Jeremiah 51:58

The broad walls of Babylon better than mg. The walls of broad Babylon, We should, with LXX, read wall. According to Herodotus, the outer wall of Babylon was 200 royal cubits (about 373 English feet) high, while it was fifty cubits wide. This, however, both from the nature of the case, and from the conflicting testimony of other writers, seems exaggerated. Probably the height was about 60 or 70 English feet, and the walls perhaps 30 or 40 feet wide, as they allowed of a team of four horses being driven along them. See Herod. I. 178, and Rawlinson's notes there.

utterly overthrown lit. (as mg.) made bare, destroyed, so that the very foundations shall be uncovered.

high gates "In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts." Herod. I. 179.

the peoples shall labour, etc.] almost identical with Habakkuk 2:13 (referred to in mg.), transposing, however, the words for "vanity" and for "the fire." It appears in both places to be a quotation from an older source, and to express a general truth. We should therefore render (with a slight change of text) by present tenses, the peoples labour for vanity, and the nations weary themselves for the fire.