Jeremiah 51:54-58

E. The Final Pronouncement Against Babylon Jeremiah 51:54-58

TRANSLATION

(54) Hark! A cry from Babylon, and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans. (55) For the LORD is destroying Babylon, silencing her great noise. Her waves roar like many waters, the noise of their voice is given forth. (56) For a destroyer shall come against her, against Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, their bows shattered, for a God of recompense is the LORD; He will surely recompense. (57) And I will cause her princes, wise. men, governors, leaders and mighty men to drink and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and never awake (oracle of the King, the LORD of hosts is His name). (58) Thus says the LORD of hosts: The wide wall of Babylon shall be utterly razed, and her high gates shall be put to the torch. Thus people labor for nothing and nations get weary only for fire.

COMMENTS

With prophetic ear Jeremiah can hear the cry at Babylon as the destruction of the city commences (Jeremiah 51:54). The foe sweeps into Babylon like a great sea, its roar drowning out the great voice (the tumult) of the city (Jeremiah 51:55). The military arm of Babylon is crushed, the defensive weapons are destroyed (Jeremiah 51:56). The leaders of Babylon will drink the cup of God's wrath and fall into a helpless stupor that they may not be able to defend the city. Indeed they will be slain in their drunkenness and will sleep a perpetual sleep, the sleep of death (cf. Jeremiah 51:39). The Lord of hosts, the King of creation, has spoken it and it shall come to pass (Jeremiah 51:57). The broad walls of Babylon, which must have appeared impregnable to the captives there, will be overthrown and the gates of the city will be burned. Ancient testimony about the dimensions of the walls of Babylon is contradictory. Herodotus, the Greek historian, estimated these walls to have been more than 350 feet high. On the basis of excavation at the ancient site of Babylon modern scholars estimate the walls to have been about 60 or 70 feet high and about 40 feet wide.[421] Herodotus further testifies that in the circuit of the wall of Babylon were a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts.[422] These gates will be burned i.e., attacked, destroyed and melted down. Countless thousands of workers from many nations of the world labored to make the citadel of Babylon impregnable. But when the Lord begins to pour out His wrath upon that city all of their weary labor will be proved to have been in vain; all the work of their hands will be set to the torch. It is very appropriate that Jeremiah closes the Babylon oracle with a quote from his contemporary Habakkuk: The peoples shall labor for vanity, and the nations for fire; and they shall be weary (cf. Habakkuk 2:13).

[421] Streane, op. cit., p. 342.

[422] Herodotus I. 179.

The abiding lesson in all this is succinctly stated in Jeremiah 51:56: The Lord is a God of recompense. He will surely requite. The God of the Bible is a God of judgment however much moderns may wish it otherwise. He will require, i.e., render the full payment, to any individual or nation that despises Him and mocks His word. Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap (Galatians 6:7).