Jeremiah 51:43

Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby. HER CITES - the cities her dependencies. So "Jerusalem and the cities thereof" (). Or the "cities" are the inner and outer cities, the two parts into which Babylon was divided by the Euphrates (Grotius)....

He repeats what he had previously said, but we have before reminded you why he speaks so largely on a subject in itself not obscure. For he might have comprehended in a few words all that he had said in the last chapter and also in this; but it was difficult to convince men of what he taught — it was therefore necessary to dwell at large on the subject. He says now that the _cities _of Babylon, that is, of that monarchy, would _become a desolation. _He seems to have hitherto directed his threatenings against the city itself; but now he declares that God’s vengeance would extend to all the cities under the power of the Chaldean nation; and he speaks at large of their desolation, for he says that it would be a _land of desert, a land of drought, _or of filthiness, so that _no one would dwell in it. _And though he uses the singular number and repeats it, yet he refers to cities, _Pass throu...

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 WILDERNESS - Or, a desert of sand. A LAND WHEREIN - Rather, “a land - no man shall dwell in them (i. e., its cities), and no human being shall pass through them.”...

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 ...

HER CITIES ARE A DESOLATION, A DRY LAND, AND A WILDERNESS,.... Which some understand of Babylon itself, divided into two parts by the river Euphrates running in the midst of it, called by Berosus f the inward and outward cities; though rather these design the rest of the cities in Chaldea, of which Babylon was the metropolis, the mother city, and the other her daughters, which should share the same fate with herself; be demolished, and the ground on which they stood become a dry, barren, uncultivated, and desert land: A LAND WHEREIN NO MAN DWELLETH, NEITHER DOTH [ANY] SON OF MAN PASS THEREBY; having neither inhabitant nor traveller; see Jeremiah 50:12. f Apud Joseph. contr. Apion, l. 1. c. 19....

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

NO MAN DWELLETH. Still future. MAN. Hebrew. _'adam._ App-14....

_a desert_ Cp. Jeremiah 50:12; Jeremiah 50:40....