Jeremiah 51:24

And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, saith the LORD. I WILL RENDER UNTO BABYLON ... ALL THEIR EVIL THAT THEY HAVE DONE. The detail of particulars (Jeremiah 51:20) is in order to express the indiscriminate slaughters perpetrated by Babylon on Zion, which, in just retribution, are all to befall herself (; ) IN YOUR SIGHT - addressed to the Jews....

The Prophet, after having reminded the Jews that all that they had suffered from the Babylonians had been justly inflicted on account of their sins, and that God had been the author of all their calamities, now subjoins, _I will render to Babylon and to the Chaldeans _what they have deserved. It may, however, appear strange at the first view, that God should here threaten the Babylonians; for if their services depended on his command, they seemed doubtless to have deserved praise rather than punishment; nay, we know what the Holy Spirit declares elsewhere, “I gave Egypt as a reward to my servant Nebuchadnezzar, because he has faithfully performed my work,” (Ezekiel 29:20) for Nebuchadnezzar had afflicted the Jews, therefore he obtained this, says Ezekiel, as his reward. It seems then an inconsistent thing when God declares that the Chaldeans deserved punishment because they had afflicte...

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...

Verse Jeremiah 51:24. _AND I WILL RENDER_] The ו _vau_ should be translated _but_, of which it has here the full power: "_But_ I will render unto Babylon....

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 ...

AND I WILL RENDER UNTO BABYLON, AND TO ALL THE INHABITANTS OF CHALDEA,.... Or, "but I will render" w, c. though I have made this use of Babylon, she shall not be spared, but receive her just recompense of reward not the city of Babylon only, but the whole land of Chaldea, and all the inhabitants of it: ALL THEIR EVIL THAT THEY HAVE DONE IN ZION, IN YOUR SIGHT, SAITH THE LORD; the sense is, that for all the evil the Chaldeans had done in Judea; the ravages they had made there, the blood they had shed, and the desolation they had made; and particularly for what they had done in Jerusalem, and especially in the temple, burning, spoiling, and profaning that, God would now righteously punish them, and retaliate all this evil on them; and which should be done publicly, before all the nations of the world, and particularly in the sight of God's own people: for this phrase, "in your sight", doe...

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

EVIL. Hebrew. _ra'a'._ App-44. SAITH THE LORD. [is] Jehovah's oracle....

Is it (_a_) Cyrus, as conqueror of Babylon, or (_b_) Babylon herself, that is addressed? Jeremiah 51:24 seems to support (_a_), but on the whole (_b_) is perhaps preferable. The future tenses can as well be rendered as presents, denoting what Babylon has hitherto been accustomed to do as the instrument of Jehovah. This view also harmonizes with Jeremiah 51:14 (while we omit 15 19; see note there), as well as with Jeremiah 51:25 ff., where Babylon is certainly the subject....