Jeremiah 51:39-49

39 While they are inflamed I will prepare them a feast and make them drunk, till they swoon away and sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, says the LORD.
40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and he-goats.
41 "How Babylon is taken, the praise of the whole earth seized! How Babylon has become a horror among the nations!
42 The sea has come up on Babylon; she is covered with its tumultuous waves.
43 Her cities have become a horror, a land of drought and a desert, a land in which no one dwells, and through which no son of man passes.
44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and take out of his mouth what he has swallowed. The nations shall no longer flow to him; the wall of Babylon has fallen.
45 "Go out of the midst of her, my people! Let every man save his life from the fierce anger of the LORD!
46 Let not your heart faint, and be not fearful at the report heard in the land, when a report comes in one year and afterward a report in another year, and violence is in the land, and ruler is against ruler.
47 "Therefore, behold, the days are coming when I will punish the images of Babylon; her whole land shall be put to shame, and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
48 Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, shall sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers shall come against them out of the north, says the LORD.
49 Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, as for Babylon have fallen the slain of all the earth.

Jeremiah 51:39-49 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.

Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.