And the land trembleth and is in pain; for the purposes of Jehovah against Babylon do stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.
Here the Lord calls the nations up against Babylon. The land shakes, and the verse says why. Heaven has already made the decision; the armies only carry it out. One question runs through the whole chapter. Is this the fall of one ancient city, or the pattern of something larger still to come?
The verses just before call up the nations against Babylon, and name the Medes among them. One writer reads the shaking that follows as proof of a decision already fixed.
The nations of Asia Minor, or those nearby, would join the Medes… Jehovah's purpose was fixed and sure. Babylon must become a desolation, with no one living in it. The circumstances of its fall, described next, confirm this.
The same chapter had already said who was moving those armies. The soldiers gathering on the horizon are not the first cause. God Himself stirred them up.
Babylon needed all its military equipment now. Jehovah had stirred up the spirit of her northern enemies against her, and had resolved to destroy her. So the prophet says… "Jehovah has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, for His plan is against Babylon, to destroy it… Jehovah has both planned and done what He spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon."
The verse says the Lord's purposes "stand". That holds for His plans in general, not only for this city. One writer sets God's counsel against everything the nations decide.
The Lord brings all the plans of the nations to nothing, but His counsel is eternal. Nothing can frustrate it. It remains, showing the wisdom and the power of God. As it was then, so it is today: the Lord will bring all the plans of men to nothing, however wise they are, if He so desires.
The same writer answers what could ever change it.
God's counsel is unchangeable. Nothing can ever alter it. No power in earth or heaven can turn God away from what He has set Himself to do.
Commentators hold that the verse has a fulfilled side and an unfinished side. The ancient city fell. The Lord's purposes reach further.
Babylon, like Edom, was marked out for the same destruction as "Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring cities… so no man shall dwell there, and no son of man shall sojourn in her" (Jer. 50:40). This was according to "the plan that the LORD has made against Babylon" (verse 45)… God has already carried out the judgment on the kingdom of Babylon. But the judgment on "Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes" (Rev. 17:5) still awaits a day soon to come.
If part of that purpose is still ahead, the chapter is more than a record of the past. One writer shows what that means in practice.
The day is yet future, as Revelation 18 shows, when "every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon" (Jer. 51:29)… The principles of Babylon are widespread today. As we see God's judgment on this system, that understanding keeps us clear of it… What belongs to Babylon is always ready to trap such people. But learning the mind of God strengthens us against the inroads of this lawless and superstitious system.
Note: this writer quotes an older translation; the ESV reads, "the LORD's purposes against Babylon stand."
The judgment has another side. One writer names the result that matters most to God.
Its doom has come under the Medes, led on by Cyrus the Persian. The result of deepest interest to God is this: the fall of Babylon opens the door for His people to return from captivity. It is a picture of a final deliverance, when one greater than Cyrus will be there to destroy the last holder of the last empire completely.
- Purpose — the land shakes because God's purpose is fixed, not because armies move.
- Power — God both plans and acts. He stirred up the Medes, so the instruments of judgment are His.
- Permanence — that counsel cannot change. The plans of nations fall. Nothing in heaven or earth turns God from what He has set Himself to do.
- Reach — His purposes stretch beyond Cyrus. The ancient city fell; the judgment on Babylon the Great still awaits its day.
- Rescue — Babylon's fall opened the door home for captives. It pictures the final deliverance God still intends for His people.
The mighty men of Babylon have ceased to fight, they are sitting in the fortresses; their might hath failed, they are become as women they have set her dwelling places on fire; her bars are broken.
Jeremiah's long message against Babylon reaches the moment her best soldiers stop fighting. The chapter answers one question: what happens to human strength when God sets Himself against it?
The soldiers' failure is not the story's cause but its evidence. William Kelly traces it back to a decision already settled in heaven:
Jehovah's purpose was fixed and sure. Babylon had to become a wasteland with no one living in it. The circumstances of its fall, described next, confirm this.
Kelly notes that God had used Babylon as His "battle axe" to break nations in pieces. That service bought her no protection later: "But this did not hinder His vengeance now."
The warriors stay in their strongholds because Babylon's defences were famous. W. T. P. Wolston describes them:
Babylon stood on a broad plain, and was exactly square. Its walls ran fifteen miles in each direction. They stood 300 feet high and 75 feet broad, and a hundred bronze gates pierced them, with lintels and side posts of bronze… With defences like these, Babylon thought herself unconquerable. The city gathered together all the gaiety, the godlessness, and the luxury a man could gather around himself. The king and the people thought they were safe from every power in heaven or on earth. But they were mistaken, for they had forgotten God.
By the end of the verse those defences are gone — dwellings on fire, bars broken.
The phrase is a figure of speech, and the prophets use it more than once. William J. Hocking shows what it stands for:
Isaiah also uses the same figure for a condition of weakness and fear in the nation of Egypt. He writes: "In that day the Egyptians will be like women, and tremble with fear before the hand that the LORD of hosts shakes over them" (Isaiah 19:16). "Woman" as a figure of lost strength occurs also in Isaiah 3:12; Jeremiah 51:30; Nahum 3:13.
Hocking applies the same picture to Israel in her weakness just before God restores her. So the image cuts both ways: it can mark a nation God is about to rescue, or, as here, one He is about to destroy.
Kelly explains how the attackers got past those walls:
In Babylon's case a gate of the city was opened. We know the splendid description of it in Isaiah, with its doors of bronze and bars of iron, which had to yield to righteousness from the east. For God called Cyrus to His foot, and gave kings as the dust of his sword, as driven stubble to his bow. When the moment came, the difficulty vanished. The Persians entered the imperial city through the dried bed of the Euphrates, which had been turned into another channel. Then they killed the drunken guards and opened the doors for the rest.
The bars of iron in that description are the bars Jeremiah sees broken. Babylon fell at the very point where she felt safest.
What happened to one city is a sample of what happens to every power built without God. Walter Scott states the principle at its widest:
The world's glory and might is only a passing dream. Everything not founded on God withers, fades, and perishes. Babylon, at the very peak of pride and greatness, at the height of her glory, is cut down. Her ruin is complete and final.
- Purpose. The soldiers' loss of nerve is not an accident of war. Kelly traces the whole scene to one settled decision: God's purpose against Babylon "was fixed and sure."
- Walls. Babylon's fifteen-mile walls and bronze gates made her think herself unconquerable, but "they had forgotten God." Her strongholds hid her warriors. They did not save them.
- Nerve. "Become women" is the prophets' image for a people emptied of courage. Isaiah and Nahum both use it. The inner collapse came before the outer one.
- Gates. When God's moment came, "the difficulty vanished" — a dried riverbed, drunken guards, an open gate. The strongest defences in the world gave way as soon as He acted.
- Pattern. Whatever is not founded on God "withers, fades, and perishes." Babylon was cut down at the height of her glory, not in her decline.
Courier runneth to meet courier, and messenger to meet messenger, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city is taken from end to end;
Jeremiah pictures the last night of an empire. Runners race past each other on the roads. Each carries the same news to the king: his city has fallen. Did it happen just as written? And does the picture stop with ancient Babylon?
Sending news at speed was old practice long before Babylon fell.
People have sent letters at speed since early times. Job said, "Now my days are swifter than a runner." When Hezekiah proclaimed a Passover for all Israel he sent letters of invitation by runners from city to city… In the prophecy of God's judgements on Babylon, the news reaches the king by one runner running to meet another. The system divided large districts into small sections, each with a post-house where runners and animals were always kept ready. That way messages could spread fast in many directions.
The ESV says the city is "taken on every side." Older translations end the verse "his city is taken at one end," and that is the wording these writers use. They point to the one night when it came true.
The Euphrates makes a bend near Babylon. So Cyrus, the Persian leader, cut a new bed for the waters a few miles upstream and diverted their course… When darkness came, they opened the sluices and turned the river into this new direction. As a result the riverbed was almost dry as far as Babylon was concerned. The Persian troops marched quietly along that bed, under the bronze gates, and took possession of the city. Then what Jeremiah told us came true: a messenger ran "to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end." In the middle of this feast, which careless, thoughtless people admired, the enemy's armies came in. The news reached the king that his city was taken, and the feast broke up at once. "That night Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans was killed." His bloody corpse, on the banqueting hall floor, is a warning to every sinner not to despise the message of God.
Someone has to tell the king: he does not know. Writers describe what he was doing while the enemy walked in.
History may tell us it was an annual festival, when immorality ran unchecked. That gave the besieging army a good chance to seize an unguarded moment and put its vast preparations to use. Scripture shows us the king wrapped in that false security which comes before destruction. He used the occasion to insult the God of Israel. Rash, blinded man! It was the eve of his ruined dynasty, and of his death.
The runners carry news of a decision already made. Earlier in the chapter God tells Babylon what she had been to Him, and that it will not save her. The quotation below follows an older translation.
"You were my battle axe, weapons of war: with you I have broken nations in pieces, and with you I have destroyed kingdoms…" But that did not hold back His vengeance now. "Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, says the LORD, you who destroy all the earth. I will stretch out my hand upon you, roll you down from the rocks, and make you a burnt mountain."
The verse gives detail no one could guess: runner meeting runner, a city taken at one end. Writers treat that precision as proof of where the words came from.
The words of Jeremiah — or rather the words of the Lord through him — have been fully proved to be of divine origin. The proof is how exactly they came true. They were fulfilled with such precision in public, private and personal detail that no honest person can question it. And what still awaits fulfilment will no doubt be carried out with the same perfection.
Cyrus's conquest did not use up everything these chapters say. Writers see more in them than the fall of one ancient city.
Many details in Jeremiah 50 and 51 show us more in the mind of the Spirit than the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus and the partial restoration of Israel afterwards… The day is still future, as Revelation 18 shows, when "every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon" — when at last "Babylon shall sink and shall not rise" again. Babylon's principles hold wide sway today. As we see God's judgment on this system, we are kept clear of it ourselves with understanding.
- Runner. The verse pictures a real relay system: couriers waiting at stations so urgent news could travel fast. Here the news is all bad.
- River. Cyrus turned the Euphrates aside, and his troops walked in along the dry bed. A runner carried the news to the king, just as Jeremiah said.
- Revelry. The message had to be carried to a king at a feast, wrapped in the false security that comes before destruction.
- Reckoning. Babylon had been God's battle axe against the nations. That record bought her nothing when He said, "I am against you."
- Repeat. The exact fulfilment of the first fall guarantees the second. Revelation 18 shows a later Babylon falling, and the call now is to stay clear of it.
and the passages are seized, and the reedy places are burnt with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.
In Jeremiah 51:32 one runner meets another, carrying news to the king of Babylon that his city has fallen. This verse is the content of that news. Two questions follow. Why did a city with such defences collapse so fast? And why did God record the detail in advance?
The verse belongs to a run of short, urgent reports. One writer reads those details as confirmation of what God had already settled:
The Lord's purpose was fixed and sure. Babylon must be reduced to a desolation without an inhabitant. The circumstances of its fall, described next, confirm this.
The same writer names who carried it out, and what the fall opened up:
Its doom has come under the Medes, led on by Cyrus the Persian. The consequence of deepest interest to God is that the fall of Babylon opens the door for the return of His people from captivity.
The verse says the fords fell first. One writer describes how the attacking army got in — along the riverbed itself:
The river Euphrates ran right through the centre of the city. Great bronze gates guarded it, so no one could get in by water. It was a very simple little trick that Cyrus, the Persian leader, used. The Euphrates makes a bend near Babylon, so Cyrus cut a new bed for the waters a few miles upstream and diverted their course... When darkness came on, they opened the sluices and turned the river in this new direction. As a result the riverbed was practically dry as far as Babylon was concerned. The Persian troops marched quietly along that bed, and under the bronze gates, and took possession of the city. Then what Jeremiah told us was fulfilled. A messenger ran to tell the king of Babylon that his city was taken at one end.
Another writer adds what then happened at the gates:
When the moment came, the difficulty vanished. The Persians entered the imperial city along the dry bed of the Euphrates, for the river had been turned into another channel. So the gates were opened for the rest of the army, once the drunken guards were killed.
The last clause of the verse reports terror, not resistance. One writer points to the thing that set her up for ruin:
God was angry with His guilty people, but that was no excuse for Babylon's merciless behaviour. And her trust in her own secure resources would be the forerunner of ruin.
Another writer shows what the whole city counted on, and what it had forgotten:
Defended in this way, Babylon thought herself unconquerable. The city gathered together all the pleasure, the godlessness and the luxury that anyone could surround himself with. The king and the people thought themselves safe from every power, in heaven or on earth. But they were mistaken, for they had forgotten God.
Small specifics like burned marshes and blocked fords are easy to pass over. One writer treats that precision as an argument about the whole book, and about what has not happened yet:
The words of Jeremiah — or rather the words of the Lord through him — have been proved again and again to come from God. The proof is how exactly they came true. They were fulfilled with such precision, in public, private and personal detail, that no honest person can question them. And what still awaits fulfilment will no doubt be carried out with the same perfection.
Commentators do not read chapters 50 and 51 as history alone. One writer finds the same Babylonish principles at work now, and a present use for the chapter:
Principles like Babylon's are widely at work today. As we see the judgment of God on this system, we ourselves are kept clear of it with understanding... What is Babylonish is always ready to trap those who seek to exalt the Lord and to call on Him out of a pure heart. But as we learn the mind of God, we are strengthened against the inroads of this lawless and superstitious system. We see that the Lord has purposed to judge it and to overthrow it completely. We also see that He will save His people from its power. In this connection it is said, "Their Redeemer is strong."
- Purpose — The details of Babylon's collapse are not the cause of it. The Lord's purpose was fixed and sure. The circumstances only confirm what He had already decided.
- Report — The messengers carry news of lost crossings and burning marshes. The attackers had come in along the drained bed of the Euphrates, under the bronze gates.
- Collapse — Babylon's confidence in her own resources was the forerunner of her ruin. Walls, gates and a river were not enough, because she had forgotten God.
- Proof — Such small details came true exactly. One writer takes that as evidence that the words are God's, and as a reason to expect the rest to come true the same way.
- Warning — The same Babylonish principles are at work today. Learning God's mind about the system keeps His people clear of it, and their Redeemer is strong.
For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-floor, at the time of its being trodden; yet a little while, and the time of harvest shall come for her.
Babylon had broken nation after nation. Now God calls the great destroyer a threshing floor, trodden flat, with her own harvest only a short while away.
A threshing floor was a place of hard work, not of peace. One writer explains both the process and what it pictures:
The threshing floor is the place where the hoofs of the ox, or the teeth of the threshing tool, separate the grain from the chaff. In that way it would suggest the enemy, but looked at as God's instrument to purge His people. In fact, at least one passage speaks of the nations in just that way (Amos 1:3), while similar judgments will purge them in turn. I think we are right in saying that the thought suggested is God's instrument of chastening.
The chapter has just recalled what God had done through Babylon before turning on her. A commentator tracing the flow of Jeremiah 51 notes the shift:
The LORD had roused the spirit of her northern foes against her, and resolved to destroy her… Then the Spirit of prophecy addresses Babylon, listing in close detail the ways God had used her before her fall. "You were my battle axe, weapons of war: with you I have broken nations in pieces, and with you I have destroyed kingdoms…" But this did not stop His vengeance now. "Behold, I am against you, destroying mountain, says the LORD, you who destroy all the earth."
The harvest coming to Babylon is not arbitrary. It matches what she herself had done, and the same principle is stated again later in Scripture about a Babylon still to come:
In her fall Babylon only reaped what she had sown. "For it is the vengeance of the LORD; take vengeance on her; do to her as she has done" (verse 15). The same verdict is pronounced on the Babylon of the end time… "Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed" (Rev. 18:6). The nations will then drink of the cup of God's wrath and judgment as the literal Babylon did.
Writers on these chapters take Babylon as standing for something larger than the ancient capital. That is why the promise of a harvest still speaks to those who suffer under the world's power today:
Babylon may be prospering, demanding songs and merrymaking, but the godly are assured that its day of judgment is coming. It is devoted to destruction. One will arise to deal with Babylon — or the world system it pictures — as it had dealt with God's people.
This verse is one of a cluster where prophets take up the threshing picture, and the pattern in them runs in a particular direction:
The prophets use the figure of threshing quite often, and nearly always apply it to the nations (see Isa. 21:10 with Jer. 51:33; Isa. 41:15; Micah 4:13; Hab. 3:12). Israel herself will one day thresh the nations. But before that time she herself must pass through the purifying chastening. It will drive the chaff away and leave the pure grain alone. During this separating time of suffering and trial, the remnant will lay hold in faith on Him who is Lord of the threshing.
The verse leaves a short gap — the floor is trodden now, the harvest comes later. God fills that gap with patience:
God is full of goodness and patience. He only strikes when iniquity has come to the full. He still seeks souls while the acceptable day lasts, the day of salvation. No one knows the day "when he shall rise up to seize the prey." But who will say the harvest is not ripening for the sickle? Who will say the grapes of the vine of the earth are not filling up for the day of His wrath?
A note on how grain was cleaned in Bible times names the stage that follows the harvest:
It is now a day of grace, a sowing time, but the harvest will come, and the winnowing will surely follow.
- Floor — Threshing separates grain from chaff under weight and pressure. Scripture makes it a picture of God's chastening, and the nations are the tool He uses.
- Axe — God used Babylon to break nations and kingdoms. Serving as His tool gave her no shelter when His vengeance turned her way.
- Crop — Her harvest is her own sowing come back to her: do to her as she has done. Scripture passes the same sentence on the Babylon of the end time.
- Reach — One ancient city does not exhaust this judgment. The world system Babylon pictures has its own day fixed, for treating God's people as it did.
- Gap — Before the harvest comes patience. God strikes only when iniquity is full. Until then it is still the day of salvation — a sowing time, with the winnowing sure to follow.