But these people are robbed and looted. They are all trapped in pits and hidden in prisons. They have become prey with no one to rescue them. They have become loot with no one to say, “Give it back.”
“Your country is devastated. Your cities are burned down. Your fields are destroyed right before your eyes by foreigners. Your fields are devastated and taken over by foreigners.
It sends messengers by sea in boats made of reeds ⌞skimming⌟ over the surface of the water. Go, swift messengers, to a tall and smooth-skinned people, a people ⌞who are⌟ feared far and near, a strong and aggressive nation, whose land is divided by rivers.
Whoever flees from news of a disaster will fall into a pit. Whoever climbs out of that pit will be caught in a trap. The floodgates in the sky will be opened, and the foundations of the earth will shake.
I prepared Cyrus for my righteous purpose. I will make all his roads straight. He will build my city and let my exiles go free without any payment or any reward, says the Lord of Armies.
I will put it in the hands of those who made you suffer. They said to you, “Lie down so that we can walk over you.” So you made your back like the ground and like a street for them to cross.
“The people of Israel are like scattered sheep that lions have chased. The first to devour them was the king of Assyria. The last to gnaw at their bones was King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month of the thirty-seventh year of the imprisonment of King Jehoiakin of Judah, King Evil Merodach of Babylon, in the first year of his reign, freed King Jehoiakin of Judah and released him from prison.