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Take a breath, find your place, and read deeply. Discover the joy of reading God’s word with the Immerse New Living Translation (NLT) Bible.
This daily Bible podcast will take you through the Bible in a year following the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. So grab your family and small group and go through the Bible in a year together with Immerse. Each of the 6 volumes is available online or at your favorite Christian bookstore.
Nancy: Welcome to immerse: the
daily bible reading experience.
day 200 and 68
the Lord gave Jeremiah the prophet,
this message concerning Babylon
and the land of the Babylonians.
This is what the Lord says.
Tell the whole world
and keep nothing back.
Raise a signal flag to tell
everyone that Babylon will fall.
Her images and idols will be shattered.
Her God's bell and Marduke
will be utterly disgraced.
For a nation will attack her from
the north and bring such destruction
that no one will live there again.
Everything will be gone.
Both people and animals will flee
in those coming days, says the Lord.
The people of Israel will return home
together with the people of Judah.
They will come weeping and
seeking the Lord their God.
They will ask the way to Jerusalem
and will start back home again.
They will bind themselves to the
Lord with an eternal covenant
that will never be forgotten.
My people have been lost sheep.
Their shepherds have led them astray
and turned them loose in the mountains.
They have lost their way
and can't remember how to
get back to the sheep fold.
All who found them devoured them.
Their enemies said We did
nothing wrong in attacking them.
For they sinned against the
Lord, their true place of rest
and the hope of their ancestors.
Now flee from Babylon.
Leave the land of the Babylonians like
male goats at the head of the flock.
Lead my people home again for
I am raising up an army of
great nations from the north.
They will join forces to attack
Babylon, and she will be captured.
The enemy's arrows will
go straight to the mark.
They will not miss.
Babylonia, will be looted until the
attackers are glutted with loot.
I the Lord have spoken.
You, rejoice and are glad you
who plundered my chosen people.
You frisk about like a calf in a
meadow and nay like a stallion.
But your homeland will be
overwhelmed with shame and disgrace.
You'll become the least of nations.
A wilderness, a dry and desolate land.
Because of the Lord's anger, Babylon
will become a deserted wasteland.
All who passed by will be
horrified and will gasp at the
destruction they see there.
Yes.
Prepare to attack Babylon
all you surrounding nations.
Let your archers shoot at her.
Spare no arrows for she has
sinned against the Lord.
Shout.
War cries against her from every side.
Look she surrenders.
Her walls have fallen.
It is the Lord's vengeance,
so take vengeance on her.
Due to her as she has done to others.
Take from Babylon, all those who plant
crops send all the harvesters away.
Because of the sword of the
enemy, everyone will run away
and rush back to their own lands.
The Israelites are like sheep
that have been scattered by lions.
First, the King of Assyria ate them up.
Then King Nebuchadnezzar of
Babylon cracked their bones.
Therefore, This is what the Lord of
Heaven's armies, the God of Israel says.
Now I will punish the king of Babylon
and his land just as I punished the
King of Assyria, and I will bring
Israel home again to its own land,
to feed in the fields of Carmel
and Basin, and to be satisfied once
more in the hill country of Iram and
Gilead in those days says the Lord.
No sin will be found
in Israel or in Judah.
For I will forgive the remnant I preserve.
Go up my warriors against the land
of mith and against the people of
peacock pursue, kill and completely
destroy them as I have commanded you.
Says the Lord.
Let the battle cry.
Be heard in the land.
A shout of great destruction Babylon.
The mightiest hammer in all the
earth lies broken and shattered.
Babylon is desolate among the nations.
Listen, Babylon, for I
have set a trap for you.
You are caught for you have
fought against the Lord.
The Lord has opened his armory and
brought out weapons to vent his fury.
The terror that falls upon the
Babylonians will be the work of the
sovereign Lord of heaven's armies.
Yes, come against her from distant lands.
Break open her granaries, crush her
walls and houses into heaps of rubble.
Destroy her completely
and leave nothing destroy.
Even her young bulls.
It will be terrible for them too.
Slaughter them all for Babylon's.
Day of Reckoning has come.
Listen to the people who
have escaped from Babylon.
As they tell in Jerusalem how the Lord
our God has taken vengeance against
those who destroyed his temple.
Send out a call for archers to come
to Babylon, surround the city so
none can escape due to her as she has
done to others, for she has defied
the Lord, the holy one of Israel.
Her young men will fall
in the streets and die.
Her soldiers will all be
killed, says the Lord.
See, I am your enemy.
You arrogant people, says the Lord.
The Lord of heaven's armies.
Your day of reckoning has arrived
the day when I will punish you.
Oh, land of arrogance.
You will stumble and fall and no one
will raise you up for I will light
a fire in the cities of Babylon that
will burn up everything around them.
This is what the Lord
of Heaven's armies says.
The people of Israel and
Judah have been wronged.
Their captors hold them and
refuse to let them go, but the
one who redeems them is strong.
His name is the Lord of Heaven's armies.
He will defend them and give
them rest again in Israel.
But for the people of Babylon,
there will be no rest.
The sword of destruction will strike
the Babylonians, says the Lord.
It will strike the people of Babylon.
Her officials and wise men too.
The sword will strike her wise
counselors and they will become fools.
The sword will strike her mightiest
warriors and panic will seize them.
The sword will strike her horses and
chariots and her allies from other lands
and they will all become like women.
The sword will strike her treasures
and they all will be plundered.
A drought will strike her water
supply, causing it to dry up.
Why?
Because the whole land is
filled with idols and the people
are madly in love with them.
Soon Babylon will be inhabited
by desert animals and hyenas.
It will be a home for owls.
Never again will people live there.
It will lie desolate forever.
I will destroy it as I destroyed
Sodom and Gomorrah and their
neighboring towns says the Lord.
No one will live there.
No one will inhabit it.
Look, a great army is coming from the
north, a great nation, and many kings are
rising against you from far off lands.
They are armed with bows and spears.
They are cruel and show no mercy
as they ride forward on horses.
They sound like a roaring sea.
They're coming in battle formation,
planning to destroy you, Babylon.
The King of Babylon has heard
reports about the enemy,
and he is weak with fright.
Pangs of anguish have gripped him,
like those of a woman in labor.
I will come like a lion from the
thickets of the Jordan leaping
on the sheep in the pasture.
I will chase Babylon from its land and I
will appoint the leader of my choice for
who is like me and who can challenge me.
What ruler can oppose my will.
Listen to the Lord's plans against
Babylon and the land of the Babylonians.
Even the little children will
be dragged off like sheep and
their homes will be destroyed.
The earth will shake with the shout.
Babylon has been taken and its cry of
despair will be heard around the world.
This is what the Lord says.
I will stir up a destroyer against
Babylon and the people of Babylonia.
Foreigners will come and winnow
her, blowing her away as chaff.
They will come from every side to rise
against her in her day of trouble.
Don't let the archers put on
their armor or draw their bows.
Don't spare.
Even her best soldiers let her
army be completely destroyed.
They will fall dead in the land of the
babylonians slash to death in her streets.
For the Lord of Heaven's, armies
has not abandoned Israel and Judah.
He is still their God.
Even though their land was filled with
sin against the holy one of Israel.
Flee from Babylon.
Save yourselves.
Don't get trapped in her punishment.
It is the Lord's time for vengeance.
He will repay her in full.
Babylon has been a gold
cup in the Lord's hands.
A cup that made the whole earth drunk.
The nations drank Babylon's
wine and it drove them all mad.
But suddenly, Babylon two has fallen,
weep for her, give her medicine.
Perhaps she can yet be healed.
We would have helped her if we
could, but nothing can save her now.
Let her go.
Abandon her.
Return now to your own land for her
punishment reaches to the heavens.
It is so great.
It cannot be measured.
The Lord has vindicated us.
Come let us announce in Jerusalem
everything the Lord our God has done.
Sharpen the arrows.
Lift up the shields.
For the Lord has inspired the
kings of the meads to march
against Babylon and destroy her.
This is his vengeance against
those who desecrated his temple.
Raise the battle flag against Babylon.
Reinforce the guard and
station the watchmen.
Prepare an ambush.
For the Lord will fulfill all
his plans against Babylon.
You are a city by a great river, a great
center of commerce, but your end has come.
The thread of your life is cut.
The Lord of heaven's armies has taken this
vow and has sworn to it by his own name.
Your cities will be filled with enemies
like fields swarming with locusts, and
they will shout in triumph over you.
The Lord made the earth by his power
and he preserves it by his wisdom.
With his own understanding,
he stretched out the heavens.
When he speaks in the thunder,
the heavens roar with rain.
He causes the clouds
to rise over the earth.
He sends the lightning with the rain and
releases the wind from his storehouses.
The whole human race is
foolish and has no knowledge.
The craftsmen are disgraced by
the idols they make for their
carefully shaped works are a fraud.
These idols have no breath or power.
Idols are worthless.
They are ridiculous Lies.
On the day of reckoning,
they will all be destroyed.
But the God of Israel is no idol.
He is the creator of everything
that exists, including his people,
his own special possession.
The Lord of Heaven's armies is his name.
You are my battleax and
sword, says the Lord.
With you, I will shatter nations
and destroy many kingdoms with you.
I will shatter armies, destroying
the horse and rider, the
chariot and charioteer with you.
I will shatter men and women, old people
and children, young men and young women.
With you.
I will shatter shepherds and flocks,
farmers and oxen, captains and officers.
I will repay Babylon and the people of
Babylonia for all the wrong they have done
to my people in Jerusalem, says the Lord.
Look almighty mountain,
destroyer of the earth.
I am your enemy, says the Lord.
I will raise my fist against you.
To knock you down from the heights.
When I am finished, you will be
nothing but a heap of burnt rubble.
You will be desolate forever.
Even your stones will never
again be used for building.
You'll be completely
wiped out, says the Lord.
Raise a signal.
Flag to the nations.
Sound the battle cry.
Mobilized them all against Babylon.
Prepare them to fight against her.
Bring out the armies of
Ara, Minai and Ashkenaz.
Appoint a commander and bring a multitude
of horses like swarming, locusts
bring against her, the armies of the
nations led by the kings of the Meads
and all their captains and officers.
The earth trembles and rides in pain.
For everything the Lord has planned
against Babylon stands unchanged.
Babylon will be left desolate
without a single inhabitant.
Her mightiest warriors no longer fight.
They stay in their barracks,
their courage gone.
They have become like women.
The invaders have burned the houses
and broken down the city gates.
The news is passed from
one runner to the next.
As the messengers hurry to tell the
king that his city has been captured.
All the escape routes are blocked.
The marshes have been set a
flame, and the army is in a panic.
This is what the Lord of Heaven's
armies, the God of Israel says.
Babylon is like wheat on a threshing
floor, about to be trampled in just a
little while, her harvest will begin.
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has eaten
and crushed us and drained us of strength.
He has swallowed us like a great monster
and filled his belly with our riches.
He has thrown us out of our own country.
Make Babylon suffer as she made us suffer.
Say the people of Zion.
Make the people of Babylonia pay for
spilling our blood says Jerusalem.
This is what the Lord says to Jerusalem.
I will be your lawyer to plead
your case and I will aven you.
I will dry up her river as
well as her springs and Babylon
will become a heap of ruins.
Haunted by jackals.
She will be an object
of horror and contempt.
A place where no one lives.
Her people will roar
together like strong lions.
They will growl like lion cubs,
and while they lie inflamed with
all their wine, I will prepare a
different kind of feast for them.
I will make them drink until they
fall asleep and they will never
wake up again, says the Lord.
I will bring them down like lambs to
the slaughter, like rams and goats to
be sacrificed how Babylon is fallen.
Great Babylon praised
throughout the earth.
Now she has become an object
of horror among the nations.
The sea has risen over Babylon.
She is covered by its crashing waves.
Her city's now lie in ruins.
She is a dry wasteland where
no one lives or even passes by.
And I will punish Bell the God of Babylon,
and make him vomit up all he has eaten.
The nations will no longer
come and worship him.
The wall of Babylon has fallen.
Come out.
My people flee from Babylon.
Save yourselves.
Run from the Lord's fierce
anger, but do not panic.
Don't be afraid when you hear the
first rumor of approaching forces
for rumors will keep coming.
Year by year, violence will
erupt in the land as the leaders
fight against each other.
For the time is surely coming.
When I will punish this great
city and all her idols, her whole
land will be disgraced and her
dead will lie in the streets.
Then the heavens and earth will rejoice
for out of the north, will come destroying
armies against Babylon, says the Lord.
Just as Babylon killed the people
of Israel and others throughout the
world, so must her people be killed.
Get out all you who
have escaped the sword.
Do not stand and watch.
Flee while you can.
Remember the Lord, though you are in
a far off land and think about your
home in Jerusalem, we are ashamed.
The people say we are insulted and
disgraced because the Lord's temple
has been defiled by foreigners.
Yes, says the Lord.
But the time is coming when I
will destroy Babylon's idols.
The groans of her wounded people
will be heard throughout the land.
Though Babylon reaches as high as the
heavens and makes her fortifications
incredibly strong, I will still
send enemies to plunder her.
I, the Lord have spoken, listen,
hear the cry of Babylon, the
sound of great destruction from
the land of the Babylonians.
For the Lord is destroying Babylon.
He will silence her loud voice.
Waves of enemies pound against her.
The noise of battle rings through the city
destroying armies come against Babylon.
Her mighty men are captured and
their weapons break in their hands.
For the Lord is a God who
gives just punishment.
He always repays in full.
I will make her officials and wise
men drunk along with her captains,
officers and warriors, they will
fall asleep and never wake up again.
Says the king whose name is
the Lord of Heaven's armies.
This is what the Lord
of Heaven's armies says.
The thick walls of Babylon will
be leveled to the ground and her
massive gates will be burned.
The builders from many
lands have worked in vain.
For their work will be destroyed by fire.
The prophet Jeremiah gave this message
to Soraya son of Neriah and grandson of
Macia, a staff officer, when Soraya went
to Babylon with Kings Akia of Judah.
This was during the fourth
year of Zeke's reign.
Jeremiah had recorded on a scroll
all the terrible disasters that
would soon come upon Babylon.
All the words written
here, he said to Soraya.
When you get to Babylon, read
aloud everything on this scroll.
Then say, Lord, you have said that you
will destroy Babylon so that neither
people nor animals will remain here.
She will lie empty and abandoned forever.
When you have finished reading
the scroll, tie it to a stone and
throw it into the Euphrates River.
Then say, in this same way, Babylon and
her people will sink never again to rise.
Because of the disasters
I will bring upon her.
This is the end of Jeremiah's messages.
Zeek was 21 years old when he became King,
and he reigned in Jerusalem 11 years.
His mother was Hamal, the daughter
of Jeremiah from Libya, but Zeek
did what was evil in the Lord's
sight just as JE Hoya Kim had done.
These things happened because of
the Lord's anger against the people
of Jerusalem and Judah, until he
finally banished them from his
presence and sent them into exile.
Zedekiah rebelled against
the king of Babylon.
So on January 15th, during the
ninth year of Zedekiah's reign,
king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon led
his entire army against Jerusalem.
They surrounded the city and built
siege ramps against its walls.
Jerusalem was kept under siege until
the 11th year of King Zia's reign.
By July 18th, in the 11th year of
Zia's Reign, the famine in the city
had become very severe, and the
last of the food was entirely gone.
Then a section of the city wall was
broken down and all the soldiers fled.
Since the city was surrounded by the
Babylonians, they waited for nightfall.
Then they slipped through the gate between
the two walls, behind the King's Garden
and headed toward the Jordan Valley.
But the Babylonian troops
chased Kings atia, and overtook
him on the planes of Jericho.
For his men, had all deserted him
and scattered, they captured the king
and took him to the king of Babylon
at Riblah in the land of Hamath.
There, the King of Babylon,
pronounced judgment upon Zetia.
The King of Babylon made Zeek
watch as he slaughtered his sons.
He also slaughtered all the
officials of Judah at Riblah.
Then he gouged out Zeek CA's eyes and
bound him in bronze chains, and the
King of Babylon led him away to Babylon.
Zeek remained there in prison
until the day of his death
on August 17th of that year.
Which was the 19th year of
King Nebuchadnezzar's reign.
Neba Arain, the captain of the Guard
and an official of the Babylonian
king, arrived in Jerusalem.
He burned down the temple of
the Lord, the royal palace and
all the houses of Jerusalem.
He destroyed all the important
buildings in the city.
Then he supervised the entire
Babylonian army as they tore down
the walls of Jerusalem on every side.
Then Neba Zain, the captain of the guard,
took as exiles some of the poorest of
the people, the rest of the people who
remained in the city, the defectors, who
had declared their allegiance to the king
of Babylon and the rest of the craftsmen.
But Neba Zain allowed some of the
poorest people to stay behind to
care for the vineyards and fields.
The Babylonians broke up the bronze
pillars in front of the Lord's
Temple, the bronze water carts.
And the great bronze Basin called
the Sea, and they carried all
the bronze away to Babylon.
They also took all the ash buckets,
shovels, lamp, snuffers, basins, dishes,
and all the other bronze articles used
for making sacrifices at the temple.
The captain of the guard also took
the small bowls, incense, burners,
basins, pots, lampstands, ladles
bowls used for liquid offerings.
And all the other articles
made of pure gold or silver.
The weight of the bronze from the
two pillars, the sea, with the 12
bronze oxen beneath it, and the water
carts was too great to be measured.
These things had been made for the Lord's
temple in the days of King Solomon.
Each of the pillars was 27 feet
tall and 18 feet in circumference.
They were hollow with
walls, three inches thick.
The bronze capital on top of each
pillar was seven and a half feet high
and was decorated with a network of
bronze pomegranates all the way around.
There were 96 pomegranates on
the sides and a total of 100
pomegranates on the network.
Around the top Nebuzaradan, the
captain of the guard took with him
as prisoners, Sreya, the high priest,
Zephaniah, the priest of the second
rank and the three chief gatekeepers.
And from among the people still hiding
in the city, he took an officer who
had been in charge of the Judean
Army, seven of the King's personal
advisors, the Army commander's chief
secretary, who was in charge of
recruitment and 60 other citizens.
Nebuzaradan, the captain of the
guard, took them all to the king of
Babylon at Riblah, and there at Riblah
in the land of Hamath, the king of
Babylon, had them all put to death.
The people of Judah were sent
into exile from their land.
The number of captives taken to
Babylon in the seventh year of
Nebuchadnezzar's reign was 3023.
Then in Nebuchadnezzar's 18th year,
he took 832 more in Nebuchadnezzar's.
23rd year, he sent Neba Zain, the
captain of the guard who took 745
more a total of 4,600 captives in all.
In the 37th year of the exile of
King Je Hoa, kin of Judah evil, MEOC
ascended to the Babylonian throne.
He was kind to je Hoa kin and released him
from prison on March 31st of that year.
He spoke kindly to JE Hoya kin and
gave him a higher place than all
the other exiled kings in Babylon.
He supplied JE Hoya kin with new
clothes to replace his prison garb
and allowed him to dine in the King's
presence for the rest of his life.
So the Babylonian king gave him a regular
food allowance as long as he lived.
This continued until the day of his death.
This concludes today's
Immerse Reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.