Call to Commitment

 

Babylon mound

Chapter 51

 

The Lord orders the righteous fall of Babylon

 1.      Thus says the LORD: "Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, Against those who dwell in Leb Kamai, A destroying wind. 

2.      And I will send winnowers to Babylon, Who shall winnow her and empty her land. For in the day of doom They shall be against her all around. 

 3.      Against her let the archer bend his bow, And lift himself up against her in his armor. Do not spare her young men; Utterly destroy all her army. 

 4.      Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, And those thrust through in her streets. 

The judgment of Babylon is given major attention at the end of this book of Jeremiah, more than any other foreign nation. Babylon plays a major role, throughout the book, as the conqueror of Judah and as their captors. It was a mighty empire, the head of gold in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a great image, interpreted by Daniel, to be the prominent, over the three empires that follow.

 The Omniscient knows the history of this city and, beyond its physical majesty in Jeremiah’s day, is concerned with its spiritual roots. The spirit in its roots carries on down through the centuries, even after physical Babylon is in ruins, and survives nearly to the end of time. The Babylon of the book of Revelation is certainly not literal Babylon, but a city which continues in the spirit of ancient Babylon, representing its idolatrous religion, its economy, and its politics. This is the story behind these two lengthy chapters in Jeremiah.

 The city was founded by Nimrod, who also built Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire (Ge.10:10-11). Nimrod was grandson of Ham and great-grandson of Noah. Being the builder of cities, which became so prominent in the earth, we can understand why he was given special attention, above his brothers, in Genesis 10:7-8. “He was a mighty one in the earth,” well-known in the primitive world after the flood, and mentioned in an ancient proverb: “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” (Ge.10:9).

 Matthew Henry comments that “the first builders of cities, both in the old world, and in the new world here, were not men of the best character and reputation: tents served God’s subjects to dwell in; cities were first built by those that were rebels.” Nimrod’s position before the Lord, was not a favorable one, but that of a renowned rebel, who defied God. He was a hunter of men, not animals, meaning that he persecuted them to gain rulership over them. He set up his own government and his own idolatrous religion and so, Babylon became the Mother of Harlots (Rv.17:5). Nimrod, in some way, was involved in the construction of Babel, later called Babylon. Even from its inception, it was a center of humanistic ideology (Ge.11:1-7): “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves.” This ideology has come into play in our day: “Man, you can do anything that you set your heart on. Dream big dreams!” That is the language of humanism and of Antichrist. 

 We learned in the last chapter that the Persians diverted the Euphrates River, which ran along the wall of the city, and came into Babylon under the walls. Their “day of doom” had arrived. King Belshazzar was still holding his drunken feast, saw the writing on the wall, and called in Daniel, who told of his fate, while the Persians took over the city. They took possession of the entire country, to the extent that the captive Jews did not have to move to Persia, from their homes in Chaldea, before returning to their own land.

 The famous Persian archers came in to destroy the Chaldean army and like a mighty wind, the conquering army penetrated Leb Kamai, that is, the heart of the people who rose up against the Lord. They reap the land and empty it of its produce. The mighty Chaldean army is destroyed in Babylon and throughout the land. 

The Lord’s people stand to demonstrate His righteousness 

5.      For Israel is not forsaken, nor Judah, By his God, the LORD of hosts, Though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel." 

 6.      Flee from the midst of Babylon, And every one save his life! Do not be cut off in her iniquity, For this is the time of the LORD's vengeance; He shall recompense her. 

 7.      Babylon was a golden cup in the LORD's hand, That made all the earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; Therefore the nations are deranged. 

 8.      Babylon has suddenly fallen and been destroyed. Wail for her! Take balm for her pain; Perhaps she may be healed. 

 9.      We would have healed Babylon, But she is not healed. Forsake her, and let us go everyone to his own country; For her judgment reaches to heaven and is lifted up to the skies. 

 10.  The LORD has revealed our righteousness. Come and let us declare in Zion the work of the LORD our God. 

The Lord is at work on behalf of His people, even those of the northern kingdom, long ago conquered by the Assyrians, along with Judah. The Lord of armies now engages the Persians to perform His will, as He begins to liberate His people.  It is emblematic of his perpetual care for the entire race to the end of time. The prophecy references, particularly, the problem of Israel’s sin, which the Holy One of Israel must remedy, to vindicate His righteousness.

 He calls them to flee Babylon, to avoid its judgment, the vengeance of the Lord, and save their lives. We see that the spirit of Babylon survives into the book of Revelation, still carrying the same characteristics of physical Babylon. It is a cup, under the sovereignty of God, some drinking to their destruction, others intoxicated with her pleasures, all deranged under the empire’s deception (Rv.18:3). What takes decades in building, is destroyed suddenly.

 But sin has reached the brim of the cup of God’s patience, the sickness has persisted and all remedies have been exhausted. The time has come to abandon the mighty empire to its fate. Israel must return to the city of Zion, to praise and declare His works. God’s righteousness is revealed through the people under His government, demonstrating it superiority to all other nations under the rule of men and devils.

 

The invasion of the Medes and Persians

 11.  Make the arrows bright! Gather the shields! The LORD has raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes. For His plan is against Babylon to destroy it, Because it is the vengeance of the LORD, The vengeance for His temple. 

 12.  Set up the standard on the walls of Babylon; Make the guard strong, Set up the watchmen, Prepare the ambushes. For the LORD has both devised and done What He spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon. 

 13.  O you who dwell by many waters, Abundant in treasures, Your end has come, The measure of your covetousness. 

 14.  The LORD of hosts has sworn by Himself: "Surely I will fill you with men, as with locusts, And they shall lift up a shout against you." 

 15.  He has made the earth by His power; He has established the world by His wisdom, And stretched out the heaven by His understanding. 

 16.  When He utters His voice—There is a multitude of waters in the heavens: "He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; He makes lightnings for the rain; He brings the wind out of His treasuries." 

 17.  Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge; Every metalsmith is put to shame by the carved image; For his molded image is falsehood, And there is no breath in them. 

 18.  They are futile, a work of errors; In the time of their punishment they shall perish. 

 The Lord enhances the armory and the spirit of the Medes towards the destruction of Babylon. Over all His purposes, He is avenging His temple. All the city’s defense will fail and God declares its end. The enemy will fill the city with soldiers.

The Scripture declares the smallness of man’s greatest power on earth, compared to the infinite greatness of the One Whom the universe cannot contain. How can Babylon defend against the Creator, the Almighty in power and the Omniscient in wisdom? By His combined power and wisdom, He has created the air and the water cycle… from the vapor or condensation to the electrical charges, that cause lightning, followed by the voice of thunder.

 Idolatry is the vain work of the dull-hearted, the insanity of fools. The metalsmith involved in its creation, skilled in his workmanship, but idiotically ignorant, manifested by the importance he gives to a breathless image. That is the best he can do, in his attempt to match the creative might and knowledge of God. The Lord will not tolerate what He calls “falsehood… futile, a work of errors”.

 

A further dissertation concerning Babylon’s fall

19.  The Portion of Jacob is not like them, For He is the Maker of all things; And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance. The LORD of hosts is His name. 

 20.  "You are My battle-ax and weapons of war: For with you I will break the nation in pieces; With you I will destroy kingdoms; 

 21.  With you I will break in pieces the horse and its rider; With you I will break in pieces the chariot and its rider; 

 22.  With you also I will break in pieces man and woman; With you I will break in pieces old and young; With you I will break in pieces the young man and the maiden; 

 23.  With you also I will break in pieces the shepherd and his flock; With you I will break in pieces the farmer and his yoke of oxen; And with you I will break in pieces governors and rulers. 

 24.  "And I will repay Babylon And all the inhabitants of Chaldea For all the evil they have done In Zion in your sight," says the LORD. 

 25.  "Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, Who destroys all the earth," says the LORD. "And I will stretch out My hand against you, Roll you down from the rocks, And make you a burnt mountain. 

 26.  They shall not take from you a stone for a corner Nor a stone for a foundation, But you shall be desolate forever," says the LORD. 

 27.  Set up a banner in the land, Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations against her, Call the kingdoms together against her: Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a general against her; Cause the horses to come up like the bristling locusts. 

 28.  Prepare against her the nations, With the kings of the Medes, Its governors and all its rulers, All the land of his dominion. 

 29.  And the land will tremble and sorrow; For every purpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon, To make the land of Babylon a desolation without inhabitant. 

 30.  The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting, They have remained in their strongholds; Their might has failed, They became like women; They have burned her dwelling places, The bars of her gate are broken. 

 31.  One runner will run to meet another, And one messenger to meet another, To show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on all sides; 

 32.  The passages are blocked, The reeds they have burned with fire, And the men of war are terrified. 

 33.  For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor When it is time to thresh her; Yet a little while And the time of her harvest will come." 

 34.  "Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon Has devoured me, he has crushed me; He has made me an empty vessel, He has swallowed me up like a monster; He has filled his stomach with my delicacies, He has spit me out. 

 35.  Let the violence done to me and my flesh be upon Babylon," The inhabitant of Zion will say; "And my blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea!" Jerusalem will say. 

 36.  Therefore thus says the LORD: "Behold, I will plead your case and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea and make her springs dry. 

 37.  Babylon shall become a heap, A dwelling place for jackals, An astonishment and a hissing, Without an inhabitant. 

 38.  They shall roar together like lions, They shall growl like lions' whelps. 

 39.  In their excitement I will prepare their feasts; I will make them drunk, That they may rejoice, And sleep a perpetual sleep And not awake," says the LORD. 

 40.  "I will bring them down Like lambs to the slaughter, Like rams with male goats. 

 41.  "Oh, how Sheshach is taken! Oh, how the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become desolate among the nations! 

 42.  The sea has come up over Babylon; She is covered with the multitude of its waves. 

 43.  Her cities are a desolation, A dry land and a wilderness, A land where no one dwells, Through which no son of man passes. 

 44.  I will punish Bel in Babylon, And I will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed; And the nations shall not stream to him anymore. Yes, the wall of Babylon shall fall. 

 45.  "My people, go out of the midst of her! And let everyone deliver himself from the fierce anger of the LORD. 

 46.  And lest your heart faint, And you fear for the rumor that will be heard in the land (A rumor will come one year, And after that, in another year A rumor will come, And violence in the land, Ruler against ruler), 

 47.  Therefore behold, the days are coming That I will bring judgment on the carved images of Babylon; Her whole land shall be ashamed, And all her slain shall fall in her midst. 

 48.  Then the heavens and the earth and all that is in them Shall sing joyously over Babylon; For the plunderers shall come to her from the north," says the LORD. 

 49.  As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, So at Babylon the slain of all the earth shall fall. 

 50.  You who have escaped the sword, Get away! Do not stand still! Remember the LORD afar off, And let Jerusalem come to your mind. 

 51.  We are ashamed because we have heard reproach. Shame has covered our faces, For strangers have come into the sanctuaries of the LORD's house.

 52.  "Therefore behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "That I will bring judgment on her carved images, And throughout all her land the wounded shall groan. 

 53.  Though Babylon were to mount up to heaven, And though she were to fortify the height of her strength, Yet from Me plunderers would come to her," says the LORD. 

 54.  The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, And great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans, 

 55.  Because the LORD is plundering Babylon And silencing her loud voice, Though her waves roar like great waters, And the noise of their voice is uttered, 

 56.  Because the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon, And her mighty men are taken. Every one of their bows is broken; For the LORD is the God of recompense, He will surely repay. 

 57.  "And I will make drunk Her princes and wise men, Her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men. And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep And not awake," says the King, Whose name is the LORD of hosts. 

 58.  Thus says the LORD of hosts: "The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, And her high gates shall be burned with fire; The people will labor in vain, And the nations, because of the fire; And they shall be weary." 

The broad walls shall fall

 Commentators believe that the Lord speaks to Babylon in verses 20-23. Omit the future tense; this punishment has been and continues to be executed as Jeremiah writes. The Lord of armies ordains Babylon as His battle-ax, cavalry, and other war weapons to break the nations. He will come in this way upon a godless citizenry and its sustenance through husbandry and agriculture. Through Babylon he broke the leadership of the nations.

 The oppressor must pay for his own sins. The battle-ax that God has used to punish the nations, will itself be punished. Matthew Henry says: “The rod will itself be thrown into the fire at last. Nor can any think it will exempt them from God’s judgments that they have been instrumental in executing his judgments on others.”

 Its great city walls will be burnt and fall under God’s opposition. No one will ever start its reconstruction, after nations, particularly the Medes and Persians, unite to destroy the city. The judgment of the Lord will not stop until Babylon is desolate. While Belshazzar sits at his banqueting table, while messengers run in and out with reports of enemy soldiers invading Babylon and taking the city, the Persians blocked the gates to the boats on the river, as well as any other means of escape.

 It is “harvest time” for Babylon, like a threshing floor, with its seeds being trampled. The Jews review the conquest of Nebuchadnezzar crushing them, emptying its goods and “swallowing”, in other words, taking total possession of them. Their cry for revenge for the Babylonian’s cruelty is now heard and their blood is being avenged. You will see in any photo, taken in this century or the last, the heap that Babylon is, from Jeremiah’s time to the present.

 Literally, wild animals made the ruins their lair and, I would suggest, that this prophecy drew them, by different species and great numbers. Particularly, the text in various places, mentions the jackal. Similarly, the call of the angel to the feast of carnivorous birds will draw them to Armageddon.

 The king and his nobility are caught reveling in a drunken feast, to which God brings them, and which will end in death. They willingly respond and come to the wine tables, as lambs, rams, and goats to the slaughter. The Lord calls Babylon, symbolically, Sheschach, after its god, Shach, taking victory over the spiritual forces that controlled the city. The demonic force behind the idol, Bel, is punished, long before the final judgment of all demonic powers. He takes from him all that he has gained. It was what the demons in Gadarea wanted to avoid, when they cried, “Jesus, You Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?" (Mt.8;29). God strips from Babylon the praise of the whole earth. Judgment has come up like the waves of the sea and covered the city. No one wants to live near this once beautiful and decorated city or even pass through the land. They avert, what once attracted them, demonstrating the fleeting pleasures of the world.

 Several times, from physical to spiritual Babylon, the Lord orders His people out from among it. Separation saves them from destruction, just as those “called out of the world,” that is, the church, are saved from judgment upon it. To encourage the Jews to make their exodus, rumors go out, concerning the approach of Cyrus; first, they hear that he is preparing for war against Babylon and then, that he has conquered Assyria.

 The most important war, behind the scenes, is the spiritual war against demonic idols. Babylon’s devotion will become its shame and death. There will be great rejoicing and singing from those on the earth, who have suffered from physical Babylon and from those in heaven, who have watched spiritual enemies fall. It will happen to the spiritual harlot, Babylon, when it is destroyed forever, both physically and spiritually. Let us read of her demise in Revelation 18: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul sprit and a cage for every unclean and hated bird!” (Rv.18:2). “I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” (Rv.18:4). “Rejoice over her, o heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!” (Rv.18:20).  

Perpetual desolation

As all Judah fell and died in defense of Jerusalem, so the Chaldeans fall and die at Babylon. The Jews, who escape the slaughter from the Persians, should flee from the city. It is the time to set their mind on their God and their mother city of Jerusalem. This is a call to repentance and returning to Jehovah. It is time to think of the shame of abandoning the temple to foreign powers.