This strongly worded message about Babylon is the last of the oracles against the nations. Such is the message that the prophet Jeremiah is called to give—even while Babylon’s power is at its height. And so in 594 b.c., before the final fall of Jerusalem, the prophet to the nations delivers this prophecy to the exiles already in Babylon and—if they choose to listen—to the Babylonians themselves. Jeremiah instructs an assistant to the king of Judah to take this oracle to Babylon and read it aloud. As if that is not enough, he then instructs the man to perform a symbolic act—the sort of thing Jeremiah himself would do if he were there. His willing accomplice will dramatize the ultimate sinking of the Babylonian Empire by fulfilling the prophet’s strange request.