Jeremiah 51:40

_I WILL BRING THEM DOWN LIKE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER, LIKE RAMS WITH HE GOATS._ _ I WILL BRING THEM DOWN LIKE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER, LIKE RAMS WITH HE GOATS._ No JFB commentary on this verse....

This is a comparison different from the former, when the Prophet said that they would be like lions, but as to roaring only. But he now shows how easy would that ruin be when it should please God to destroy the Babylonians. Then as to their cry, they were like lions; but as to the facility of their destruction, they were like lambs led to the slaughter. God does not mean here that they would be endued with so much gentleness as to give themselves up to a voluntary death; but he means, that however strong the Babylonians might have previously been, and however they might have threatened all other nations, they would then be women in courage, and be led to the slaughter as though they were lambs or rams. This is a comparison which occurs often in the prophets, for sacrifices were then daily made; and then the prophets considered the destruction of the ungodly as a kind of sacrifice; for as...

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...

LAMBS ... RAMS ... HE GOATS - i. e., all classes of the population (see Isaiah 34:6 note)....

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 ...

I WILL BRING THEM DOWN LIKE LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER,.... To the place of slaughter; who shall be able to make no more resistance than lambs. This explains what is meant by being made drunk, and sleeping a perpetual sleep, even destruction and death: LIKE RAMS WITH HE GOATS; denoting the promiscuous destruction of the prince and common people together....

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

_lambs … rams … he-goats_ Cp. Jeremiah 50:27; Isaiah 34:6....

B. The Complaint of Israel and the Reply of the Lord Jeremiah 51:34-40 TRANSLATION (34) Nebuchadnezzar has devoured us, has crushed us, has set us down like an empty vessel. Like a monster he has devoured us, filled his belly with my dainties, expelled us. (35) May the violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitress of Zion say. May my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say. (36) Therefore, thus says the LORD: Behold, I am about to plead your cause and execute your vengeance and I will dry up her seas and cause her fountains to fail. (37) And Babylon shall be heaps, a habitation of jackals, an astonishment and place over which one will whistle, without inhabitant. (38) They shall roar together like young lions, growl like lion's whelps. (39) When they become hot I will prepare a feast for them; I will make them drunken t