This is what the LORD says: I will answer your prayers because I have set a time when I will help by coming to save you. I have chosen you to take my promise of hope to other nations. You will rebuild the country from its ruins, then people will come and settle there.
Though Zion is in ruins, the LORD will bring comfort, and the city will be as lovely as the garden of Eden that he provided. Then Zion will celebrate; it will be thankful and sing joyful songs.
I am the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, and I make this promise-- "Soon Babylon will be leveled and packed down like a threshing place at harvest time."
I will punish Marduk, the god of Babylon, and make him vomit up everything he gobbled down. Then nations will no longer bring him gifts, and Babylon's walls will crumble.
and said, "Hurry! Tell that man with the measuring line that Jerusalem won't have any boundaries. It will be too full of people and animals even to have a wall.
Then the glorious LORD All-Powerful ordered me to say to the nations that had raided and robbed Zion: Zion is as precious to the LORD as are his eyes. Whatever you do to Zion, you do to him.