So the Lord brought on them the officials of the army of the king of Assyria. They captured Manasseh with hooks, and they bound him in bronze chains and led him to Babylon.
and the Sabeans attacked them, and took them away, and they killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and only I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, another came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three companies and made a raid on the camels and have taken them away. They killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
The Lord said to the Adversary, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, who fears God and avoids evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you moved Me against him, to destroy him without cause.”
The Lord has sworn by His right hand and by His strong arm: Surely I will no longer give your grain as food for your enemies; and the sons of the foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored.
“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me and crushed me; he has made me an empty vessel. He has swallowed me up like a dragon; he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has cast me out.
I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth from his mouth what he has swallowed up; and the nations will not flow together any more to him. Indeed, the wall of Babylon will fall.
All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash their teeth. They say, “We have swallowed her up! Certainly this is the day that we longed for; we have found it; we have seen it.”
The Lord has become like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel, He has swallowed up all her palaces; He has destroyed her strongholds, and has increased mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah.
For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no head and will yield no flour. If it were to yield, foreigners would swallow it up.
A nation that you do not know will consume the produce of your land and all your labors, and you will be nothing but oppressed and crushed all the time.
They will eat the offspring of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, wine, or oil, or the offspring of your herd or the offspring of your sheep, until they have destroyed you.
Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak tree in Ophrah belonging to Joash the Abiezrite. Gideon his son was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites.