Jeremiah 51:5

For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the LORD of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel. ISRAEL HATH NOT BEEN FORSAKEN - as a widow [Hebrew, 'almaan (H488)]. Israel is not severed from her Husband, Yahweh (Isaiah 54:5), by a perpetual divorce. THOUGH THEIR LAND WAS FILLED WITH SIN - though the land of Israel has been filled with sin - i:e., with the punishment of their sin, devastation. But, as the Hebrew means for, or and therefore, not though, translate, 'and therefore their (the Chaldeans') land has been filled with (the penal consequences of) their sin (Grotius)....

The Prophet shows here the cause why God had resolved to treat the Babylonians with so much severity, even because he would be the avenger of his own people. He also obviates a doubt which might have disturbed weak minds, for he seemed to have forsaken his people when he suffered them to be driven into exile. As this was a kind of repudiation, as we have seen elsewhere, the Prophet says now, that _Israel had _not been _wholly widowed, nor Judah, by his God; _as though he had said, that the Jews and the Israelites were indeed, for a time, like widows, but this was not to be perpetual. For, as we have said, the divorce was temporary, when God so forsook his Temple and the city, that the miserable people was exposed to plunder. As long, then, as the will of their enemies prevailed, God seemed to have forsaken his people. It is of this widowhood that the Prophet now speaks; but he yet testif...

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 51:5. _FOR ISRAEL_ HATH _NOT_ BEEN _FORSAKEN_] God still continued his prophets among them; he had never cast them wholly off. Even in the midst of _wrath _- highly deserved and inflicted _punishment_, he has remembered _mercy_; and is now about to crown what he has done by restoring them to their own land. I conceive אשם _asham_, which we translate _sin_, as rather signifying _punishment_, which meaning it often has....

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 ...

FOR ISRAEL [HATH] NOT [BEEN] FORSAKEN, NOR JUDAH OF HIS GOD, OF THE LORD OF HOSTS,.... That is, not totally and finally; for though they might seem to be forsaken, when carried captive by their enemies, yet they were not in such sense as a woman is deprived of her husband when dead, and she is become a widow, as the word d used may signify; or when divorced from him; or as children are deprived of their parents, and become orphans; but so it was not with Israel; for thought they were under the frowns of Providence, and the resentment of God they had sinned against, yet the relation between them still subsisted; he was their covenant God and Father, their husband and protector, and who would vindicate them, and avenge them on their enemies: THOUGH THEIR LAND WAS FILLED WITH SIN AGAINST THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL; which was the reason why they were carried captive, and so seemed to be forsak...

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

ISRAEL... JUDAH. Now one People again. GOD. Hebrew. _Elohim._ App-4. THE LORD OF HOSTS. See note on Jeremiah 6:6, and 1 Samuel 1:3. SIN. Hebrew. _chata._ THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL. See note on Psalms 71:22....

_forsaken_ lit. _widowed_, cp. Isaiah 54:4. The word is masculine, contrary to the figure (e.g. Jeremiah 2:2) where Israel is the wife, and Jehovah the husband. _though their land, etc_.] i.e. in spite of the guilt of the people of Jehovah. The Heb. conjunction, however, is better rendered _for_, and "their land" understood to be Chaldaea. In that case we should (with Co.) transpose the two parts of the _v_....