Jeremiah 51:59-64

Jeremiah 51
59-64 Jeremiah's Command to Seraiah (4th year of Zedekiah's reign)

• When Seraiah son of Neriah son of Mahseiah goes to Babylon [on behalf of, not with, according to commentaries] King Zedekiah, Jeremiah tells him to take a scroll and read it there.
• The scroll announces that God will destroy Babylon so that neither humans nor animals will be able to live in it. This pronouncement is 7 years before Zedekiah and the rest of Judah go into Babylonian captivity, 60 years before the destruction of Babylon.
  
• After he reads the scroll, Seraiah is to throw it into the Euphrates and compare its sinking to the sinking of Babylon, never to rise again.

Note: Seraiah's identity is variously translated. The New Revised Version (which I am reading for the first time for this blog), the New American Standad and New King James render it "quartermaster." The American Standard Version reads "chief chamberlain," but the King James Version translates it "quiet prince." So some commentaries have long paragraphs about the nature of Seraiah's character, the reason Jeremiah trusted him with the message.