For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.”
Parallel translations
- WEB For Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time when it is trodden. Yet a little while, and the time of harvest shall come for her.”
- KJV For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; The daughter of Babylon is like a threshingfloor, it is time to thresh her: yet a little while, and the time of her harvest shall come.
- NKJV For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor When it is time to thresh her; Yet a little while And the time of her harvest will come.”
- NASB ¶For this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel says: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor At the time that it is tread down; In just a little while the time of harvest will come for her.”
- NLT 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.”
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The Lord likens Babylon to a threshing floor at the moment of treading; soon her harvest of judgment will come. Babylon is ripe and the time to thresh her is near.
Overview
Threshing imagery, where grain is trampled and beaten, pictures the crushing judgment about to fall, with 'harvest' marking its appointed time. The 'little while' stresses that the delay is short and the outcome certain. The harvest of judgment is a recurring biblical figure that ultimately points to Christ, who comes to gather the wheat and execute final justice.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Isa 21:10O my people, crushed on the threshing floor, I tell you what I have heard from the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel.
- Hos 6:11Also for you, O Judah, a harvest is appointed, when I restore My people from captivity.
- Joel 3:13Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full; the wine vats overflow because their wickedness is great.
- Isa 41:15–16Behold, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.
- Mic 4:13Rise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion, for I will give you horns of iron and hooves of bronze to break to pieces many peoples. Then you will devote their gain to the LORD, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.
- Rev 14:15–20Then another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the One seated on the cloud, “Swing Your sickle and reap, because the time has come to harvest; for the crop of the earth is ripe.”
- Hab 3:12You marched across the earth with fury; You threshed the nations in wrath.
- Isa 18:5For before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife and remove and discard the branches.
- Isa 17:5–11as the reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the ears with his arm, as one gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.
- Amos 1:3This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of Damascus, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they threshed Gilead with sledges of iron.
- Matt 13:39and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
- Matt 13:30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat into my barn.’”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Against the failure of false shepherds Jeremiah promises the Righteous Branch, 'The LORD our righteousness,' and the new covenant written on the heart and sealed in the blood of Christ.
How Jeremiah 51:33 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.