Jeremiah 51:53

Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the LORD. THOUGH BABYLON SHOULD MOUNT UP TO HEAVEN - (cf. as to Edom; , "Though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down"). THOUGH ... YET FROM ME SHALL SPOILERS COME UNTO HER, SAITH THE LORD. We are not to measure God's power by what seems to our perceptions natural or probable....

The Prophet again teaches us, that however impregnable Babylon might be, there was yet no reason to fear but that God would be its judge; for it is by no means right to measure his power by our thoughts. And nothing does more hinder or prevent us from embracing the promises of God, than to think of what may be done naturally, or of what is probable. When, therefore, we thus consult our own thoughts, we exclude the power of God, which is superior to all the means that may be used. Hence the Prophet says here, that though Babylon ascended above the heavens, and in the height fortified strength for itself, _yet from me, _he says, _shall come wasters to it _(107) There is to be understood here a contrast between God and men; for if there be a contest between men, they fight one with another; but the way of God is different, for he can thunder from heaven, and thus lay prostrate the highest m...

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 53. _THOUGH BABYLON SHOULD MOUNT UP TO HEAVEN_] Though it were fortified even to the skies, it shall fall by the enemies that I will send against it....

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 ...

THOUGH BABYLON SHOULD MOUNT UP TO HEAVEN,.... Could the walls of it, which were very high, two hundred cubits high, as Herodotus p says, be carried up as high as heaven; or the towers of it, which were exceeding high, ten foot higher than the walls, as Curtius q says, likewise be raised to the same height: AND THOUGH SHE SHOULD FORTIFY THE HEIGHT OF HER STRENGTH: make her walls and towers as strong as they were high; unless this is to be understood particularly of the temple of Bel, in which was a solid tower, in length and thickness about six hundred and sixty feet; and upon this tower another; and so on to the number of eight, towers; and in the last of them a large temple, as the above historian r relates: but if these towers could have been piled up in a greater number, even so as to reach to heaven, it would have availed nothing against the God of heaven, to secure from his vengean...

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

MOUNT UP, &C. Compare Isaiah 14:12....

Cp. Isaiah 14:12-14. _fortify_ lit. _cut off_, i.e. render inaccessible. _the height of her strength_ the height of her walls....