Jeremiah 51:36

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will plead thy cause, and take vengeance for thee; and I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry. THUS SAITH THE LORD; BEHOLD, I WILL PLEAD THY CAUSE - (, "Their Redeemer is strong, The Lord of hosts is His name: He shall throughly plead their cause"). SEA - the Euphrates (; ). Compare , "see" - i:e., the Nile ()....

Then follows a clearer explanation, when God promises that he would be the avenger of his chosen people, and that whatever the Jews had suffered would be rendered to Babylon: _Therefore thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will litigate thy quarrel. _By this passage we are taught to present our complaints to God, if we wish him to undertake our cause; for when we are silent, he will in his turn rest, as he considers us unworthy of being helped. But if we cry to him, he will doubtless hear us. Then we must remember the order of things, for the Prophet says on the one hand, _Let Jerusalem cry, let the daughter of Sion say; _and on the other hand he says, Therefore God will come and hear the cry of his people. He says, first, _Behold, I will plead thy cause, _and then, I _will vindicate or _avenge _thy vengeance. _These are hard words to Latin ears; but yet they contain more force and power than i...

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 51:36. _I WILL DRY UP HER SEA_] Exhaust all her treasures....

HER SEA - Probably the great lake dug by Nitocris to receive the waters of the Euphrates. HER SPRINGS - Her reservoir; the whole system of canals dug Jeremiah 51:13. The wealth of Babylonia depended upon irrigation....

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 ...

THEREFORE THUS SAITH THE LORD,.... In answer to the prayers of the inhabitants of Zion and Jerusalem, imprecating divine vengeance on Babylon: BEHOLD, I WILL PLEAD THY CAUSE, AND TAKE VENGEANCE FOR THEE; not by words only, but by deeds, inflicting punishment on their enemies: AND I WILL DRY UP HER SEA; the confluence of waters about Babylon; the river Euphrates, the channel of which was drained by Cyrus, by which means he took the city; and this may figuratively design the abundance of riches and affluence of good things in Babylon, which should now be taken from her: AND MAKE HER SPRINGS DRY; deprive her of all the necessaries of life; and stop up all the avenues by which she was supplied with them; and cut off all communication of good things to her....

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

DRY UP. Referring to the act of Cyrus (by Gobryas). Compare Jeremiah 51:31, above. SEA. the river Euphrates. So called from its breadth....