Jeremiah 50:24

I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD. I HAVE LAID A SNARE FOR THEE. Thou hast to do with God, not merely with men. THOU ART ALSO TAKEN, O BABYLON, AND THOU WAST NOT AWARE. Herodotus relates that one-half of the city was taken before those in the other were "aware" of it. Cyrus turned the waters of Euphrates, where it was defended, into a different channel, and so entered the city by the dried-up channel at night, by the upper and lower gates ()....

He then immediately answers in the person of God, _I have ensnared thee, and therefore thou Babylon art taken _Here God declares, that though it could not be possible that Babylon and its empire should fall through human means, yet its destruction was in his hand. _Thou, _he says, _art taken, _even because _I ensnared thee; _as though he had said, that the Chaldeans would not have to do with men, because he himself would carry on the war and guide and direct the Persians and the Medes, and also endue them with power: He would, in short, fight himself until he had overcome the Babylonians. When he says, _thou knewest not, _he not only reproves the insensibility of that people, but at the same time derides their security, as though he had said, “Thou thinkest thyself beyond the reach of harm, but thou wilt find that no one can escape my hand.” We now then perceive the meaning of the Prophe...

21-32 The forces are mustered and empowered to destroy Babylon. Let them do what God demands, and they shall bring to pass what he threatens. The pride of men's hearts sets God against them, and ripens them apace for ruin. Babylon's pride must be her ruin; she has been proud against the Holy One of Israel; who can keep those up whom God will throw down?...

Verse Jeremiah 50:24. _I HAVE LAID A SNARE FOR THEE_] It was not by _storm_ that Cyrus took the city. The _Euphrates_ ran through it; he dug a channel for the river in another direction, to divert its stream; he waited for that time in which the inhabitants had delivered themselves up to debauchery: in the dead of the night he turned off the stream, and he and his army entered by the _old channel_, now void of its waters. This was the _snare_ of which the prophet here speaks. See _Herodotus_, lib. i., c. 191....

I HAVE LAID A SNARE FOR THEE - Babylon, the impregnable, was taken (according to Herodotus) by Cyrus by stratagem. Having diverted the waters of the Euphrates, he entered the city by the river channel: but see Daniel 5:1 note. AND THOU WAST NOT AWARE - Better literally, and thou didst not know it....

Jeremiah 50:1. AND 51. ON BABYLON. EXPOSITION We have now reached a point at which some reference is necessary to the centre versies of the so called "higher criticism." An attempt must be made to put the reader in possession of the data which are so variously estimated by critics of different schools. Theological considerations need not, and therefore ought not, to be admitted; like every other critical question, that which we are now approaching can be argued out on purely literary grounds. At first sight, indeed, it would appear not to require a long debate, seeing that in Jeremiah 1:1 and Jeremiah 51:60 the prophecy is expressly attributed t

I HAVE LAID A SNARE FOR THEE, AND THOU ART ALSO TAKEN, O BABYLON,.... Retorting to the stratagem that Cyrus used, in draining the river Euphrates, and marching his army up through it into the midst of the city of Babylon, and took it by surprise, while the inhabitants at night were feasting and revelling: this is said to be a snare laid by the Lord, because it was according to the counsel of his will, and through his directing and overruling providence: AND THOU WAST NOT AWARE; of what the enemy had done, of his march into the city, and taking of it; for, as Herodotus and Aristotle report, one part of the city was seized and taken before the other knew anything of it: THOU ART FOUND, AND ALSO CAUGHT; as wild beasts in a net, or birds in a snare. The Targum is, "thy sins are sought, and are found, and also thou art taken:'' BECAUSE THOU HAST STRIVEN AGAINST THE LORD; as persons litiga...

CHAPTER S 50-51 BABYLON These two final Chapter s contain a great prophecy concerning Babylon, her overthrow and doom. The fifty-first chapter closes with the statement “thus far are the words of Jeremiah.” There is a direct statement that Jeremiah wrote all these words. We find it at the close of Jeremiah 51:59. “Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written against Babylon.” It would be a brazen infidelity which says Jeremiah did not write all these words. Yet the almost universally accepted view of the critics is that these Chapter s cannot be the work of Jeremiah. The German infidel, Professor Eichhorn, the man who coined the phrase “higher criticism,” started this denial; Kuenen, Budde and others have followed in his steps. Others have modified this radical view and concede the possibility that Jeremiah may have b

JEREMIAH 50:1 TO JEREMIAH 51:58. BABYLON. This long and monotonous prophecy, which is without order or logical development of ideas, is largely a compilation from the prophetic writings of Jeremiah and others (_cf., e.g.,_ Jeremiah 50:41 ff., Jeremiah 51:15). It presupposes the destruction of Jerusalem, apparently as a remote rather than a recent event. Its idea of Babylon is that of a cruel tyrant to be punished by Yahweh, not that of a Divinely commissioned agent of Yahweh's wrath against Israel, as Jeremiah teaches. We are not at liberty to make it contemporaneous with such exilic writings as Isaiah 13, 40-55, because

I HAVE LAID A SNARE FOR THEE— Cyrus took the city by surprise, entering it when the walls were intire, the city full of provisions, and the people in high spirits, to their utter consternation, by having drained the Euphrates. See Jeremiah 50:38....