{"commentary":{"id":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamieson-Fausset-Brown_Bible_Commentary","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"db3d4c8b3c1f32ef9d1430a57392e02bda3a17aac1f9bbe398461de021a3cb13","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":66,"totalNumberOfChapters":1187,"totalNumberOfVerses":17056,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"JER","commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","name":"Jeremiah","commonName":"Jeremiah","introduction":"JEREMIAH, son of Hilkiah, one of the ordinary priests, dwelling in Anathoth of Benjamin (Jer 1:1), not the Hilkiah the high priest who discovered the book of the law (Kg2 22:8); had he been the same, the designation would have been \"the priest\", or \"the high priest\". Besides, his residence at Anathoth shows that he belonged to the line of Abiathar, who was deposed from the high priesthood by Solomon (Kg1 2:26-35), after which the office remained in Zadok's line. Mention occurs of Jeremiah in Ch2 35:25; Ch2 36:12, Ch2 36:21. In 629 B.C. the thirteenth year of King Josiah, while still very young (Jer 1:5), he received his prophetical call in Anathoth (Jer 1:2); and along with Hilkiah the high priest, the prophetess Huldah, and the prophet Zephaniah, he helped forward Josiah's reformation of religion (2Ki. 23:1-25). Among the first charges to him was one that he should go and proclaim God's message in Jerusalem (Jer 2:2). He also took an official tour to announce to the cities of Judah the contents of the book of the law, found in the temple (Jer 11:6) five years after his call to prophesy. On his return to Anathoth, his countrymen, offended at his reproofs, conspired against his life. To escape their persecutions (Jer 11:21), as well as those of his own family (Jer 12:6), he left Anathoth and resided at Jerusalem. During the eighteen years of his ministry in Josiah's reign he was unmolested; also during the three months of Jehoahaz or Shallum's reign (Jer 22:10-12). On Jehoiakim's accession it became evident that Josiah's reformation effected nothing more than a forcible repression of idolatry and the establishment of the worship of God outwardly. The priests, prophets, and people then brought Jeremiah before the authorities, urging that he should be put to death for his denunciations of evil against the city (Jer 26:8-11). The princes, however, especially Ahikam, interposed in his behalf (Jer 26:16, Jer 26:24), but he was put under restraint, or at least deemed it prudent not to appear in public. In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (606 B.C.), he was commanded to write the predictions given orally through him, and to read them to the people. Being \"shut up\", he could not himself go into the house of the Lord (Jer 36:5); he therefore deputed Baruch, his amanuensis, to read them in public on the fast day. The princes thereupon advised Baruch and Jeremiah to hide themselves from the king's displeasure. Meanwhile they read the roll to the king, who was so enraged that he cut it with a knife and threw it into the fire; at the same time giving orders for the apprehension of the prophet and Baruch. They escaped Jehoiakim's violence, which had already killed the prophet Urijah (Jer 26:20-23). Baruch rewrote the words, with additional prophecies, on another roll (Jer 36:27-32). In the three months' reign of Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, he prophesied the carrying away of the king and the queen mother (Jer 13:18; Jer 22:24-30; compare Kg2 24:12). In this reign he was imprisoned for a short time by Pashur (Jer. 20:1-18), the chief governor of the Lord's house; but at Zedekiah's accession he was free (Jer 37:4), for the king sent to him to \"inquire of the Lord\" when Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem (Jer 21:1-3, &c.; Jer 37:3). The Chaldeans drew off on hearing of the approach of Pharaoh's army (Jer 37:5); but Jeremiah warned the king that the Egyptians would forsake him, and the Chaldeans return and burn up the city (Jer 37:7-8). The princes, irritated at this, made the departure of Jeremiah from the city during the respite a pretext for imprisoning him, on the allegation of his deserting to the Chaldeans (Jer 38:1-5). He would have been left to perish in the dungeon of Malchiah, but for the intercession of Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian (Jer 38:6-13). Zedekiah, though he consulted Jeremiah in secret yet was induced by his princes to leave Jeremiah in prison (Jer 38:14-28) until Jerusalem was taken. Nebuchadnezzar directed his captain, Nebuzar-adan, to give him his freedom, so that he might either go to Babylon or stay with the remnant of his people as he chose. As a true patriot, notwithstanding the forty and a half years during which his country had repaid his services with neglect and persecution, he stayed with Gedaliah, the ruler appointed by Nebuchadnezzar over Judea (Jer 40:6). After the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael, Johanan, the recognized ruler of the people, in fear of the Chaldeans avenging the murder of Gedaliah, fled with the people to Egypt, and forced Jeremiah and Baruch to accompany him, in spite of the prophet's warning that the people should perish if they went to Egypt, but be preserved by remaining in their land (Jer. 41:1-43:13). At Tahpanhes, a boundary city on the Tanitic or Pelustan branch of the Nile, he prophesied the overthrow of Egypt (Jer 43:8-13). Tradition says he died in Egypt. According to the PSEUDO-EPIPHANIUS, he was stoned at TaphnÃ&brvbr or Tahpanhes. The Jews so venerated him that they believed he would rise from the dead and be the forerunner of Messiah (Mat 16:14).\n\nHAVERNICK observes that the combination of features in Jeremiah's character proves his divine mission; mild, timid, and susceptible of melancholy, yet intrepid in the discharge of his prophetic functions, not sparing the prince any more than the meanest of his subjects--the Spirit of prophecy controlling his natural temper and qualifying him for his hazardous undertaking, without doing violence to his individuality. Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Daniel, and Ezekiel were his contemporaries. The last forms a good contrast to Jeremiah, the Spirit in his case acting on a temperament as strongly marked by firmness as Jeremiah's was by shrinking and delicate sensitiveness. Ezekiel views the nation's sins as opposed to righteousness--Jeremiah, as productive of misery; the former takes the objective, the latter the subjective, view of the evils of the times. Jeremiah's style corresponds to his character: he is peculiarly marked by pathos, and sympathy with the wretched; his Lamentations illustrate this; the whole series of elegies has but one object--to express sorrow for his fallen country; yet the lights and images in which he presents this are so many, that the reader, so far from feeling it monotonous, is charmed with the variety of the plaintive strains throughout. The language is marked by AramÃ&brvbrisms, which probably was the ground of JEROME'S charge that the style is \"rustic\". LOWTH denies the charge and considers him in portions not inferior to Isaiah. His heaping of phrase on phrase, the repetition of stereotyped forms--and these often three times--are due to his affected feelings and to his desire to intensify the expression of them; he is at times more concise, energetic, and sublime, especially against foreign nations, and in the rhythmical parts.\n\nThe principle of the arrangement of his prophecies is hard to ascertain. The order of kings was--Josiah (under whom he prophesied eighteen years), Jehoahaz (three months), Jehoiakim (eleven years), Jeconiah (three months), Zedekiah (eleven years). But his prophecies under Josiah (the first through twentieth chapters) are immediately followed by a portion under Zedekiah (the twenty-first chapter). Again, Jer 24:8-10, as to Zedekiah, comes in the midst of the section as to Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jeconiah (the twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fifth chapters, &c.) So the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth chapters as to Jehoiakim, follow the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, thirty-third, thirty-fourth chapters, as to Zedekiah; and the forty-fifth chapter, dated the fourth year of Jehoiakim, comes after predictions as to the Jews who fled to Egypt after the overthrow of Jerusalem. EWALD thinks the present arrangement substantially Jeremiah's own; the various portions are prefaced by the same formula, \"The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord\" (Jer 7:1; Jer 11:1; Jer 18:1; Jer 21:1; Jer 25:1; Jer 30:1; Jer 32:1; Jer 34:1, Jer 34:8; Jer 35:1; Jer 40:1; Jer 44:1; compare Jer 14:1; Jer 46:1; Jer 47:1; Jer 49:34). Notes of time mark other divisions more or less historical (Jer 26:1; Jer 27:1; Jer 36:1; Jer 37:1). Two other portions are distinct of themselves (Jer 29:1; Jer 45:1). The second chapter has the shorter introduction which marks the beginning of a strophe; the third chapter seems imperfect, having as the introduction merely \"saying\" (Jer 3:1, Hebrew). Thus in the poetical parts, there are twenty-three sections divided into strophes of from seven to nine verses, marked some way thus, \"The Lord said also unto me\". They form five books: I. The Introduction, first chapter II. Reproofs of the Jews, the second through twenty-fourth chapters, made up of seven sections: (1) the second chapter (2) the third through sixth chapters; (3) the seventh through tenth chapters; (4) the eleventh through thirteenth chapters; (5) the fourteenth through seventeenth chapters; (6) the seventeenth through nineteenth and twentieth chapters; (7) the twenty-first through twenty-fourth chapters. III. Review of all nations in two sections: the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth through forty-ninth chapters, with a historical appendix of three sections, (1) the twenty-sixth chapter; (2) the twenty-seventh chapter; (3) the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters. IV. Two sections picturing the hopes of brighter times, (1) the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters; (2) the thirty-second and thirty-third chapters; and an historical appendix in three sections: (1) Jer 34:1-7; (2) Jer 34:8-22; (3) Jer. 35:1-19. V. The conclusion, in two sections: (1) Jer 36:2; (2) Jer 45:1-5. Subsequently, in Egypt, he added Jer 46:13-26 to the previous prophecy as to Egypt; also the three sections, the thirty-seventh through thirty-ninth chapters; fortieth through forty-third chapters; and forty-fourth chapter. The fifty-second chapter was probably (see Jer 51:64) an appendix from a later hand, taken from Kg2 24:18, &c.; Kg2 25:30. The prophecies against the several foreign nations stand in a different order in the Hebrew from that of the Septuagint; also the prophecies against them in the Hebrew (the forty-sixth through fifty-first chapters) are in the Septuagint placed after Jer 25:14, forming the twenty-sixth and thirty-first chapters; the remainder of the twenty-fifth chapter of the Hebrew is the thirty-second chapter of the Septuagint. Some passages in the Hebrew (Jer 27:19-22; Jer 33:14-26; Jer 39:4-14 Jer 48:45-47) are not found in the Septuagint; the Greek translators must have had a different recension before them; probably an earlier one. The Hebrew is probably the latest and fullest edition from Jeremiah's own hand. See on Jer 25:13. The canonicity of his prophecies is established by quotations of them in the New Testament (see Mat 2:17; Mat 16:14; Heb 8:8-12; on Mat 27:9, see on Introduction to Zechariah); also by the testimony of Ecclesiasticus 49:7, which quotes Jer 1:10; of PHILO, who quotes his word as an \"oracle\"; and of the list of canonical books in MELITO, ORIGEN, JEROME, and the Talmud. \n\n\n\nNext: Jeremiah Chapter 1\n\n","order":24,"numberOfChapters":52,"sha256":"c78e13c74a2800611f22cb60aa103f8a8343344fc49d4e0043f00d5c7e483f21","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":52,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/52.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":52},"totalNumberOfVerses":1164},"chapter":{"number":50,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["Declare . . . among . . . nations--who would rejoice at the fall of Babylon their oppressor. \n\nstandard--to indicate the place of meeting to the nations where they were to hear the good news of Babylon's fall [ROSENMULLER]; or, the signal to summon the nations together against Babylon (Jer 51:12, Jer 51:27), [MAURER]. \n\nBel--the tutelary god of Babylon; the same idol as the PhÅ“nician Baal, that is, lord, the sun (Isa 46:1). \n\nconfounded--because unable to defend the city under their protection. \n\nMerodach--another Babylonian idol; meaning in Syria \"little lord\"; from which Merodach-baladan took his name.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["a nation--the Medes, north of Babylon (Jer 51:48). The devastation of Babylon here foretold includes not only that by Cyrus, but also that more utter one by Darius, who took Babylon by artifice when it had revolted from Persia, and mercilessly slaughtered the inhabitants, hanging four thousand of the nobles; also the final desertion of Babylon, owing to Seleucia having been built close by under Seleucus Nicanor.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["Fulfilled only in part when some few of the ten tribes of \"Israel\" joined Judah in a \"covenant\" with God, at the restoration of Judah to its land (Neh 9:38; Neh 10:29). The full event is yet to come (Jer 31:9; Hos 1:11; Zac 12:10). \n\nweeping--with joy at their restoration beyond all hope; and with sorrow at the remembrance of their sins and sufferings (Ezr 3:12-13; Psa 126:5-6). \n\nseek . . . Lord-- (Hos 3:5).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["thitherward--rather, \"hitherward,\" Jeremiah's prophetical standpoint being at Zion. \"Faces hitherward\" implies their steadfastness of purpose not to be turned aside by any difficulties on the way. \n\nperpetual covenant--in contrast to the old covenant \"which they brake\" (Jer 31:31, &c.; Jer 32:40). They shall return to their God first, then to their own land.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["(Isa 53:6). \n\non the mountains--whereon they sacrificed to idols (Jer 2:20; Jer 3:6, Jer 3:23). \n\nresting-place--for the \"sheep,\" continuing the image; Jehovah is the resting-place of His sheep (Mat 11:28). They rest in His \"bosom\" (Isa 40:11). Also His temple at Zion, their \"rest,\" because it is His (Psa 132:8, Psa 132:14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["devoured-- (Psa 79:7). \"Found them\" implies that they were exposed to the attacks of those whoever happened to meet them. \n\nadversaries said--for instance, Nebuzara-dan (Jer 40:2-3; compare Zac 11:5). The Gentiles acknowledged some supreme divinity. The Jews' guilt was so palpable that they were condemned even in the judgment of heathens. Some knowledge of God's peculiar relation to Judea reached its heathen invaders from the prophets (Jer 2:3; Dan 9:16); hence the strong language they use of Jehovah here, not as worshippers of Him themselves, but as believing Him to be the tutelary God of Judah (\"the hope of their fathers,\" Psa 22:4; they do not say our hope), as each country was thought to have its local god, whose power extended no farther. \n\nhabitation-- (Psa 90:1; Psa 91:1). Alluding to the tabernacle, or, as in Eze 34:14, \"fold,\" which carries out the image in Jer 50:6, \"resting-place\" of the \"sheep.\" But it can only mean \"habitation\" (Jer 31:23), which confirms English Version here. \n\nhope of their fathers--This especially condemned the Jews that their apostasy was from that God whose faithfulness their fathers had experienced. At the same time these \"adversaries\" unconsciously use language which corrects their own notions. The covenant with the Jews' \"fathers\" is not utterly set aside by their sin, as their adversaries thought; there is still \"a habitation\" or refuge for them with the God of their fathers.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":8,"content":["(Jer 51:6, Jer 51:45; Isa 48:20; Zac 2:6-7; Rev 18:4). Immediately avail yourselves of the opportunity of escape. \n\nbe as . . . he-goats before . . . flocks--Let each try to be foremost in returning, animating the weak, as he-goats lead the flock; such were the companions of Ezra (Ezr 1:5-6).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":9,"content":["from thence--that is, from the north country. \n\nexpert--literally, \"prosperous.\" Besides \"might,\" \"expertness\" is needed, that an arrow may do execution. The Margin has a different Hebrew reading; \"destroying,\" literally, \"bereaving, childless-making\" (Jer 15:7). The Septuagint and Syriac support English Version. \n\nIn vain--without killing him at whom it was aimed (Sa2 1:22).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["(Isa 47:6). \n\ngrown fat--and so, skip wantonly. \n\nat grass--fat and frisky. But there is a disagreement of gender in Hebrew reading thus. The Keri is better: \"a heifer threshing\"; the strongest were used for threshing, and as the law did not allow their mouth to be muzzled in threshing (Deu 25:4), they waxed wanton with eating. \n\nbellow as bulls--rather, \"neigh as steeds,\" literally, \"strong ones,\" a poetical expression for steeds (see on Jer 8:16) [MAURER].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Your mother--Babylon, the metropolis of the empire. \n\nhindermost--marvellous change, that Babylon, once the queen of the world, should be now the hindermost of nations, and at last, becoming \"a desert,\" cease to be a nation!\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["(Isa 13:20).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":14,"content":["Summons to the Median army to attack Babylon. \n\nagainst the Lord--By oppressing His people, their cause is His cause. Also by profaning His sacred vessels (Dan 5:2).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":15,"content":["Shout--Inspirit one another to the onset with the battle cry. \n\ngiven . . . hand--an idiom for, \"submitted to\" the conquerors (Ch1 29:24, Margin; Lam 5:6). \n\nas she hath done, do unto her--just retribution in kind. She had destroyed many, so must she be destroyed (Psa 137:8). So as to spiritual Babylon (Rev 18:6). This is right because \"it is the vengeance of the Lord\"; but this will not justify private revenge in kind (Mat 5:44; Rom 12:19-21); even the Old Testament law forbade this, though breathing a sterner spirit than the New Testament (Exo 23:4-5; Pro 25:21-22).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Babylon had the extent rather of a nation than of a city. Therefore grain was grown within the city wall sufficient to last for a long siege [ARISTOTLE, Politics, 3.2; PLINY, 18.17]. Conquerors usually spare agriculturists, but in this case all alike were to be \"cut off.\" \n\nfor fear of . . . oppressing sword--because of the sword of the oppressor. \n\nevery one to his people--from which they had been removed to Babylon from all quarters by the Chaldean conquerors (Jer 51:9; Isa 13:14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["lions--hostile kings (Jer 4:7; Jer 49:19). \n\nAssyria-- (Kg2 17:6, Shalmaneser; Ezr 4:2, Esar-haddon). \n\nNebuchadnezzar-- (Kg2 24:10, Kg2 24:14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["punish . . . king of Babylon--Nabonidus, or Labynitus. \n\nas . . . punished . . . Assyrian--Sennacherib and other kings [GROTIUS] (Kg2 19:37).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["(Isa 65:10; Eze 34:13-14).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["The specification of \"Israel,\" as well as Judah, shows the reference is to times yet to come. \n\niniquity . . . none--not merely idolatry, which ceased among the Jews ever since the Babylonian captivity, but chiefly their rejection of Messiah. As in a cancelled debt, it shall be as if it had never been; God, for Christ's sake, shall treat them as innocent (Jer 31:34). Without cleansing away of sin, remission of punishment would be neither to the honor of God nor to the highest interests of the elect. \n\nwhom I reserve--the elect \"remnant\" (Isa 1:9). The \"residue\" (Zac 14:2; Zac 13:8-9).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["Merathaim--a symbolical name for Babylon, the doubly rebellious, namely, against God. Compare Jer 50:24, \"thou hast striven against the Lord\"; and Jer 50:29, \"proud against the Lord.\" The \"doubly\" refers to: first, the Assyrian's oppression of Israel; next, the kindred Chaldean's oppression of Judah (compare Jer 50:17-20, Jer 50:33; especially Jer 50:18). \n\nPekod-- (Eze 23:23); a chief province of Assyria, in which Nineveh, now overthrown, once lay. But, as in Merathaim, the allusion is to the meaning of Pekod, namely, \"visitation\"; the inhabitants whose time of deserved visitation in punishment is come; not, however, without reference to the now Babylonian province, Pekod. The visitation on Babylon was a following up of that on Assyria. \n\nafter them--even their posterity, and all that is still left of Babylon, until the very name is extinct [GROTIUS]. Devastate the city, after its inhabitants have deserted it. \n\nall . . . I . . . commanded--by Isaiah (Isa 13:1, &c.).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":23,"content":["hammer--that is, Babylon, so called because of its ponderous destructive power; just as \"Martel,\" that is, \"a little hammer,\" was the surname of a king of the Franks (Isa 14:6).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":24,"content":["I--Thou hast to do with God, not merely with men. \n\ntaken . . . not aware--HERODOTUS relates that one half of the city was taken before those in the other half were \"aware\" of it. Cyrus turned the waters of the Euphrates where it was defended into a different channel, and so entered the city by the dried-up channel at night, by the upper and lower gates (Dan 5:30-31).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":25,"content":["weapons of his indignation--the Medes and Persians (Isa 13:5).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":26,"content":["from the utmost border--namely, of the earth. Or, from all sides LUDOVICUS DE DIEU]. \n\nstorehouses--or, \"her houses filled with men and goods\" [MICHAELIS]. When Cyrus took it, the provisions found there were enough to have lasted for many years. \n\nas heaps--make of the once glorious city heaps of ruins. Vast mounds of rubbish now mark the site of ancient Babylon. \"Tread her as heaps of corn which are wont to be trodden down in the threshing-floor\" [GROTIUS].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":27,"content":["bullocks--that is, princes and strong warriors (Jer 46:21; Psa 22:12; Isa 34:7). \n\ngo down to . . . slaughter--The slaughterhouses lay low beside the river; therefore it is said, \"go down\"; appropriate to Babylon on the Euphrates, the avenue through which the slaughterers entered the city.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":28,"content":["declare in Zion . . . temple--Some Jews \"fleeing\" from Babylon at its fall shall tell in Judea how God avenged the cause of Zion and her temple that had been profaned (Jer 52:13; Dan 1:2; Dan 5:2).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":29,"content":["archers--literally, \"very many and powerful\"; hence the Hebrew word is used of archers (Job 16:13) from the multitude and force of their arrows. \n\naccording to all that she hath done--(See on Jer 50:15). \n\nproud against the Lord--not merely cruel towards men (Isa 47:10).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":30,"content":["(See on Jer 49:26). \n\nin the streets--The Babylonians were so discouraged by having lost some battles that they retired within their walls and would not again meet Cyrus in the field.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":31,"content":["most proud--literally, \"pride\"; that is, man of pride; the king of Babylon. \n\nvisit--punish (Jer 50:27).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":33,"content":["Israel and . . . Judah were oppressed--He anticipates an objection, in order to answer it: Ye have been, no doubt, \"oppressed,\" therefore ye despair of deliverance; but, remember your \"Redeemer is strong,\" and therefore can and will deliver you.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":34,"content":["strong--as opposed to the power of Israel's oppressor (Rev 18:8). \n\nplead . . . cause--as their advocate. Image from a court of justice; appropriate as God delivers His people not by mere might, but by righteousness. His plea against Satan and all their enemies is His own everlasting love, reconciling mercy and justice in the Redeemer's work and person (Mic 7:9; Zac 3:1-5; Jo1 2:1). \n\ngive rest . . . disquiet--There is a play on the similarity of sounds in the two Hebrew verbs to express more vividly the contrast: \"that He may give quiet to the land of Judah (heretofore disquieted by Babylon); but disquiet to the inhabitants of Babylon\" (heretofore quietly secure) (Isa 14:6-8).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":35,"content":["The repetition of \"A sword\" in the beginning of each verse, by the figure anaphora, heightens the effect; the reiterated judgment is universal; the same sad stroke of the sword is upon each and all connected with guilty Babylon. \n\nwise men-- (Isa 47:13). Babylon boasted that it was the peculiar seat of wisdom and wise men, especially in astronomy and astrology.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":36,"content":["liars--Those whom he before termed \"wise men,\" he here calls \"liars\" (impostors), namely, the astrologers (compare Isa 44:25; Rom 1:21-25; Co1 1:20).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":37,"content":["as women--divested of all manliness (Nah 3:13).\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":38,"content":["drought--Altering the pointing, this verse will begin as the three previous verses, \"A sword.\" However, all the pointed manuscripts read, \"A drought,\" as English Version. Cyrus turned off the waters of the Euphrates into a new channel and so marched through the dried-up bed into the city (Jer 51:32). Babylonia once was famed for its corn, which often yielded from one to two hundredfold [HERODOTUS]. This was due to its network of water-courses from the Euphrates for irrigation, traces of which [LAYARD] are seen still on all sides, but dry and barren (Isa 44:27). \n\ntheir idols--literally, \"terrors.\" They are mad after idols that are more calculated to frighten than to attract (Jer 51:44, Jer 51:47, Jer 51:52; Dan 3:1). Mere bugbears with which to frighten children.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":39,"content":["wild beasts of the desert--wild cats, remarkable for their howl [BOCHART]. \n\nwild beasts of the islands--jackals (See on Isa 13:21). \n\nowls--rather, \"female ostriches\"; they delight in solitary places. Literally, \"daughters of crying.\" Compare as to spiritual Babylon, Rev 18:2. \n\nno more inhabited for ever--The accumulation of phrases is to express the final and utter extinction of Babylon; fulfilled not immediately, but by degrees; Cyrus took away its supremacy. Darius Hystaspes deprived it, when it had rebelled, of its fortifications. Seleucus Nicanor removed its citizens and wealth to Seleucia, which he founded in the neighborhood; and the Parthians removed all that was left to Ctesiphon. Nothing but its walls was left under the Roman emperor Adrian.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":40,"content":["(Isa 13:19). Repeated from Jer 49:18.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":41,"content":["(Compare Jer 6:22-24). The very language used to describe the calamities which Babylon inflicted on Zion is that here employed to describe Babylon's own calamity inflicted by the Medes. Retribution in kind. \n\nkinds--the allies and satraps of the various provinces of the Medo-Persian empire: Armenia, Hyrcania, Lydia, &c. \n\ncoasts--the remote parts.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":42,"content":["cruel--the character of the Persians, and even of Cyrus, notwithstanding his wish to be thought magnanimous (Isa 13:18). \n\nlike a man--So orderly and united is their \"array,\" that the whole army moves to battle as one man [GROTIUS].\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":43,"content":["hands waxed feeble--attempted no resistance; immediately was overcome, as HERODOTUS tells us.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":44,"content":["Repeated mainly from Jer 49:19-21. The identity of God's principle in His dealing with Edom, and in that with Babylon, is implied by the similarity of language as to both.\n\n"]},{"type":"verse","number":46,"content":["cry . . . among the nations--In Edom's case it is, \"at the cry the noise thereof was heard in the Red Sea.\" The change implies the wider extent to which the crash of Babylon's downfall shall be heard.\n\n\n\n\nNext: Jeremiah Chapter 51\n\n"]}],"introduction":"BABYLON'S COMING DOWNFALL; ISRAEL'S REDEMPTION. (Jer. 50:1-46)\n\nCompare Isa. 45:1-47:15. But as the time of fulfilment drew nearer, the prophecies are now proportionally more distinct than then.\n\n"},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/50.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":50},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/51.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":51},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/jamieson-fausset-brown/JER/49.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"jamieson-fausset-brown","book":"JER","chapter":49},"numberOfVerses":41}