A high-efficiency eye-safe Raman laser was demonstrated by use of the third Stokes radiation in a Ba(NO3)2 crystal pumped by a 1064-nm Nd:YAG laser. The output wavelength of the Raman laser was 1598.5 nm with a full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 1.5 nm. With an incident pump energy of 140 mJ, a maximum of 18-mJ Raman output energy was generated at a repetition rate of 30 Hz, corresponding to an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 12.9%. The Raman pulse duration was shortened to 2.9 ns compared with that of the pump pulse of 19.3 ns. The eye-safe solid-state Raman laser is expected to have wide applications in range-finding, telemetry, laser radar, and other aspects.