- But wait, there's still more. God's going to send a destructive wind against Babylon.
- The land will be emptied. The young men shouldn't be spared, and the army needs to be totally annihilated.
- But Israel should be remembered and it should get far away from Babylon before God drops the boom on it.
- Babylon's like a cup of wine that God used to make everyone else drunk, but now he's destroying it.
- The Medes will destroy Babylon, providing God with vengeance for his ruined temple.
- God urges military preparations against the Babylonians with troops as numerous and destructive as locusts.
- God made the world by power and wisdom and understanding. He makes lightning, rain, wind, etc.
- Oh, and idols are bad (in case you didn't remember).
- God says that Israel is his war club (though this would make more sense if addressed to the Medes, actually).
- He's used them to crush kingdoms and people: old men, young men, farmers, soldiers, shepherds, and so on and so forth.
- God hates Babylon now and he'll turn it into a burned-out mountain.
- God imagines how sweet victory will be, with the Babylonian messengers running to tell the king about their loss and destruction. The Babylonian warriors become "like women."
- The people of Zion all ask for revenge against Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon, which was like a monster that ate and digested them. Godzillanezzar, we believe.
- God will dry up and defeat Babylon. It'll become ruins and only jackals will live there.
- He'll lead the Babylonians like lambs to the slaughter after making them drunk with carelessness.
- The Babylonian god Bel will be punished too. Oh yeah.
- God's going to punish Babylon's idols. The heavens and earth will rejoice over Babylon's destruction.
- God tells the Hebrew survivors to run away from this destruction and set their minds on Jerusalem.
More Show and Tell
- But back to Jeremiah: Jeremiah wrote all his prophecies against Babylon and gave them to a guy named Seraiah.
- He told Seraiah (who was headed into exile in Babylon), to read the scroll in Babylon, remind God of his promise to destroy Babylon, and to finally drop the scroll into the Euphrates with a stone tied to it. As he does this, Seraiah is to say, "Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more."
- Jeremiah sure has a thing for the dramatic gesture.