Jeremiah 51:36-44

36 Therefore this is what the LORD says: “Behold, I will plead your case and take vengeance on your behalf; I will dry up her sea and make her springs run dry.

37 Babylon will become a heap of rubble, a haunt for jackals, ^[a] an object of horror and scorn, without inhabitant.

38 They will roar together like young lions; they will growl like lion cubs.

39 While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast, and I will make them drunk so that they may revel; then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up, declares the LORD.

40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.

41 How Sheshach ^[b] has been captured! The praise of all the earth has been seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!

42 The sea has come up over Babylon; she is covered in turbulent waves.

43 Her cities have become a desolation, a dry and arid land, a land where no one lives, where no son of man passes through.

44 I will punish Bel in Babylon. I will make him spew out what he swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him; even the wall of Babylon will fall.

Jeremiah 51:36-44 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JEREMIAH 51

The former part of this chapter is a continuation of the prophecy of the preceding chapter, concerning the destruction of Babylon, Jer 51:1-58; the latter part of it contains a prophecy of Jeremiah sent to the captives in Babylon by the hand of Seraiah, with the copy of the above prophecy against Babylon, and an order to fasten a stone to it, and cast it into the river Euphrates, as a sign, confirming the utter and irreparable ruin of Babylon, Jer 51:59-64.

Footnotes

• [a] Or serpents or dragons
• [b] Sheshach is a code name for Babylon.