting reproach.

¹⁰ Among them I will bring to an end the song of joy and the song of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstone and the light of the lamp.

¹¹ This whole land shall be a ruin and a desert. Seventy years these nations shall be enslaved to the king of Babylon;

¹² but when the seventy years have elapsed, I will punish the king of Babylon and the nation and the land of the Chaldeans for their guilt, says the LORD. Their land I will turn into everlasting desert.

¹³ Against that land I will fulfill all the words I have spoken against it (all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations).

¹⁴ They also shall be enslaved to great nations and mighty kings, and thus I will repay them according to their own deeds and according to their own handiwork.

¹⁵ For thus said the LORD, the God of Israel, to me: Take this cup of foaming wine from my hand, and have all the nations to whom I will send you drink it.

¹⁶ They shall drink, and be convulsed, and go mad, because of the sword I will send among them.

¹⁷ I took the cup from the hand of the LORD and gave drink to all the nations to which the LORD sent me:

¹⁸ (Jerusalem, the cities of Judah, her kings and her princes, to make them a ruin and a desert, an object of ridicule and cursing, as they are today;)

¹⁹ Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and his servants, his princes, all the people under him, native

²⁰ and foreign; all the kings of the land of Uz; all the kings of the land of the Philistines: Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod;

²¹ Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites;

²² all the kings of Tyre, of Sidon, and of the shores beyond the sea;

²³ Dedan and Tema and Buz, all the desert dwellers who shave their temples;

²⁴ (all the kings of Arabia;)

²⁵ all the kings of Zimri, of Elam, of the Medes;

²⁶ all the kings of the north, near and far, one after the other; all the kingdoms upon the face of the earth (and after them the king of Sheshach shall drink).

²⁷ Tell them: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink! become drunk and vomit; fall, never to rise, before the sword that I will send among you!

²⁸ If they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink, say to them: Thus says the LORD of hosts: You must drink!

²⁹ For since with this city, which is called by my name, I begin to inflict evil, how can you possibly be spared? You shall not be spared! I will call down the sword upon all who inhabit the earth, says the LORD of hosts.

³⁰ Prophesy against them all these things and say to them: The LORD roars from on high, from his holy dwelling he raises his voice; Mightily he roars over the range, a shout like that of vintagers over the grapes.

³¹ To all who inhabit the earth to its very ends the uproar spreads; For the LORD has an indictment against the nations, he is to pass judgment upon all mankind: The godless shall be given to the sword, says the LORD.

³² Thus says the LORD of hosts: Lo! calamity stalks from nation to nation; A great storm is unleashed from the ends of the earth.

³³ On that day, those whom the LORD has slain will be strewn from one end of the earth to the other. None will mourn them, none will gather them for burial; they shall lie like dung on the field.

³⁴ Howl, you shepherds, and wail! roll in the dust, leaders of the flock! The time for your slaughter has come; like choice rams you shall fall.

³⁵ There is no flight for the shepherds, no escape for the leaders of the flock.

³⁶ Listen! Wailing from the shepherds, howling by the leaders of the flock! For the LORD lays waste their grazing place,

³⁷ desolate lie the peaceful pastures;

³⁸ The lion leaves his lair, and their land is made desolate By the sweeping sword, by the burning wrath of the LORD.