Jeremiah 51:19

He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by his understanding. HE HATH MADE THE EARTH BY HIS POWER ... WHEN HE UTTERETH HIS VOICE ... EVERY MAN IS BRUTISH BY HIS KNOWLEDGE ... THEY ARE VANITY ... THE PORTION OF JACOB IS NOT LIKE THEM ... - repeated from Jeremiah 10:12; except that "Israel" is not in the Hebrew of (though it is in ): ought, therefore, to be translated, 'He is the Former of all things, and (therefore) of the rod of His inheritance' - i:e., of the nation peculiarly His own. In...

Had the Prophet only said that idols were mere impostures and mockeries, it would have been indeed something; but this part of his teaching would have been cold and uninteresting, had he not, on the other hand, proclaimed the glory of the one and only true God. We ought, indeed, to know that idols are nothing, that men are most foolishly deceived, and are wholly infatuated, when they imagine that there is in them some divinity. But the main thing is, that the true God himself is brought before us, and that we are taught to direct all our thoughts to him. This, then, is what is now done by the Prophet; for after having exposed the folly of the heathens in worshipping idols, and having shown that the whole is nothing but deception and falsehood, he now says, _Not as they, _the fictitious gods, _is the portion of Jacob; _that is, the God who had revealed himself to the chosen people is very...

1-58 The particulars of this prophecy are dispersed and interwoven, and the same things left and returned to again. Babylon is abundant in treasures, yet neither her waters nor her wealth shall secure her. Destruction comes when they did not think of it. Wherever we are, in the greatest depths, at the greatest distances, we are to remember the Lord our God; and in the times of the greatest fears and hopes, it is most needful to remember the Lord. The feeling excited by Babylon's fall is the same with the New Testament Babylon, Revelation 18:9; Revelation 18:19. The ruin of all who support idolatry, infidelity, and superstition, is needful for the revival of true godliness; and the threatening prophecies of Scripture yield comfort in this view. The great seat of antichristian tyranny, idolatry, and su...

A transcript of Jeremiah 10:12....

EXPOSITION JEREMIAH 51:1 AGAINST THEM THAT DWELL IN THE MIDST OF THEM THAT RISE UP AGAINST ME. The Hebrew has _lēb-kāmai_, which is _Kasdim_, or _Chaldea, _written in the cypher called Athbash (see on Jeremiah 25:26); just as _Sheshach_ in Jeremiah 51:41 is equivalent to Babel. The question arises whether the prophet himself is responsible for this covert way of writing, or a scribe in later times (so Ewald). In favour of the former view it may be urged that Babylon and Chaldea receive symbolic names (though not in Athbash) in the connected chapter ...

THE PORTION OF JACOB [IS] NOT LIKE THEM; FOR HE [IS] THE FORMER OF ALL THINGS: AND [ISRAEL IS] THE ROD OF HIS INHERITANCE: THE LORD OF HOSTS [IS] HIS NAME. Jeremiah 10:16....

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

THE PORTION OF JACOB, &C. Note the _Alternation_ in Jeremiah 51:19, Not such as these is Jacob's Portion: (Deuteronomy 32:9; Psalms 16:5). For [the] Former of all things is He: And the Sceptre of his (Israel's) inheritance: The LORD of hosts is His Name (Deuteronomy 10:9)....

These _vv_. are taken almost _verbatim_from Jeremiah 10:12-16. The object of the insertion is to emphasize the powerlessness of Babylon's idols against Jehovah....