The Sea Come Up Over Babylon
27 “Set up a standard in the land! Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations against her! Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz! Appoint a marshal against her! Cause the horses to come up as the swarming locusts! 28 Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes, its governors, and all its deputies, and all the land of their dominion! 29 The land trembles and is in pain; for the purposes of Yahweh against Babylon stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant. 30 The mighty men of Babylon have stopped fighting, they remain in their strongholds. Their might has failed. They have become as women. Her dwelling places are set on fire. Her bars 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 every quarter. 32 So the passages are seized. They have burned the reeds with fire. The men of war are frightened.” 33 For Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time when it is trodden. Yet a little while, and the time of harvest comes for her.” 34 “Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me. He has crushed me. He has made me an empty vessel. He has, like a monster, swallowed me up. He has filled his mouth with my delicacies. He has cast me out. 35 May the violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon!” the inhabitant of Zion will say; and, “May my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea!” will Jerusalem say. 36 Therefore Yahweh says: “Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry. 37 Babylon will become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant. 38 They will roar together like young lions. They will growl as lions’ cubs. 39 When they are inflamed, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh. 40 “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats. 41 “How Sheshach is taken! How the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations! 42 The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves. 43 Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it. 44 I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. The nations will not flow any more to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall. 45 “My people, go away from the middle of her, and each of you save yourselves from Yahweh’s fierce anger. 46 Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t fear for the news that will be heard in the land. For news will come one year, and after that in another year news will come, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler. 47 Therefore behold, the days come that I will execute judgment on the engraved images of Babylon; and her whole land will be confounded. All her slain will fall in the middle of her. 48 Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says Yahweh. 49 “As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so the slain of all the land will fall at Babylon. 50 You who have escaped the sword, go! Don’t stand still! Remember Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.” 51 “We are confounded because we have heard reproach. Confusion has covered our faces, for strangers have come into the sanctuaries of Yahweh’s house.” 52 “Therefore behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will execute judgment on her engraved images; and through all her land the wounded will groan. 53 Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet destroyers will come to her from me,” says Yahweh. 54 “The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, and of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans! 55 For Yahweh lays Babylon waste, and destroys out of her the great voice! Their waves roar like many waters. The noise of their voice is uttered. 56 For the destroyer has come on her, even on Babylon. Her mighty men are taken. Their bows are broken in pieces, for Yahweh is a God of retribution. He will surely repay. 57 I will make her princes, her wise men, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men drunk. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies. 58 Yahweh of Armies says: “The wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
The city falls while its couriers are still running to tell the king, and the last word on the whole enterprise is that the nations wore themselves out working for a fire.
The muster is called from kingdoms far outside anything Judah dealt with — Ararat, Minni, Ashkenaz, the kings of the Medes — and the picture of the fall itself is a piece of reporting. 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 every quarter. The couriers are colliding on their way in. The place has already fallen at every point while the news is still traveling, and the king learns it in fragments from men who have overtaken one another.
The complaint that justifies it is put in Jerusalem's own mouth, and it is physical: He has made me an empty vessel. He has, like a monster, swallowed me up. He has filled his mouth with my delicacies. The reply takes the image literally — God will bring out of Bel's mouth what he has swallowed — so the restitution is described as a disgorging rather than a compensation. What was taken comes back out.
The end comes at a feast. When they are inflamed, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up — princes, wise men, governors, deputies and soldiers, all at one table, going from a banquet into a sleep with no morning. And the water imagery that ran through the oracles against Judah returns as the last thing said about the city: The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves. An inland capital on a river is drowned.
The closing verse steps back from the whole thing and delivers a verdict on empire-building as such. The wide walls are overthrown and the high gates burned, and then: The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary. Everything the ancient world admired most — the greatest walls, the greatest gates, the accumulated work of subject nations — is described as fuel gathered by exhausted men. It is the same judgment the book passed on a king who built himself cedar rooms with unpaid labor Jeremiah 22:13–14, enlarged to the scale of a civilization.
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