Jeremiah Chapter 51
From The Open Bible Project
51:1 Thus says Yahweh: Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against those who dwell in Lebkamai, a destroying wind.
- (a) The Medes and Persians who will destroy them as the wind does the chaff.
51:2 I will send to Babylon strangers, who shall winnow her; and they shall empty her land: for in the day of trouble they shall be against her around.
51:3 Against [him who] bends let the archer bend his bow, and against [him who] lifts himself up in his coat of mail: and don't spare her young men; utterly destroy all her army.
51:4 They shall fall down slain in the land of the Chaldeans, and thrust through in her streets.
51:5 For Israel is not forsaken, nor Judah, of his God, of Yahweh of Armies; though their land is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.
- (b) Though they were forsaken for a time, yet they were not utterly cast off as though their husbands were dead.
51:6 Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save every man his life; don't be cut off in her iniquity: for it is the time of Yahweh's vengeance; he will render to her a recompense.
- (c) He shows that there remains nothing for them that abide in Babylon but destruction, (Jeremiah 17:6, Jeremiah 48:6).
51:7 Babylon has been a golden cup in Yahweh's hand, who made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.
- (d) By whom the Lord poured out the drink of his vengeance, to whom it pleased him.
- (e) For the great afflictions that they have felt by the Babylonians.
51:8 Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed: wail for her; take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.
51:9 We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go everyone into his own country; for her judgment reaches to heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.
- (f) Thus the people of God exhort one another to go to Zion and praise God.
51:10 Yahweh has brought forth our righteousness: come, and let us declare in Zion the work of Yahweh our God.
- (g) In approving our cause and punishing our enemies.
51:11 Make sharp the arrows; hold firm the shields: Yahweh has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; because his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it: for it is the vengeance of Yahweh, the vengeance of his temple.
- (h) For the wrong done to his people and to his temple, (Jeremiah 50:28).
51:12 Set up a standard against the walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set the watchmen, prepare the ambushes; for Yahweh has both purposed and done that which he spoke concerning the inhabitants of Babylon.
51:13 You who dwell on many waters, abundant in treasures, your end has come, the measure of your covetousness.
- (i) For the land of Chaldea was full of rivers which ran into the Euphrates.
51:14 Yahweh of Armies has sworn by himself, [saying], Surely I will fill you with men, as with the canker worm; and they shall lift up a shout against you.
51:15 He has made the earth by his power, he has established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding has he stretched out the heavens:
51:16 when he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he makes lightning for the rain, and brings forth the wind out of his treasuries.
51:17 Every man is become brutish [and is] without knowledge; every goldsmith is disappointed by his image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
- (k) (Jeremiah 10:14).
51:18 They are vanity, a work of delusion: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.
- (l) When God will execute his vengeance.
51:19 The portion of Jacob is not like these; for he is the former of all things; and [Israel] is the tribe of his inheritance: Yahweh of Armies is his name.
- (m) That is, the true God of Israel is not like these idols: for he can help when all things are desperate.
51:20 You are my battle axe and weapons of war: and with you will I break in pieces the nations; and with you will I destroy kingdoms;
- (n) He means the Medes and Persians, as before he called the Babylonians his hammer, (Jeremiah 50:23).
51:21 and with you will I break in pieces the horse and his rider;
51:22 and with you will I break in pieces the chariot and him who rides therein; and with you will I break in pieces man and woman; and with you will I break in pieces the old man and the youth; and with you will I break in pieces the young man and the virgin;
51:23 and with you will I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock; and with you will I break in pieces the farmer and his yoke [of oxen]; and with you will I break in pieces governors and deputies.
51:24 I will render to Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, says Yahweh.
51:25 Behold, I am against you, destroying mountain, says Yahweh, which destroys all the earth; and I will stretch out my hand on you, and roll you down from the rocks, and will make you a burnt mountain.
- (o) Not that Babylon stood on a mountain but because it was strong and seemed invincible.
- (p) From your strongholds and fortresses.
51:26 They shall not take of you a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but you shall be desolate for ever, says Yahweh.
51:27 Set up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz: appoint a marshal against her; cause the horses to come up as the rough canker worm.
- (q) By these three nations he means Armenia the higher, Armenia the lower and Scythia; for Cyrus had gathered an army of various nations.
51:28 Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes, its governors, and all its deputies, and all the land of their dominion.
51:29 The land trembles and is in pain; for the purposes of Yahweh against Babylon do stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.
51:30 The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they remain in their strongholds; their might has failed; they are become as women: her dwelling places are set on fire; her bars are broken.
51:31 One runner will run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on every quarter:
- (r) By turning the course of the river one side was made open and the reeds that grew in the water were destroyed which Cyrus did by the counsel of Gobria and Gabatha Belshazzar’s captains.
51:32 and the passages are seized, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are frightened.
51:33 For thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel: 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.
- (s) When she will be cut up and threshed.
51:34 Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me, he has made me an empty vessel, he has, like a monster, swallowed me up, he has filled his maw with my delicacies; he has cast me out.
- (t) This is spoken in the person of the Jews bewailing their state and the cruelty of the Babylonians.
51:35 The violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say; and, My blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say.
51:36 Therefore thus says Yahweh: Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you; and I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry.
- (u) Thus the Lord esteemed the injury done to his Church as done to himself because their cause is his.
51:37 Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant.
51:38 They shall roar together like young lions; they shall growl as lions' cubs.
51:39 When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, says Yahweh.
- (x) When they are inflamed with surfeiting and drinking, I will feast with them, alluding to Belshazzar’s banquet, (Daniel 5:2).
51:40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
51:41 How is Sheshach taken! and the praise of the whole earth seized! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!
- (y) Meaning Babel as in (Jeremiah 25:26).
51:42 The sea is come up on Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of its waves.
- (z) The great army of the Medes and Persians.
51:43 Her cities are become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells, neither does any son of man pass thereby.
51:44 I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up; and the nations shall not flow any more to him: yes, the wall of Babylon shall fall.
- (a) That is, his gifts and presents which he had received as part of the spoil of other nations, and which the idolaters brought to him from all countries.
51:45 My people, go away from the midst of her, and save yourselves every man from the fierce anger of Yahweh.
51:46 Don't let your heart faint, neither fear for the news that shall be heard in the land; for news shall come one year, and after that in another year [shall come] news, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
- (b) Meaning that Babylon would not be destroyed all at once but little by little would be brought to nothing for the first year came the tidings, the next year the siege and in the third year it was taken: yet this is not that horrible destruction which the prophets threatened in many places: for that was after this when they rebelled and Darius over came them by the policy of Zopyrus, and hanged three thousand gentlemen beside the common people.
51:47 Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will execute judgment on the engraved images of Babylon; and her whole land shall be confounded; and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
51:48 Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers shall come to her from the north, says Yahweh.
- (c) All creatures in heaven and earth will rejoice and praise God for the destruction of Babylon the great enemy of his Church.
51:49 As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the land.
- (d) Babylon not only destroyed Israel, but many other nations.
51:50 You who have escaped the sword, go, don't stand still; remember Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.
- (e) Yet that are now captives in Babylon.
51:51 We are confounded, because we have heard reproach; confusion has covered our faces: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of Yahweh's house.
- (f) He shows how they would remember Jerusalem by lamenting the miserable affliction of it.
51:52 Therefore, behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will execute judgment on her engraved images; and through all her land the wounded shall groan.
51:53 Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall destroyers come to her, says Yahweh.
- (g) For the walls were two hundred feet high.
51:54 The sound of a cry from Babylon, and of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
51:55 For Yahweh lays Babylon waste, and destroys out of her the great voice; and their waves roar like many waters; the noise of their voice is uttered:
51:56 for the destroyer is come on her, even on Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, their bows are broken in pieces; for Yahweh is a God of recompenses, he will surely requite.
51:57 I will make drunk her princes and her wise men, her governors and her deputies, and her mighty men; and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up, says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.
- (h) I will so astonish them by affliction that they will not know which way to turn themselves.
51:58 Thus says Yahweh of Armies: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the peoples shall labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they shall be weary.
- (i) The thickness of the wall was fifty feet.
51:59 The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was chief quartermaster.
- (k) This was not in the time of his captivity but seven years before, when he went either to congratulate Nebuchadnezzar or to intreat of some matters.
51:60 Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come on Babylon, even all these words that are written concerning Babylon.
51:61 Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When you come to Babylon, then see that you read all these words,
51:62 and say, Yahweh, you have spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that none shall dwell therein, neither man nor animal, but that it shall be desolate forever.
51:63 It shall be, when you have made an end of reading this book, that you shall bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates:
- (l) John in his Revelation alludes to this place when he says that the angel took a millstone and cast it into the sea: signifying by it the destruction of Babylon, (Revelation 18:21).
51:64 and you shall say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.
- (m) They will not be able to resist but will labour in vain.
