The inhabitants of Babylon fall; the city perishes with its idols, to the joy of the whole world. - Jeremiah 51:38. "Together they roar like young lions, they growl like the whelps of lionesses. Jeremiah 51:39. When they are heated, I will prepare their banquets, and will make them drunk, that they may exult and sleep an eternal sleep, and not awake, saith Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:40. I will bring them down like lambs to be slaughtered, like rams with he-goats. Jeremiah 51:41. How is Sheshach taken, and the praise of the whole earth seized! How Babylon is become an astonishment among the nations! Jeremiah 51:42. The sea has gone up over Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves. Jeremiah 51:43. Her cities have become a desolation, a land of drought, and a steppe, a land wherein no man dwells, and through which no son of man passes. Jeremiah 51:44. And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed, and no longer shall nations go in streams to him: the wall of Babylon also shall fall. Jeremiah 51:45. Go ye out from the midst of her, my people! and save ye each one his life from the burning of the wrath of Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:46. And lest your heart be weak, and ye be afraid because of the report which is heard in the land, and there comes the [ equals this] report in the [ equals this] year, and afterwards in the [ equals that] year the [ equals that] report, and violence, in the land, ruler against ruler. Jeremiah 51:47. Therefore, behold, days are coming when I will punish the graven images of Babylon; and her whole land shall dry up,

(Note: Rather, "shall be ashamed;" see note at foot of p. 311. - Tr.)

and all her slain ones shall fall in her midst. Jeremiah 51:48. And heaven and earth, and all that is in them, shall sing for joy over Babylon: for the destroyers shall come to her from the north, saith Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:49. As Babylon sought that slain ones of Israel should fall, so there fall, in behalf of Babylon, slain ones of the whole earth."

This avenging judgment shall come on the inhabitants of Babylon in the midst of their revelry. Jeremiah 51:38. They roar and growl like young lions over their prey; cf. Jeremiah 2:15; Amos 3:4. When, in their revelries, they will be heated over their prey, the Lord will prepare for them a banquet by which they shall become intoxicated, so that they sink down, exulting (i.e., staggering while they shout), into an eternal sleep of death. חמּם, "their heat," or heating, is the glow felt in gluttony and revelry, cf. Hosea 7:4., not specially the result or effect of a drinking-bout; and the idea is not that, when they become heated through a banquet, then the Lord will prepare another one for them, but merely this, that in the midst of their revelry the Lord will prepare for them the meal they deserve, viz., give them the cup of wrath to drink, so that they may fall down intoxicated into eternal sleep, from which they no more awake. These words are certainly not a special prediction of the fact mentioned by Herodotus (i. 191) and Xenophon (Cyrop. vii. 23), that Cyrus took Babylon while the Babylonians were celebrating a feast and holding a banquet; they are merely a figurative dress given to the thought that the inhabitants of Babylon will be surprised by the judgment of death in the midst of their riotous enjoyment of the riches and treasure taken as spoil from the nations. In that fact, however, this utterance has received a fulfilment which manifestly confirms the infallibility of the word of God. In Jeremiah 51:40, what has been said is confirmed by another figure; cf. Jeremiah 48:5 and Jeremiah 50:27. Lambs, rams, goats, are emblems of all the classes of the people of Israel; cf. Isaiah 34:6; Ezekiel 39:18.

Jeremiah 51:44 Parallel Commentaries

I will punish

Jeremiah 51:18,47 They are vanity, the work of errors: in the time of their visitation they shall perish...

Jeremiah 50:2 Declare you among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken...

Isaiah 46:1,2 Bel bows down, Nebo stoops, their idols were on the beasts, and on the cattle: your carriages were heavy laden...

I will bring

Jeremiah 51:32 And that the passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.

2 Chronicles 36:7 Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the LORD to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon.

Ezra 1:7 Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem...

Daniel 1:2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God...

Daniel 5:2-4,26 Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine...

the nations

Isaiah 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains...

Isaiah 60:5 Then you shall see, and flow together, and your heart shall fear, and be enlarged...

Daniel 3:2,3,29 Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers...

Daniel 4:1,22 Nebuchadnezzar the king, to all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied to you...

Daniel 5:19,31 And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew...

Revelation 18:9-19 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall mourn her, and lament for her...

the wall

Jeremiah 51:53,58 Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength...