Jeremiah 50 - Introduction

Many critics have endeavored to show that this prophecy Jer. 50–51 was not written by Jeremiah. Others grant that Jeremiah was the true author, yet assert that the prhophecy has been largely interpolated. The arguments for its authenticity are briefly stated in the following:

(a) The superscription Jeremiah 50:1, and the appended history Jeremiah 51:59;

(b) The general admission that the style is Jeremiah’s;

(c) The fact that the author was living at Jerusalem (Jeremiah 50:5, where read “hitherward,” not “thitherward”);

(d) The Medes and not the Persians are described as the future conquerors of Babylon Jeremiah 51:11, Jeremiah 51:28.

The knowledge of topography and Babylonian customs is not more than Jeremiah may have learned from the Chaldaeans when they were at Jerusalem in the fourth, and again in the eleventh year of Jehoiakim: and there was constant contact by letter and otherwise between Babylon and Jerusalem.

The prophecy may be considered essential to the right discharge by Jeremiah of the duties of his office. He had foretold the capture and ruin of Jerusalem, not from love to Babylon, but as a necessary act of the divine justice, and as the one remedy for Judah’s sins. He recognized the Chaldaeans as Yahweh’s ministers; but recognizing also that they practiced wanton barbarities, and claimed the g ory for themselves and their gods, he proclaimed that Babylon must be punished for its cruelty, its pride, and its idolatry.

The date is fixed by Jeremiah 51:59. With this agrees the internal evidence.

Though deficient in arrangement the prophecy is full of grand ideas; and the similarity between passages in this prophecy and Isaiah illustrates the large knowledge which Jeremiah evidently possessed of the earlier Scriptures, and the manner in which, consciously or unconsciously, he has perpetually imitated them in his own writings.