Jeremiah50chapter 50

Jeremiah 50:11

“Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of mine heritage,.... This is addressed to the Chaldeans who destroyed Jerusalem and the land of Judea, once the heritage of the Lord; when they rejoiced at the destruction of God's people, and insulted them in their miseries; and which is the cause and reason assigned of their ruin; for though they had a commission to destroy, yet they exceeded that, and especially by exulting at the ruin of that people, which showed great inhumanity.”

Jeremiah 50:11

“But there is a disagreement of gender in Hebrew reading thus. The Keri is better: "a heifer threshing"; the strongest were used for threshing, and as the law did not allow their mouth to be muzzled in threshing (De 25:4), they waxed wanton with eating. bellow as bulls--rather, "neigh as steeds," literally, "strong ones," a poetical expression for steeds (see on Jer 8:16) [MAURER].”

Jeremiah 50:12

“Your mother - Speaking to the Chaldeans: Babylon, the metropolis, or mother city, shall be a wilderness, a dry land, a desert, neither fit for man nor beast.”

Jeremiah 50:13

“Because of the wrath of the Lord, it shall not be inhabited,.... That is, Babylon; which the Targum expresses, "because thou, Babylon, hast provoked the Lord;'' by their idolatry, luxury, ill usage of his people, and profanation of the vessels of the sanctuary; therefore it should be destroyed, and left without an inhabitant in it: but it shall be wholly desolate; as it now is.”

Jeremiah 50:14

“Summons to the Median army to attack Babylon. against the Lord--By oppressing His people, their cause is His cause. Also by profaning His sacred vessels (Da 5:2).”

Jeremiah 50:14

“Note, It is sin that makes men a mark for the arrows of God's judgments. An abundance of idolatry and immorality was to be found in Babylon, yet those are not mentioned as the reason of God's displeasure against them, but the injuries they had done to the people of God, from a principle of enmity to them as his people.”

Jeremiah 50:15

“Shout against her round about,.... As soldiers do when they make an assault upon a place, to encourage one another, and dismay the besieged; just as the Israelites did when they surrounded Jericho: she hath given her hand; submitted to the conqueror, and sued for mercy.”

Jeremiah 50:15

Shout - i. e., spoken of the war-cry. So in Isa 42:13, where God is compared to a warrior, it is said He shall shout (the King James Version cry), i. e., raise the war-cry. Site hath given her hand - The sign of submission (compare 1Ch 29:24 margin). Foundations - Or, buttresses. The Septuagint: “battlements.”

Jeremiah 50:15

“The country that was populous shall be dispeopled, that was enriched with a fertile soil shall become barren. The great city, the head of it, shall be quite ruined. Her foundations have fallen, and therefore her walls are thrown down; for how can the walls stand when divine vengeance is at the door and shakes the very foundations?”

Jeremiah 50:16

“Cut off the sower from in Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest,.... Both sower and reaper: the walls of Babylon took in a large compass of land, where there were corn fields; and which, as Curtius (s) observes, would yield a sufficiency to hold out a siege against an enemy; but being taken, the husbandman would not be spared, as used to be, but should be cut off, and so none to till the ground, or to reap what was upon it; and thus, in course, would be, desolate, as before threatened.”

Jeremiah 50:16

“The population is to be destroyed so utterly that the rich fields of Babylonia are to remain untilled. They shall turn - The full force of the words will be seen if it be remembered that it had been the policy of Nebuchadnezzar to compel citizens selected from the vanquished nations to settle in Babylonia.”

Jeremiah 50:17

“Israel is a scattered sheep - i. e., is like a flock which has been scared and driven in all directions, for lions have chased him. First the king ... - Rather, the first lion “ate him, even the king of Assyria; and this one, the last, heath picked his bones, even Nebuchadrezzar etc.” The constant wasting of the land by the Assyrians had so lessened the number of Israel, that Nebuchadnezzar had but the bones to pick.”

Jeremiah 50:18

“As I have punished the king of Assyria - The Assyrians were overthrown by the Medes and the Chaldeans. The king is here taken for all their kings, generals, etc., Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, etc. To them succeeded the Chaldean or Babylonish kings. Nebuchadnezzar came against Judea several times; and at last took the city and burnt it, profaned and demolished the temple, wasted the land, and carried the princes and people into captivity.”

Jeremiah 50:19

“And I will bring Israel again to his habitation,.... Or "fold" (u), or place of pasturage; for the metaphor of sheep is still continued. Israel designs not the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and the Levites, and a few of the other tribes mixed with them only, but all Israel, together with Judah, as appears from Jer 50:20; and so this prophecy had not its full accomplishment at the Jews' return from the Babylonish captivity; but respects their future conversion, when all Israel shall be saved, and they will return to their own land.”

Jeremiah 50:19

“Or, “I will bring Israel (the scared sheep) back to his pasturage (see Jer 50:7) and he shall graze etc.” The places named are the districts of Palestine most famous for their rich herbage.”

Jeremiah 50:19

“They still retained a title to the land of Canaan; it is their habitation still. The discontinuance of their possession was not the destruction of their right.”

Jeremiah 50:20

“In those days and in that time - This phrase appears to take in the whole of an epoch, from its commencement to its end. See Jer 50:4. I will pardon them - So as to deliver them from their captivity, and exact no more punishment from them whom I reserve, namely, the remnant left in the Babylonish captivity.”

Jeremiah 50:20

“The specification of "Israel," as well as Judah, shows the reference is to times yet to come. iniquity . . . none--not merely idolatry, which ceased among the Jews ever since the Babylonian captivity, but chiefly their rejection of Messiah. As in a cancelled debt, it shall be as if it had never been; God, for Christ's sake, shall treat them as innocent (Jer 31:34).”

Jeremiah 50:20

“This denotes how fully God forgives sin; he remembers it no more. Note, Deliverances out of trouble are then comforts indeed when they are the fruits of the forgiveness of sin, Isa. xxxviii. Judah and Israel were so fully forgiven when they were brought back out of Babylon that they are said to have received of the Lord's hand double for all their sins, Isa. xl.”

Jeremiah 50:21

“Go up against the land of Merathaim,.... Thought to be the country of the Mardi, which lay part of it in Assyria, and part of it in Armenia; expressed in the dual number, because one part of it lay on one side the Tigris, and the other on the other side. Cyrus, with his army of Medes and Persians, is here called upon; who, according to Herodotus, passed through Assyria to Babylon: and so it may be agreeably rendered, "go by the land of Merathaim"; or the country of the Mardi.”

Jeremiah 50:21

“The land of Merathaim - of double rebellion. Like Mitsraim, i. e., the two Egypts, Aram-Naharaim, i. e., Syria of the two rivers, or Mesopotamia, it is a dual. It may have been a real name; or - the dual ending being intensive - it may mean the land of very great rebelliousness. Pekod - Possibly a Babylonian town. Waste - Rather, slay, Jer 50:27.”

Jeremiah 50:21

“Pekod-- (Eze 23:23); a chief province of Assyria, in which Nineveh, now overthrown, once lay. But, as in Merathaim, the allusion is to the meaning of Pekod, namely, "visitation"; the inhabitants whose time of deserved visitation in punishment is come; not, however, without reference to the now Babylonian province, Pekod.”

Jeremiah 50:21

“It was said of Cyrus ( Isa. xliv. 28 ), He shall perform all my pleasure, in his expedition against Babylon. They must waste and utterly destroy after them; when they have destroyed once they must go over them again, or destroy their posterity that should come after them.”

Jeremiah 50:22

“A sound of battle is in the land,.... In the land of the Chaldeans, as it is expressed in the Septuagint and Arabic versions; the noise of warriors, the clashing of arms, and sound of trumpets, both of the enemy entered into the land, and of the Chaldeans arming themselves in their own defence: and of great destruction; in the same land; or in Babylon, as Abarbinel supplies it; this is the consequent of the former.”

Jeremiah 50:23

“How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken!.... The Targum is, "how is the king cut down and broken that moved the whole earth!'' The king of Babylon, or the kingdom of Babylon, which was like a hammer for its hardness and strength; and being an instrument, in the hand of God, of beating to pieces and destroying the kingdoms and nations around it; but is now destroyed itself.”

Jeremiah 50:23

“The hammer - Babylon, by whose instrumentality Yahweh had crushed the nations, is now cut asunder, i. e., the head of iron or bronze is cut away from the wooden handle, and broken.”

Jeremiah 50:24

“I have laid a snare for thee - It was not by storm that Cyrus took the city. The Euphrates ran through it; he dug a channel for the river in another direction, to divert its stream; he waited for that time in which the inhabitants had delivered themselves up to debauchery: in the dead of the night he turned off the stream, and he and his army entered by the old channel, now void of its waters. This was the snare of which the prophet here speaks. See Nerodotus, lib. i., c. 191.”

Jeremiah 50:24

“I--Thou hast to do with God, not merely with men. taken . . . not aware--HERODOTUS relates that one half of the city was taken before those in the other half were "aware" of it. Cyrus turned the waters of the Euphrates where it was defended into a different channel, and so entered the city by the dried-up channel at night, by the upper and lower gates (Da 5:30, 31).”

Jeremiah 50:25

“The Lord hath opened his armoury,.... Alluding to the manner of kings, who have some particular edifice built for an armoury; see Son 4:4; wherein are provided and laid up all sorts of armour, small and great, which are fetched out from thence, in time of need.”

Jeremiah 50:25

“By a grand figure the prophet describes Yahweh arming Himself that in person He may execute justice upon the wicked city. For this is the work - Rather, for my Lord Yahweh of hosts hath a work to do in the land of the Chaldaeans.”

Jeremiah 50:26

“Open her store-houses - At the time that Cyrus took the city, it was full of provisions and treasures of all kinds; the walls had suffered no injury; and when the inhabitants heard that the enemy was within, they thought they must have arisen out of the earth in the center of the city!”

Jeremiah 50:28

“Declare in Zion the vengeance of the Lord - Zion was desolated by Babylon; tell Zion that God hath desolated the desolator. The vengeance of his temple - Which Nebuchadnezzar had pillaged, profaned, and demolished, transporting its sacred vessels to Babylon, and putting them in the temple of his god Bel.”

Jeremiah 50:29

“Call together the archers against Babylon,.... The Medes and Persians, who were well skilled in archery, especially the Elamites; see Isa 22:6; hence Horace (d) makes mention of "Medi pharetra"; and Cyrus in Xenophon (e) says, that he had under his command sixty thousand men that wore targets and were archers; See Gill on Jer 50:”

Jeremiah 50:29

“Or, “Summon the archers to Babylon, even all who bend the bow: encamp against her etc.” In this portion of the prophecy the capture of Babylon is regarded as the punishment due to her for burning the temple Jer 50:28.”

Jeremiah 50:30

“Therefore shall her young men fall in the streets,.... Or "surely" (f); it is the form of an oath, according to Jarchi Cyrus, when he took Babylon, ordered proclamation to be made that the inhabitants should keep within doors; and that whoever were found in the streets should be put to death (g), as doubtless many were: and all her men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the Lord; as Belshazzar and his guards were (h); see Dan 5:30; compare with this Rev 19:18. (f) לכן "certe". (g) Cyropaedia, l. 7. c. 23. (h) Ibid.”

Jeremiah 50:31

“Thou pride (so the word is), as proud as pride itself. Note, the pride of men's hearts sets God against them and ripens them apace for ruin; for God resists the proud and will bring them down.”

Jeremiah 50:32

“And the most proud shall stumble and fall,.... Or "pride", as before; "the man of pride", who is so proud that he may be called pride itself. The Targum, as before, interprets it a wicked king; and Abarbinel understands it of Belshazzar particularly, who was slain the night that Babylon was taken.”

Jeremiah 50:32

“And the most proud - זדון zadon, as before. Here pride is personified and addressed, as if possessing a being and rational powers.”

Jeremiah 50:34

“Redeemer - i. e., גאל gā'al. Yahweh is Israel’s next relative, bound by law to avenge him, as well as to ransom him from captivity. It was the Go’el’s duty also to plead his kinsman’s cause. How thoroughly Yahweh will execute this duty for Israel is shown in the Hebrew by the triple repetition of the same word; literally “in pleading He will plead their plea.” The land ... - Rather, “the earth.” Babylon has hitherto by its ambition kept the world in unrest: now by its fall men everywhere can dwell in security.”

Jeremiah 50:35

“Omit “is.” A summons comes from Yahweh, Israel’s Goel, to the sword to fall upon all the elements of Babylon’s greatness. The princes were her rulers at home and her generals in war. The wise men were those upon whose learning she so prided herself (Dan 1:4 note).”

Jeremiah 50:35-37

“The repetition of "A sword" in the beginning of each verse, by the figure anaphora, heightens the effect; the reiterated judgment is universal; the same sad stroke of the sword is upon each and all connected with guilty Babylon. wise men-- (Isa 47:13). Babylon boasted that it was the peculiar seat of wisdom and wise men, especially in astronomy and astrology.”

Jeremiah 50:36

“A sword is upon the liars,.... Some render it "bars" (m), as the word sometimes signifies; and interpret it of great men, who are the strength and security of cities and commonwealths; but these are mentioned both before and after.”

Jeremiah 50:37

“The troops of other nations that were in their service shall be quite disheartened: The mingled people shall become as weak and timorous as women. [6.] Upon their exchequer: The sword shall be upon her treasures, which are the sinews of war, and they shall be robbed, and made use of by the enemy against them.”

Jeremiah 50:38

“A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up,.... Either on the waters of the land of Chaldea in general, from whence should follow barrenness, and so a want of the necessaries of life; hence Kimchi interprets it of a consumption of riches, and all good things; or on the waters of Babylon, the river Euphrates, which ran through it; the channel of which was diverted by Cyrus, and drained and made so dry, that he marched his army up it into the city.”

Jeremiah 50:38

“A drought is upon her waters - May not this refer to the draining of the channel of the Euphrates, by which the army of Cyrus entered the city. See on Jer 50:24 (note). The original is, however, חרב chereb, a sword, as in the preceding verses, which signifies war, or any calamity by which the thing on which it falls is ruined.”

Jeremiah 50:38

“Dried - This phrase has a plain reference to Cyrus's stratagem used in the surprize of Babylon; one part of it was fortified by the great river Euphrates, which Cyrus diverted by cutting several channels, 'till he had drained it so low, that it became passable for his army; others think that a want of rain is here threatened.”

Jeremiah 50:39

The wild beasts of the desert - Dahler translates these various terms, “The wild cats, the jackals, and the ostriches.” And Blayney the same. Wicklif, “Dragons, woodewoses, and ostriches.” Coverdale, “Wild beestes, apes, and estriches.”

Jeremiah 50:39

“Literally, "daughters of crying." Compare as to spiritual Babylon, Re 18:2. no more inhabited for ever--The accumulation of phrases is to express the final and utter extinction of Babylon; fulfilled not immediately, but by degrees;”

Jeremiah 50:40

“As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbour cities thereof, saith the Lord,.... Admah and Zeboim: so shall no man abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein; the same is said concerning Edom; See Gill on Jer 49:18.”

Jeremiah 50:40

“As God overthrew Sodom - As the very ground on which these cities stood, with all the plain, now lies under the Dead Sea; so Babylon and the adjacent country shall be rendered totally barren and unfruitful, and utterly incapable of being inhabited. And this is the fact concerning both countries. See Jer 49:18.”

Jeremiah 50:40

“No man - Cyrus only made them tributaries, and took away their government. But Seleucus Nicanor, a Grecian prince, utterly destroyed Babylon, so that in the time of Adrian the Roman emperor, there was nothing left standing of that great city.”

Jeremiah 50:41

“Behold, a people shall come from the north, and a great nation,.... The Modes and Persians, whose country lay north of Babylon: See Gill on Jer 50:9; and many kings shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth; the kings of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz, Jer 51:27; and of the Armenians and other nations that Cyrus had subdued and brought with him in his army against Babylon, as Xenophon (s) relates. Ten kings shall be raised up against mystical Babylon, and hate her, and burn her with fire, Rev 17:12. (s) Cyropaedia, l. 5. c. 15.”

Jeremiah 50:41

“An application to Babylon of the doom against Jerusalem Jer 6:22-24. Jer 50:41 The coasts of the earth - See the Jer 6:22 note.”

Jeremiah 50:41-43

“The very language used to describe the calamities which Babylon inflicted on Zion is that here employed to describe Babylon's own calamity inflicted by the Medes.”

Jeremiah 50:42

“They shall hold the bow and the lance,.... Or "spear". The Targum interprets it, "shields"; as many in Cyrus's army had (t); the one an offensive, the other a defensive weapon; or, if bow and lance, the one is used at a distance, the other when near.”

Jeremiah 50:44-46

“Repeated mainly from Jer 49:19-21. The identity of God's principle in His dealing with Edom, and in that with Babylon, is implied by the similarity of language as to both.”

Jeremiah 50:46

“At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth is moved,.... It being so sudden and unexpected, and so very astonishing: and the cry is heard among the nations; that Babylon is fallen; which, as applied to mystical Babylon, will be matter of joy to some, and of lamentation to others; see Rev 14:8.”

Jeremiah 50:46

“At the noise of the taking of Babylon - See the note on the parallel place, Jer 49:21 (note). In the forty-ninth chapter, these words are spoken of Nebuchadnezzar; here, of Cyrus. The taking of Babylon was a wonder to all the surrounding nations. It was thought to be impregnable.”