51
📚Thus says the LORD:“See, I will raise up 📖 against Babylon,
and against those who live
in the midst of those who rise up
against me 📖, a destroying wind,
2 📚And will send winnowers to Babylon
who will winnow her and empty her land;
for in the day of trouble they will be
against her all around.
3 📚Against him who bends a bow
let the archer bend his bow,
and against him who lifts
himself up in his armour;
and do not spare her young men.
Completely destroy all her army.
4 📚Thus the slain will fall in the land
of the Chaldeans,
and those who are pierced
in her streets.
5 📚For neither Israel nor Judah has been
forsaken by his God, by the LORD of hosts,
even though their land was filled with sin
against the Holy One of Israel”.
51:5 When God acts as He does among the nations He always has His people in His heart and mind (Zech 2:8).⚜
6 📚Flee 📖 out of the midst of Babylon,
and everyone rescue his soul.
Do not be cut off in her wickedness.
For this is the time of the LORD’s
vengeance 📖; he will repay her.
7 📚Babylon has been a golden cup
in the LORD’s hand 📖,
that has made the whole earth drunk.
The nations have drunk of her wine,
therefore the nations have gone mad.
8 📚Babylon has suddenly fallen
and been destroyed. Wail for her.
Take balm for her pain;
perhaps she may be healed.
9 📚“We would have healed Babylon,
but she is not healed. Forsake her,
and let each of us go to his own country,
for her judgment reaches to heaven,
and is lifted up to the skies.
10 📚The LORD has revealed our righteousness.
Come, and let us declare in Zion the work
of the LORD our God.
51:10 This is a prophecy that looks forward many years. The exiles from Judah and Jerusalem speak. They have learned many lessons in Babylon, have repented, sought and found God (Jer 29:10-14). Now God brings their righteousness to the light (Ps 37:6).⚜
11 📚Make the arrows bright! Gather
the shields!
The LORD has raised up the spirit of the kings
of the Medes 📖, for his plan against Babylon
is to destroy it;
because it is the vengeance
of the LORD,
the vengeance concerning his temple 📖.
12 📚Set up the banner on the walls
of Babylon! Make the guard strong!
Station the watchmen! Prepare the ambushes!
For the LORD has both planned and done
what he spoke against the inhabitants
of Babylon.
13 📚O you who live on many waters 📖,
abundant in treasures, your end has come,
and the measure of your covetousness.
14 📚The LORD of hosts has sworn
by himself, saying,
“Surely I will fill you with men,
as with locusts; and they will raise
a shout against you”.
15 📚He has made the earth by his power,
has established the world
by his wisdom, and has stretched out
the heavens by his understanding.
16 📚When he utters his voice,
there is a roar of waters
in the heavens,
and he causes the vapours to ascend
from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning with rain,
and brings the wind out of his treasuries.
17 📚Every man is stupid, without knowledge.
Every metal worker is put to shame
by the carved image,
for his cast metal image is a lie,
and there is no breath in them.
18 📚They are worthless,
the work of error.
In the time of their punishment
they will perish.
19 📚The Portion of Jacob is not
like them; for he is the Maker
of all things,
and Israel is the tribe
of his inheritance.
The LORD of hosts is his name.
51:15-19 See Jer 10:12-16. Many peoples of that day made the mistake of thinking that Jehovah, the God of Israel, was only one deity among a great many (just as many people today mistakenly think the God of Christians is only one of many). Here God proclaims to the Babylonians who He really is, and how worthless is all worship other than the worship of the true God.⚜
20 📚“You are my war club 📖,
my weapons for battle;
for with you I will break the nations
in pieces, and with you I will
destroy kingdoms,
21 📚And with you I will break the horse
and its rider in pieces,
and with you I will break the chariot
and its rider in pieces,
22 📚With you I will also break man
and woman in pieces,
and with you I will break old
and young in pieces,
and with you I will break the young man
and the maiden in pieces;
23 📚With you I will also break the shepherd
and his flock in pieces,
and with you I will break the farmer
and his yoke of oxen in pieces,
and with you I will break captains
and rulers in pieces.
24 📚And I will repay Babylon and all
the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil
that they have done in Zion in your sight,
says the LORD.
51:24 Nations will be judged according to their behavior to God’s people. See Deut 32:10; Zech 2:8; compare Matt 25:31-46.⚜
25 📚“See, I am against you,
O destroying mountain, who destroys
the whole earth, says the LORD,
and I will stretch out my hand over you,
and roll you down from the rocks,
and will make you a burnt mountain.
26 📚And they will not take a stone
for a corner from you,
or a stone for foundations;
but you will be desolate forever,
says the LORD.
27 📚“Set up a banner in the land.
Blow the trumpet among the nations.
Prepare the nations against her.
Call together the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni,
and Ashkenaz against her.
Appoint a commander against her.
Cause the horses to come up like
the bristling locusts.
51:27 Verse 11. Other kingdoms were allied to the Medes and Persians. These three were located north of Babylon and the land of the Medes. They had come under the power of the Medes (v 28).⚜
28 📚Prepare the nations against her,
with the kings of the Medes,
its commanders, and all its rulers,
and the whole land of his dominion.
29 📚And the land will tremble and writhe,
for every purpose of the LORD will be
accomplished against Babylon,
to make the land of Babylon a desolation
without an inhabitant.
30 📚The mighty men of Babylon have stopped
fighting. They remain in their
strongholds. Their might has failed.
They have become like women.
They have burned her dwelling places.
The bars of her gates are broken.
31 📚One courier runs to meet another,
and one messenger to meet another,
to tell the king of Babylon that his city
has been captured from end to end,
32 📚And that the river fords
are blocked, that they have burned
the reeds with fire,
that the warriors are terrified.
33 📚“For thus says the LORD of hosts,
the God of Israel:
The daughter 📖 of Babylon is like a
threshing floor;
it is time to thresh her.
Yet a little while, and the time of her
harvest will come”.
34 📚“Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon,
has devoured me. He has crushed me.
He has made me an empty jar.
He has swallowed me up like a monster.
He has filled his stomach with my delicacies.
He has thrown me out.
35 📚The violence done to me
and to my flesh be on Babylon”,
says the inhabitant of Zion.
“And my blood be on the inhabitants
of Chaldea”, says Jerusalem.
51:34-35 The exiles from Jerusalem speak. For notes on such prayers against enemies see Ps 35:8.⚜
36 📚Therefore 📖 thus says the LORD:
“See, I will plead your case,
and take vengeance for you;
and I will dry up her sea,
and make her springs dry.
37 📚And Babylon will become ruins,
a dwelling place for jackals 📖,
an object of astonishment
and hissing, without an inhabitant.
38 📚They will roar together like lions;
they will growl like lion cubs.
39 📚In their feverish activity
I will make feasts for them,
and I will make them drunk,
so that they may rejoice,
and sleep a permanent sleep,
and not wake up, says the LORD.
40 📚I will bring them down like lambs
to the slaughter,
like rams with male goats.
41 📚How Sheshach 📖 is captured!
And how the praise of the whole
earth is surprised!
How Babylon has become an object of
astonishment among the nations!
42 📚The sea 📖 has come up on Babylon.
She is covered with its many waves.
43 📚Her cities are a desolation, a dry land,
and a wilderness, a land where
no one lives,
where no son of man passes by.
44 📚And I will punish Bel 📖 in Babylon,
and I will bring out of his mouth
what he has swallowed up.
And the nations will no longer
go streaming to him; yes,
the wall of Babylon will fall.
45 📚“My people, go out of her midst,
and each one of you rescue his soul
from the fierce anger of the LORD.
46 📚Then do not let your heart faint,
or fear for the rumour that will be
heard in the land.
A rumour will come one year,
and after that, in another year,
a rumour will come,
and violence will be
in the land, ruler against ruler.
47 📚Therefore, see, the days come,
when I will bring judgment 📖 on the carved
images of Babylon,
and her whole land will be put
to shame, and all her slain
will fall in her midst.
48 📚Then the heavens and the earth,
and all that is in them,
will shout for joy over Babylon;
for the destroyers will come to her
from the north, says the LORD.
51:48 Compare Rev 19:1-3. The fall of a cruel, blood-stained, God-defying system will be a cause of great joy.⚜
49 📚“As Babylon has caused the slain
of Israel to fall, so at Babylon
will fall the slain of all the earth.
51:49 Verses 1,11,24; Zech 2:8.⚜
50 📚You who have escaped the sword,
go away. Do not stand still.
Remember 📖 the LORD from afar,
and let Jerusalem come into your mind”.
51 📚“We are ashamed because we have
heard reproach.
Shame has covered our faces,
for foreigners have come into the
sanctuaries of the LORD’s house”.
51:51 The exiles of Judah and Jerusalem speak. Nebuchadnezzar’s army had defiled the temple in Jerusalem.⚜
52 📚“Therefore, see, the days
are coming, says the LORD,
when I will judge her carved images;
and through all her land the wounded
will groan.
53 📚Even though Babylon mounts up
to heaven, and though she fortifies her
high stronghold,
yet destroyers will come
from me to her, says the LORD”.
54 📚A sound of a cry comes
from Babylon, and great destruction
from the land of the Chaldeans;
55 📚Because the LORD has destroyed
Babylon, and silenced her loud voice,
when her waves roared like great waters,
and the noise of their
voice sounded out,
56 📚Because the destroyer has
come on her, on Babylon,
and her mighty men are captured.
Every one of their bows is broken.
For the LORD God of retribution 📖
will certainly repay.
57 📚“And I will make her princes
and her wise men drunk 📖,
also her captains and her rulers,
and her mighty men;
and they will sleep a permanent sleep,
and not wake up, says the King,
whose name is the LORD of hosts”.
58 📚Thus says the LORD of hosts:
“The broad walls of Babylon will be
utterly broken down,
and her high gates will be burned with fire 📖;
and the people will labour in vain,
and the nation, because of the fire;
and they will be faint”.
59 📚This is the word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And this Seraiah was a quiet officer.
51:59 Seraiah was the brother of Baruch, Jeremiah’s colleague.⚜
60 📚So Jeremiah wrote in a book the whole disaster that would come on Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon. 61 📚And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, “When you arrive in Babylon, and see it, and read all these words,
51:61 Compare Jer 36:5-6.⚜
62 📚then you shall say, ‘O LORD, you have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that nothing remains in it, whether man or beast. It will be desolate forever.’ 63 📚And it shall be, when you have finished reading this book, that you will tie a stone to it, and hurl it into the middle of the Euphrates; 64 📚and you shall say, ‘Babylon will sink like this, and will not rise from the disaster that I will bring on her; and they will be faint.’ ” Thus far the words of Jeremiah 📖.