אֶ֫רֶץ

A drought is upon her waters, and they will be dried up. For it is a land of graven images, and the people go mad over idols.

Behold, an army is coming from the north; a great nation and many kings are stirred up from the ends of the earth.

Therefore hear the plans that the LORD has drawn up against Babylon and the strategies He has devised against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely the little ones of the flock will be dragged away; certainly their pasture will be made desolate because of them.

At the sound of Babylon’s capture the earth will quake; a cry will be heard among the nations.

I will send strangers to Babylon to winnow her and empty her land; for they will come against her from every side in her day of disaster.

And they will fall slain in the land of the Chaldeans, and pierced through in her streets.

For Israel and Judah have not been abandoned by their God, the LORD of Hosts, though their land is full of guilt before the Holy One of Israel.”

Babylon was a gold cup in the hand of the LORD, making the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore the nations have gone mad.

“We tried to heal Babylon, but she could not be healed. Abandon her! Let each of us go to his own land, for her judgment extends to the sky and reaches to the clouds.”

The LORD made the earth by His power; He established the world by His wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding.

When He thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; He causes the clouds to rise from the ends of the earth. He generates the lightning with the rain and brings forth the wind from His storehouses.

“Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, you who devastate the whole earth, declares the LORD. I will stretch out My hand against you; I will roll you over the cliffs and turn you into a charred mountain.

“Raise a banner in the land! Blow the ram’s horn among the nations! Prepare the nations against her. Summon the kingdoms against her—Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a captain against her; bring up horses like swarming locusts.

Prepare the nations for battle against her—the kings of the Medes, their governors and all their officials, and all the lands they rule.

The earth quakes and writhes because the LORD’s intentions against Babylon stand: to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.

How Sheshach has been captured! The praise of all the earth has been seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!

Her cities have become a desolation, a dry and arid land, a land where no one lives, where no son of man passes through.

Do not let your heart grow faint, and do not be afraid when the rumor is heard in the land; for a rumor will come one year—and then another the next year—of violence in the land and of ruler against ruler.

Therefore, behold, the days are coming when I will punish the idols of Babylon. Her entire land will suffer shame, and all her slain will lie fallen within her.

Then heaven and earth and all that is in them will shout for joy over Babylon because the destroyers from the north will come against her,” declares the LORD.

“Babylon must fall on account of the slain of Israel, just as the slain of all the earth have fallen because of Babylon.

“Therefore, behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will punish her idols, and throughout her land the wounded will groan.

“The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, the sound of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!

By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.

The Chaldeans seized the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he pronounced judgment on Zedekiah.

But Nebuzaradan captain of the guard left behind some of the poorest of the land to tend the vineyards and fields.

Of those still in the city, he took a court official who had been appointed over the men of war, as well as seven trusted royal advisers. He also took the scribe of the captain of the army, who had enlisted the people of the land, and sixty men who were found in the city.

There at Riblah in the land of Hamath, the king of Babylon struck them down and put them to death. So Judah was taken into exile, away from its own land.

How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger.

Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes.

Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations, the law is no more, and even her prophets find no vision from the LORD.

The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

Both young and old lie together in the dust of the streets. My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without compassion.

To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the land,

The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any people of the world, that an enemy or a foe could enter the gates of Jerusalem.

So rejoice and be glad, O Daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz. Yet the cup will pass to you as well; you will get drunk and expose yourself.

…the word of the LORD came directly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the River Kebar. And there the LORD’s hand was upon him.

When I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces.

So as the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them, and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose.

When the creatures moved, the wheels moved; when the creatures stood still, the wheels stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose alongside them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.

But she has rebelled against My ordinances more wickedly than the nations, and against My statutes worse than the countries around her. For her people have rejected My ordinances and have not walked in My statutes.’

Yet I will leave a remnant, for some of you will escape the sword when you are scattered among the nations and throughout the lands.