Jeremiah 51
ButlerHis captive people. His interposition would give rest to His own land and to His people, restored and dwelling there, while it would equally give disquiet to the people of Babylon. H. C.
34. This is their comfort in distress, that though they are weak their Redeemer is strong (verse 34—their Avenger, so the word signifies); He that has a right to them and will claim His right, and make good His claim; He is stronger than their enemies that hold them fast; He can overpower all the force that is against them, and put strength into His own people though they are very weak. The Lord of Hosts is His name, and He will answer to His name, and make it to appear that He is what His people call Him, and will be that to them for which they depend upon Him. It is the unspeakable comfort of the people of God that though they have hosts against them, they have the Lord of Hosts for them; and He shall thoroughly plead their cause; pleading He shall plead it, plead it with jealousy, plead it effectually, plead it and carry it, that He may give rest to the land, to His people’s land, rest from all their enemies round about. This is applicable to all believers who complain of the dominion of sin and corruption and of their own weakness and manifold infirmities; let them know that their Redeemer is strong, He is able to keep what they commit to Him, and He will plead their cause, sin shall not have dominion over them; He will make them free, and they shall be free indeed; He will give them rest, that rest which remains for the people of God. H.
The almightiness of God is our assurance of redemption. The massive strength of the rock makes it painful for us to fall upon it, and fearful and fatal for it to fall upon us; but this very characteristic renders it a blessing if we rest under its shadow, build on its foundation, or cling to it for support in the driving tempest. Men may well shrink from the might of God when they are opposed to it, and tremble and despair when it rises up, awful and irresistible, to crush them; but if they can turn to it with trust and know it is working their good, they will find in it a ground for solid assurance. How disastrous would it be for us to have a weak God, though He might have all other Divine perfections! His love might be infinite; but if He could only pity, and not effectually save us, His grace would be of little use. But our Redeemer is the Lord of hosts. If a host encamp against us, the Lord of Hosts is on our side. Adeney.
40. A desolation like that of Sodom and Gomorrah is the extreme of ruin, beyond which all figures and comparisons fail us.
43. The account of Belshazzar (Dan. 5) and the records of profane history conspire to fulfil every word of this prophecy. Belshazzar was in dismay and anguish; his night of revelry became his night of doom.
46. The fall of Babylon shook the whole earth; the cry of it went forth among all the nations. No nation could be unaffected by this event. She was the great central power in the whole eastern world. Hence, the shock of her fall was felt in every land like the shock of an earthquake. H. C.
51:1 THUS saith the LORD: Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in Leb-kamai, a destroying wind. And I will send unto Babylon strangers, that shall fan her; and they shall empty her land: for in the day of trouble they shall be against her round about. Let not the archer bend his bow, and let him not lift himself up in his coat of mail: and spare ye not her young men; destroy ye utterly all her host. And they shall fall down slain in the land of the Chaldeans, and thrust through in her streets. For Israel is not forsaken, nor Judah, of his God, of the LORD of hosts; though their land is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel. Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save every man his life; be not cut off in her iniquity: for it is the time of the LORD’s vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence. Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD’s hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the
8 nations are mad. Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed : howl for her ; take balm for 9 her pain, if so be she may be healed. We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed : 10 forsake her, and let us go every one into his own country : for her judgement reacheth unto 10 heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies. The LORD hath brought forth our righteousness : 11 come, and let us declare in Zion the work of the LORD our God. Make sharp the arrows ; 12 hold firm the shields : the LORD hath stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes ; because 13 his device is against Babylon, to destroy it : for it is the vengeance of the LORD, the ven- 14 geance of his temple. Set up a standard against the walls of Babylon, make the watch 15 strong, set the watchmen, prepare the ambushes : for the LORD hath both devised and done 13 that which he spake concerning the inhabitants of Babylon. O thou that dwellest upon 14 many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, the measure of thy covetousness. 14 The LORD of hosts hath sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will fill thee with men, as with 15 the cankerworm ; and they shall lift up a shout against thee. 15 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and by 16 his understanding hath he stretched out the heavens : when he uttereth his voice, there is a 17 tumult of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the 18 earth ; he maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasuries. 19 Every man is become brutish and is without knowledge ; every goldsmith is put to shame 20 by his graven image : for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them. 21 They are vanity, a work of delusion : in the time of their visitation they shall perish. 22 The portion of Jacob is not like these ; for he is the former of all things ; and Israel is the 23 tribe of his inheritance : the LORD of hosts is his name. 24 Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war : and with thee will I break in pieces the 25 nations ; and with thee will I destroy kingdoms ; and with thee will I break in pieces the 26 horse and his rider ; and with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and him that rideth therein ; 27 and with thee will I break in pieces man and woman ; and with thee will I break in pieces 28 the old man and the youth ; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the 29 maid ; and with thee will I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock ; and with thee will I 30 break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen ; and with thee will I break in pieces 31 governors and deputies. And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chal- 32 dea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, saith the LORD. 33 Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the LORD, which destroyest all the 34 earth : and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and 35 will make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a 36 stone for foundations ; but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the LORD. Set ye up a 37 standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, 38 call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz : appoint a marshal 39 against her ; cause the horses to come up as the rough cankerworm. Prepare against her the 40 nations, the kings of the Medes, the governors thereof, and all the deputies thereof, and all 41 the land of his dominion. And the land trembleth and is in pain : for the purposes of the 42 LORD against Babylon do stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabit- 43 ant. The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they remain in their strong holds ; 44 their might hath failed ; they are become as women : her dwelling places are set on fire ; her 45 bars are broken. One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to 46 shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken on every quarter : and the passages are sur- 47 prised, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted. 48 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel : The daughter of Babylon is like a 49 threshing-floor at the time when it is trodden ; yet a little while, and the time of harvest shall 50 come for her. Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, 51 he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his 52 maw with my delicates ; he hath cast me out. The violence done to me and to my flesh be 53 upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say ; and, My blood be upon the inhabitants of 54 Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say. Therefore thus saith the LORD : Behold, I will plead thy cause, 55 and take vengeance for thee ; and I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry. And 56 Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and an hissing, 57 without inhabitant. They shall roar together like young lions ; they shall growl as lions’ 58 whelps. When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunken, that
40 they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD. I will bring 41 them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he-goats. How is Sheshach taken! and the praise of the whole earth surprised! how is Babylon become a desolation among the 42 nations! The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of the waves 43 thereof. Her cities are become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land wherein no man 44 dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby. And I will do judgement upon Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up; and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall. 45 My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and save yourselves every man from the fierce 46 anger of the LORD. And let not your heart faint, neither fear ye for the rumour that shall be heard in the land; for a rumour shall come one year, and after that in another year shall 47 come a rumour, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler. Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will do judgement upon the graven images of Babylon, and her whole land shall 48 be ashamed; and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her. Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for joy over Babylon; for the spoilers shall come unto her 49 from the north, saith the LORD. As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at 50 Babylon shall fall the slain of all the land. Ye that have escaped the sword, go ye, stand not 51 still; remember the LORD from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind. We are ashamed, because we have heard reproach; confusion hath covered our faces: for strangers 52 are come into the sanctuaries of the LORD’s house. Wherefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will do judgement upon her graven images; and through all her land the 53 wounded shall groan. Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the LORD. 54 The sound of a cry from Babylon, and of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans! 55 for the LORD spoileth Babylon, and destroyeth out of her the great voice; and their waves 56 roar like many waters, the noise of their voice is uttered: for the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon, and her mighty men are taken, their bows are broken in pieces: for the 57 LORD is a God of recompences, he shall surely requite. And I will make drunk her princes and her wise men, her governors and her deputies, and her mighty men; and they shall sleep 58 a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts. Thus saith the LORD of hosts: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the peoples shall labour for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they shall be weary. 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 60 his reign. Now Seraiah was chief chamberlain. And Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written concerning Babylon. 61 And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, then see that thou read all 62 these words, and say, O LORD, thou hast spoken concerning this place, to cut it off, that none 63 shall dwell therein, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever. And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and 64 cast it into the midst of Euphrates: and thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.
Chap. 51. Verses 1-4 are the very words of the Lord. Verses 5-13 are the words of the prophet. H. C.
5. “Suffering, but not forsaken.” Israel is not forsaken because she is driven from her home. Babylon is not more favored because she flourishes for a season as a “golden cup in the Lord’s hand.” For the land of the Chaldeans is filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel. Thus the truth is quite contrary to appearances. When God chastises His people He must not be thought to have forsaken them. The chastisement is for their own good. It is, therefore, a proof that God has not neglected them. Instead of being an indication of hatred or indifference, chastisement is a sign of God’s love. Moreover, when His people suffer God is peculiarly near to them, and often nearest in those dark hours when bitterness of soul prevents us from having any comforting hope in Him. Adeney.
Outward prosperity is not essential to signify
God’s satisfaction with us. Nor must we infer that, because a backsliding Christian has fallen into trouble and misery, therefore God has forsaken him. The signs of man forsaking God are made very clear, so that there may be all possible incentives to repentance; but if God ever does forsake a man, leaving him utterly to his own folly and recklessness, no sign of it is given to us. There is quite enough already in our own wild fancies to make us desponding and despairing. Y.
10. The prophet speaks in the name of the Jews. “The Lord hath brought forth our righteousness” in the sense of pleading and avenging our cause and testifying His displeasure against our enemies and captors. Come and let us praise Him in our holy Temple and city, and speak of His deliverances there.
12,13. This ruin of Babylon is God’s retribution for her sins, especially against His Temple. Verse 12 intimates that ambushes would be among the agencies of this victory, in which the prophecy and the history are at one. Cyrus took the city by a species of grand ambushment, turning the river elsewhere and marching his army into the city through its dry channel. Verse 13 addresses Babylon as “dwelling upon many waters,” with reference to her position on the great Euphrates, out of which she took large supplies of water for irrigation by canals, and thus literally “sat upon many waters.” “The measure of her covetousness had come” in the sense that God now set a limit to her greed and grasp after unrighteous gain, shown in the exaction of unpaid labor from her hosts of captives. H. C.
19. Jehovah being the portion of Jacob, it is equally true that Jehovah’s portion is His people (De. 32:9). God will be our inheritance just in proportion as we are God’s inheritance. We cannot get satisfaction out of God unless He is getting satisfaction out of us. Our faith, our obedience, our devotion, are the conditions of His peculiar and richest bounty. Y.
24. The idea of retribution on Babylon for the evil they had brought on Zion before the very eyes of His people stands out prominently in verse 24, and really underlies the whole passage (verses 20-24).
26. That from her vast structures not a stone should be taken for the building of other cities is a very extraordinary prophecy, since it quite reverses the common law. In fact, large building stones were never there. Her immense structures were built of brick, either sun-dried or kiln-burned. Hence the great mass of these materials lie to this day more or less decomposed in the mountains of rubbish which mark the site of that once magnificent city. But how came a prophet in Palestine to know that of the great structures of Babylon, most of them as yet unbuilt, men should take away no corner or foundation-stone when they should lie in ruins? How else can such minute and improbable, yet truthful predictions be accounted for except as inspired of God? H. C.
30. Looking at events on their human side, it is quite true to say that Abraham founded the Hebrew race, and that David founded the Jewish monarchy, and Judas rescued his country from destruction. But it is of supreme importance, if we would see God in history, and in the history of our own times in particular, to recognize in the sages, and heroes, and reformers, and also in the philosophers, and discoverers, and inventors, whose several labors have changed the aspect of the world at particular epochs, God’s special instruments sent for that very thing; and to recognize in the changes brought about, not merely the action of those instruments, but the results of the will of God. As long as God is pleased to preserve a nation in greatness and power, He continues to raise up among them warriors, divines, men of genius and statesmen. When the set time of decadence is come, there arise no great men among them; their mighty men become as women (Jer. 51:30), and counsel perishes from the wise (ibid. 18:18). In applying these truths to our own Church and country it behooves us to remember that we owe all our own national prosperity, both in spiritual and temporal things, to the undeserved mercy of God; that the continuance of that prosperity depends upon the continuance of His favor; and that the only way by which to preserve that favor is to walk in righteousness and godliness. Unless God wills to maintain our power and greatness among the nations, all the courage and policy in the world will not suffice to do so; and even courage and policy may cease to grow among us. Bp. Hervey.
31,32. The word rendered “post” means a courier, a runner. It need not surprise us that in this vast city, whose outer wall, according to Herodotus, was sixty miles in circumference, one end might be taken by the enemy some time before the other end would hear the tidings. These runners report to the king that the gates opening from the city to the river which ran through its centre are seized by the enemy; that the reeds (palisades) with which the banks were fortified to prevent an enemy from gaining access to the city through the river-bed were burned with fire, and that the Chaldean soldiers were panic-smitten. No history could describe the progressive steps of this assault and capture with more precision than this prophecy written by Jeremiah before these vast walls of Babylon were even built. For all reliable history testifies that Nebuchadnezzar was the great builder of Babylon; that nearly all of its vast structures, including the city walls and the defences along the river bank, were either built or rebuilt by him. Yet the prophet saw things that were not as though they were, and so put on record this wonderfully minute account of their capture and ruin. H. C.
32. That the passages are surprised. These were most probably the entrances into the city from the river side, which were secured by gates, that ought, as Herodotus observes, to have been fast barred; which, if it had been done, would have effectually frustrated the attempt of the enemy; but, being left open and unguarded on account of the public festivity, the assailants were in possession of those entrances, and in the heart of the city before the besieged were aware of it. Blayney.
And the reeds they have burned with fire. The soldiers, seeing the Euphrates nearly dry, set fire to the reeds which covered its borders in order to facilitate the approach of the troops to the walls. The messengers reported to the king this circumstance for the purpose of signifying to him that all the waters round about Babylon were dried up, and that there was no longer anything to shelter the city from the enemy. These reeds are said to have been very large and high, and, together with the mud on which they stood, to have formed as it were another wall round the city. Poole.
33-35. The figures of the threshing-floor and of the harvest are common in the Hebrew poets to indicate the destruction of cities and the slaughter of their people. (Isa. 21:10; 17:5; Amos 1:3; Micah 4:13; Joel 3:13; Rev. 14:15, 18.) The ancient threshing instrument was a heavy roller, ridged with iron, drawn by animals, and made to crush both the straw and the grain with great force. Hence it vividly represented the instruments of Jehovah’s vengeance on guilty nations. In verses 34 and 35, Judah and Jerusalem speak, recognizing the fall of Babylon as God’s righteous retribution for her violence against the holy city and people. This is one of the most prominent thoughts in this entire prophecy against Babylon, the object being to assure the exiles that the Lord remembered and would yet avenge them; would break down Babylon and release them to return to their own land. H. C.
34. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, hath devoured me. A pathetic description of the calamities brought upon the Jews by Nebuchadnezzar and his forces, who, after they had devoured the wealth and laid waste the beauty of their country, then turned them out of it, and led them captives into a strange land. W. Lowth.
36. I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry. (See Isa. 14:23 and verse 31 of this chapter.) By the means there described, Babylon was taken, as here foretold. The city would have been otherwise impregnable, as it was supplied with provisions for many years, saith Herodotus; for more than twenty years, according to Xenophon; for, as Herodotus saith, if the Babylonians had but known what the Persians were doing, by shutting the gates which opened upon the river, and by standing upon the walls which were built as banks, they might have taken and destroyed the Persians as in a net or cage. Bp. Newton.
37. The foundations of Babylon were to fall, her lofty and broad walls were to be thrown down (Jer. 50:15), and she was not to present the appearance of a ruined city at all, but simply to “become heaps.” It is the constant remark of travellers that what are called the ruins of Babylon are simply a succession of unsightly mounds, some smaller, some larger—“shapeless heaps of rubbish,” “immense tumuli,” elevations that might easily be mistaken for natural hills, and that only after careful examination convince the beholder that they are human constructions. The complete disappearance of the walls is particularly noticed; and the visitor, who has alone attempted to conjecture the position which they occupied, can mark no more than some half-dozen mounds along the line which he ventures to assign to them. Only a single fragment of a building still erects itself above the mass of rubbish whereof the mounds are chiefly composed, to show that human habitations really once stood where all is now ruin, decay and desolation.
When Babylon was standing in all its glory, with its great rampart walls from two hundred to three hundred feet high, with its lofty palaces and temple-towers, with its “hanging gardens,” reckoned one of the world’s wonders, and even its ordinary houses from three to four stories high, it was a bold prophecy that the whole would one day disappear—that the edifices would all crumble into ruin, and the decomposed material cover up and conceal the massive towers and walls, presenting nothing to the eye but rounded hillocks, huge unsightly “heaps.” It may be that such a fate had already befallen the great cities of Assyria, which had been destroyed nearly a century earlier, and which, from the nature of their materials, must have gone rapidly to decay. But the lessons of the past do not readily impress themselves on men; and it must have required a deep conviction of God’s absolute foreknowledge on the part of the Hebrew prophets to publish it abroad, on the strength of a spiritual communication, that such a fate would overtake the greatest city of their day—“the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency” (Isa. 13:19). G. R.
42-44. The vast plains around Babylon were flooded by the Euphrates in its great freshets, presenting the appearance of an inland sea. (Cf. verses 13, 36.) To regulate these inundations, Nebuchadnezzar, with immense labor, constructed a vast reservoir, an inland lake, and then cut canals from this lake to irrigate the country when water was needed. But when the huge brick structures of Babylon became heaps of ruins, these canals and even the river itself were blocked up, and the whole plain was flooded during large portions of the year. Consequently, it passed from a state of most luxuriant fertility to one of utter barrenness, a vast quagmire, a continent of mud, marsh, bog, miasm, desolation! Thus was this wonderfully minute, and to human view improbable prophecy, literally fulfilled. Bel, the chief and patron god of Babylon, is thought of as having taken into his stomach the vast amount of treasures brought into his temple; but in righteous judgment, the great God compels him to disgorge it! The nations shall no more “flow together,” making their long pilgrimages with votive offerings to his shrine. The word rendered “flow together,” is the same which represents the confluence of the nations to Jehovah’s Temple “in the latter days” (e.g., Isa. 2:2; Micah 4:1; Jer. 31:12). That the walls of Babylon should fall was a great event, which such a prophecy could not omit. Herodotus, an eye-witness, describes this double wall, an outer and an inner; the outer, three hundred and thirty-seven and a half feet high, eighty-five feet thick, with one hundred gates of brass. It was the wonder of the age—indeed, of the world. Yet under the mighty hand of God, how easily it was made to fall! H. C.
43. Not only the site of Babylon herself, but the whole plain of Babylonia, covered with the shapeless heaps under which the great Chaldean cities lie hidden, bears a perpetual witness to the truth of the prophecy, every word of which is a historic description: “Her cities are a desolation, a dry land and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby.” “Besides the great mound,” says the most distinguished investigator of the site, “other shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land. The lofty banks of ancient canals fret the country, like natural ridges of hills. Some have been long choked with sand; others still carry the waters of the river to distant villages and palm-groves. On all sides fragments of glass, marble, pottery and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and hideous waste. Owls start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows” (Layard). P. S.
51. This is what the exiles are supposed to say when exhorted to think of their own Jerusalem. “It is sad” (say they) “to think of her; we remember how the heathen reproached us, and how they laid unclean hands upon the most holy things of the house of our God.”
54-56. Among numerous other indications of the ruin of Babylon, we have here the fearful outcry of terror at her fall, coupled also with the crash and the roar when her lofty towers and walls are seen in vision to fall to the ground. In the last clause of verse 55, “Her waves that roar like great waters,” are probably her enemies rushing upon her with the shout of victory, and in point of the ruin they bring, resembling a mighty inundation. The next clauses show that the mind of the writer is on the invading hosts of spoilers.
58. This closing verse of this elaborate prophetic description sums up the most vital facts. The broad walls of Babylon, though eighty-five feet broad, and built apparently for immortality, shall be utterly broken. The original implies that their foundations shall be laid naked, the very ground on which they stood being made bare. Her hundred lofty gates shall be burned with fire. The armies of captives whose labor she employed for years in their erection will appear to have spent their strength and toil in vain, working and building only for the fire to destroy. And they shall be utterly exhausted, past all power to recuperate their strength. This is the sense of “being weary.” Hab. 2 : 13 treats of the same subject, and was perhaps in the mind of Jeremiah. The reader who shall carefully group together all the minute and special points of this prophecy will find himself already possessed with the great facts of that wonderful history. Let him note that Babylon is here a great city of vast extent ; of lofty and broad walls ; of a large foreign population, who scattered and fled each to his own country ; that her kings and princes were revelling in a drunken debauch on that fatal night ; that her armies were panic-smitten and forbore to fight ; that tidings first came to the king that his city was taken at one end ; that “the passages” from the city to the river were seized by the enemy, and the palisades that fortified those points were burned ; that her broad walls were levelled to the ground ; that a fearful ruin ultimately swept over her, and left nothing but emptiness and desolation ; that the sea covered her ; and, in another line of facts, that her destroyers came from the north ; that the Medes were prominent among them ; that there were many other great nations combined with them in this final conflict ; that they were armed with the bow, etc.—these are a portion of the definite points made in this prophecy, all which are definitely confirmed by historians who never read Jeremiah, and who, if they had, could have no interest in making out a fulfilment of his prophecies. Yet when Jeremiah wrote, the Babylon of the great Chaldean dynasty was yet in great measure to be made. Its immensely broad and lofty walls were yet to be built. Cyrus was yet unborn. The great Median power was scarcely known. The Divine providences which brought up those northern kingdoms, developed their strength and effected their combination, were yet to be unfolded. What mortal eye could pierce into that darkness of yet unmade history ? What human line could fathom those depths of the distant future ? Verily this cometh only of the wisdom of Him who “calleth the things that are not as though they were,” and who can read to mortals their yet unmade history, because it is His province to shape the making of all human history. H. C.
Of its splendor under Nebuchadnezzar there can be no doubt. Pliny says, “It was the greatest city the sun ever shone upon.” Isaiah called it the “Golden City.” Its walls, three hundred feet in height, according to one of its historians, and seventy-five feet in breadth, appeared more like the bulwarks of nature than the workmanship of man. They were regarded by Strabo as one of the seven wonders of the world. The entire area within its massive walls, according to Herodotus and Ctesias, its chief historians, was two hundred square miles. Its temples, its palaces, its fortresses, its brazen gates, its enamelled brick, its plated pillars, its huge embankments along the shores of the Euphrates, its artificial mountains as high as the dome of St. Peter’s, its ornamental architecture, its artificial lakes, and its lofty palaces, with its hanging gardens piled in successive terraces to the top of its walls, displayed more of the mighty works of mortals than have ever elsewhere been concentrated in one spot on the earth. Such was Babylon. And yet, while the city was in its glory, while royal power defended it, one hundred and sixty years before the foot of an enemy had entered its gates or menaced its walls, the prophets of God declared that the spearmen and the horsemen from the north should deluge the city in blood, and that the Almighty Himself should sweep it with the bosom of destruction. L. T. Townsend.
59-64. This passage stands here as a sequel to the prophecy against Babylon comprised in chaps. 50 and 51 : 1-58, showing especially that the prophet, having written it, committed it to Seraiah to carry to Babylon—he being one of the attendants of King Zedekiah in his journey to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Seraiah was directed, on arriving at Babylon, to read this prophecy ; then to repeat certain words here recited ; and, finally, to bind a stone to this roll and sink it in the Euphrates, saying, “Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil which I will bring upon her ; and they shall be weary”—i.e., exhausted so as never to regain their national vigor and vitality. This Seraiah was not the one who bears this name in chap. 36 : 26, nor the other who bears this name in chap. 40 : 8, as is shown by the name of his father, Neriah. But he was a brother of Baruch, and therefore of a family who were warm and fast friends of the prophet. Seraiah manifestly held a place of responsible trust under Zedekiah. H. C.
63. This was a significative emblem of Babylon’s sinking irrecoverably under the judgments here denounced against her. (Cf. Rev. 18 : 21.) This threatening was, in a literal sense, fulfilled. W. Lowth.—This stone lost in one sense was not lost in another. Nay, it was serving a higher purpose than any it could have served simply as a stone. It became a teacher, and it is a teacher still, warning all ambitious men and all neglecters of the commandments and predictions of Jehovah. Y.
64. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah. This is probably mentioned to show that the next chapter was added by Ezra, or Baruch, or whoever collected this prophecy into one volume.
W. Lowth.