Jeremiah 51:42

42 The sea has come up on Babylon; she is covered with its tumultuous waves.

Jeremiah 51:42 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 51:42

The sea is come up upon Babylon
A vast army, comparable to the great sea for the multitude thereof, even the army of the Medes and Persians under Cyrus; so the Targum,

``a king with his armies, which are numerous like the waters of the sea, is come up against Babylon:''

she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof;
being surrounded, besieged, surprised, and seized upon by the multitude of soldiers in that army, which poured in upon it unawares. Some think here is a beautiful antithesis, between the inundation of Cyrus's army and the draining of the river Euphrates, by which means he poured in his forces into Babylon.

Jeremiah 51:42 In-Context

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.