Jeremiah 51:57

57 I'll make her leaders and sages drunk, her governors, officials, and warriors as well. They will sleep forever, never to get up, declares the king, whose name is the LORD of heavenly forces.

Jeremiah 51:57 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 51:57

And I will make drunk her princes
With the wine of divine wrath; that is, slay them; though there may be an allusion to their being drunk with wine at the feast Belshazzar made for his thousand lords; who are the princes here intended, together with the king and his royal family, ( Daniel 5:1 Daniel 5:4 ) ; and her wise [men], her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men:
the counsellors of state, priests, magicians, and astrologers; officers in the army, superior and inferior ones; and the soldiers and warriors, whom Cyrus and his men slew; when they entered the city; compare with this ( Revelation 19:18 ) ; and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awake;
be all asleep in their drunken fits, and be slain therein; and so never wake, or live more. The Targum is,

``and they shall die the second death, and not come into the world to come;''

(See Gill on Jeremiah 51:39); saith the king, whose name [is] the Lord of hosts;
the King of kings and Lord of lords; the Lord of armies in heaven and earth; and can do, and does, what he pleases in both worlds.

Jeremiah 51:57 In-Context

55 The LORD is destroying Babylon and silencing her outcry, whose roar is like the crushing waves, a deafening crash.

56 He certainly comes against her; the destroyer comes against Babylon. Her warriors are captured; their bows are broken. The LORD is an exacting God who repays in full.

57 I'll make her leaders and sages drunk, her governors, officials, and warriors as well. They will sleep forever, never to get up, declares the king, whose name is the LORD of heavenly forces.

58 The LORD of heavenly forces proclaims: Babylon's massive walls will come down, down to the ground; and its high gates will be burned to the ground. People labor in vain; nations toil for nothing but ashes!

59 This is what the prophet Jeremiah instructed the staff officer Seraiah, Neriah's son and Mahseiah's grandson, when Seraiah went to Babylon with Judah's King Zedekiah in the fourth year of his rule. Jeremiah's words end here.