1The word that the LORD spoke concerning Babylonia, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, through Jeremiah the prophet.
2Tell among the nations and make it heard,
and raise a banner, make it heard, do not conceal it.
Say: Babylonia is captured, Bel is shamed, Merodach shattered.
Her idols are shamed, her foul things shattered.
3For a nation from the north has gone up against her,
and it shall make her land a desolation,
and there shall be no dweller in it,
from man to beast, they shall wander, go off.
4In those days and in that time, said the LORD,
the Israelites and the Judahites shall come together,
weeping as they walk shall they go,
and the LORD their God they shall seek.
5Zion shall they ask,
their faces turned this way.
“Come!” and they shall join the LORD
in an everlasting covenant never forgotten.
6Lost sheep my people were.
Their shepherds led them astray.
To the mountains they led them astray,
quick to the hills they went,
they forgot their resting place.
7All who found them devoured them,
and their foes said, “We bear no guilt
as they offended the LORD,
the righteous pasture and their father’s hope, the LORD.”
8Wander from the midst of Babylon
and from the land of the Chaldeans.
They shall go out and become like he-goats
before the flock.
9For I am about to rouse and bring up against Babylonia
an assembly of great nations from the land of the north,
and they shall array against her, from there she shall be captured.
His arrows like those of a death-dealing warrior,
he does not turn back empty.
10And the Chaldeans shall become spoil,
all their despoilers shall be sated, said the LORD.
11For you rejoiced, for you exulted,
O plunderers of My estate.
For you stomped like a heifer threshing,
and you neighed like stallions.
12Your mother is greatly shamed,
she who bore you is disgraced.
wilderness, parched land, and desert.
13Because of the LORD’s fury she shall not be settled,
and all of her shall be a desolation.
All who pass by Babylonia shall be shocked
and hiss at all her blows.
14Array against Babylonia all round,
all who bend the bow.
Shoot at her, spare no arrow,
for she has offended against the LORD.
15Shout against her all around.
She gave up, her bastions have fallen,
her walls have been destroyed.
For the LORD’s vengeance it is, take vengeance of her,
as she did to you, do to her.
16Cut off the sower from Babylonia
and the sickle wielder in harvesttime.
From the oppressive sword
each man shall turn to his people
and each man shall flee to his land.
17Israel is a scattered flock—
lions have harried him.
First the king of Assyria devoured him and then the last one, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia, crunched his bones. 18Therefore, thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel: I am about to reckon with the king of Babylonia and with his land as I reckoned with the king of Assyria.
19And I will bring back Israel to his pasture,
and he shall graze on Carmel and in Bashan,
and on Mount Ephraim and in Gilead he shall be sated.
20In those days and in that time, said the LORD,
Israel’s crime shall be sought and it shall be gone,
and Judah’s offenses—and they shall not be found.
For I will forgive those I let remain.
21Against the land of Merathaim,
go up against her.
And against the dwellers at Pekod,
ruin and utterly destroy them
said the LORD,
and do as all I have charged you.
22Hark! War is in the land
and a great shattering.
23How hacked and broken
is the hammer of all the earth.
How become a desolation
Babylonia among the nations.
24I laid a snare for you and you were captured,
O Babylonia, and you did not know.
You were found and also caught,
for you provoked the LORD.
25The LORD opened his armory
and brought out the weapons of His wrath,
for the LORD of Armies has a task
in the land of the Chaldeans.
26Come against her from all sides,
open her granaries.
Pile her up like heaps and utterly destroy her.
Let her have no remnant.
27Put all her bulls to the sword,
let her go down to the slaughter.
Woe to them, for their day has come,
the time of their reckoning.
28Hark! The fugitives flee
from the land of Babylonia
the vengeance of the LORD our God,
the vengeance for his people.
29Summon archers against Babylonia
all who bend the bow.
Camp against her all around,
let her have no fugitives.
Pay her back for her acts,
as all that she did, do to her,
for she was arrogant toward the LORD
toward Israel’s Holy One.
30Therefore shall her young men fall in her squares, and all her men of war shall be silent on that day, said the LORD.
31Here I am against you. Arrogance,
said the Master, LORD of Armies.
For your day has come,
the time when I reckon with you.
32And Arrogance shall stumble and fall,
with none to raise him up,
and I will light a fire in his towns
and it shall consume all round him.
33Thus said the LORD of Armies:
The Israelites were oppressed
and the Judahites, together,
and all their captors held on to them,
refused to set them free.
34Their redeemer is strong,
the LORD of Armies is His name.
He shall surely take up their cause
so as to bring quiet to the land
and make the dwellers of Babylonia quake.
35A sword against the Chaldeans, said the LORD,
and against Babylonia’s dwellers
and against her nobles and her sages.
36A sword against the soothsayers, exposed as fools.
A sword against her warriors, that they be shattered.
37A sword against her horses and her chariots.
A sword against the mixed race in her midst,
that they turn into women.
A sword against her treasures,
that they be looted.
38A drought against her waters, that they dry up,
for she is a land of idols,
and through the gods they fear, they madden.
39Therefore wildcats and hyenas shall dwell there,
and ostriches shall dwell within her,
and she shall be uninhabited forever,
and shall not be settled for all time.
40Like God’s overturning of Sodom
and Gomorrah and its neighbors, said the LORD.
No man shall dwell there
and no human sojourn in her.
41Look, a people is coming from the north,
a great nation,
and many kings shall be roused
from the far corners of the earth.
42Bow and lance they wield,
they are cruel and show no mercy.
Their voice roars like the sea,
arrayed as one man for battle—
against you, Daughter of Babylonia.
43Babylonia’s king heard the report of them,
and his hands went slack.
A pang seized him,
travail like a woman in labor.
44Look, as a lion comes up
from the Jordan’s thicket to a secure pasture,
so in a flash I will rush him off from her,
and who is the young man I could appoint over her,
for who is like Me, who can fix a time for Me?
45Therefore hear the counsel of the LORD
that He conceived against Babylonia
and the plans that He devised against the land of the Chaldeans—
they shall surely drag them off, the young men of the flock,
they shall surely desolate their pastures.
46And from the sound of “Babylonia is captured” the earth shook,
and a scream was heard in the nations.
CHAPTER 50 NOTES
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2. Bel . . . Merodach. There are two names for the patron deity of Babylonia. The latter also appears as “Marduk.”
her foul things. As elsewhere in biblical usage, gilulim is a deliberately insulting epithet for “idols” that invokes gelalim, “turds.”
3. a nation from the north. Babylonia’s traditional enemies—most recently, the Assyrian empire, which it conquered—came from the north, so this is neither a prediction nor a late reflection of Persia’s successful assault on Babylonia half a century after Jeremiah.
4. the Israelites and the Judahites shall come together. This is another moment when Jeremiah cherishes the idea of a restored Israel reunited with a restored Judah, though by his own time, a century and a half after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, scant trace of it remained.
weeping as they walk. This is a very different picture of the return to Zion from the one in the prophecies of Second Isaiah, where the returning exiles are jubilant and triumphant. Here, they weep because they have been shattered by the experience of exile, and they are even uncertain about how to get back to Zion, asking for directions (verse 5).
5. “Come!” and they shall join the LORD. The Syriac reads somewhat more smoothly, “Come, and let us join the Lord.”
6. To the mountains they led them astray, / quick to the hills they went. The probable reference is to sites in the mountains and hills where they worshipped nature gods, led by false leaders (“shepherds”).
their resting place. The Hebrew noun is a term for the place where animals bed down and so continues the metaphor of the people as lost sheep.
7. All who found them devoured them. Sheep wandering over the hills with no proper shepherd would be vulnerable to predators.
8. Wander from the midst of Babylon. The prophet exhorts the inhabitants of Babylonia to flee before the arrival of the murderous invaders. The Hebrew bavel can refer either to the country, Babylonia, or to its principal city, Babylon, and the latter sense is perhaps more likely here.
9. a death-dealing warrior. The Hebrew mashkil, unusual in this conjugation, literally means “causing bereavement.” Some Hebrew manuscripts and three ancient versions read maskil, “cunning.”
12. the last among nations. The phrase ʾaḥarit goyim plays antithetically on the more common collocation, re’shit goyim, “first among nations.” Babylonia’s standing has been entirely reversed.
15. She gave up. The literal sense is “she gave her hand,” but since “hand” often means “power,” giving up is the likely meaning.
16. each man shall turn to his people. The evident assumption is that there was a multiethnic population in Babylonia, whether through immigration or the attachment of mercenaries to the army.
21. the land of Merathaim / . . . the dwellers at Pekod. Although these are actual regions of Babylonia, the prophet is also clearly playing on the seeming echoes in the names of Hebrew words: Merathaim could suggest to the Hebrew ear either “rebellion” or “bitterness” and Pekod, “reckoning.”
23. the hammer of all the earth. In all likelihood this is an epithet for the mighty Babylonian emperor. Jeremiah would have been thinking of Nebuchadrezzar.
25. The LORD opened his armory. At several points in biblical poetry, a virtually mythic image occurs of YHWH as a warrior-god with a storehouse of weapons in the sky saved for a cosmic battle.
for the LORD of Armies has a task / in the land of the Chaldeans. This is a striking instance in which instead of the usual semantic parallelism in the second half of the line of poetry, a surprise is sprung. The word “task” in itself might seem innocuous, but when it is followed by “in the land of the Chaldeans,” and after the mention of weapons of wrath, the task turns out to be a grim mission of destruction throughout Babylonia.
28. to tell in Zion / the vengeance of the LORD. This is a piquant fantasy of revenge. Not only do the inhabitants of Babylonia flee as their kingdom falls, but they flee to Zion, where they can bear witness before the Judahites of the full extent of vengeance God has exacted from those who destroyed His temple.
31. Here I am against you. Arrogance. The poem now moves into a quasi-allegorical mode. Babylonia, or perhaps its king, is represented as the very personification of arrogance.
34. Their redeemer is strong. Despite the salvific resonance of the English noun “redeemer,” goʾel is less a theological term than a legal term. The goʾel is the kinsman who sets right a wrong that has been done to one of his close relatives. Its very use implies a kind of kinship between God and Israel.
35. A sword against the Chaldeans. In a rhetorical move relatively rare in biblical poetry, this prophecy builds on an insistent anaphora, virtually every line beginning with “A sword against . . .” The effect is to powerfully convey a sense of the inexorable, comprehensive destruction that is about to sweep over Babylonia.
38. A drought against her waters. The Hebrew for “drought” here is ḥorev, which, as many commentators have observed, puns on ḥerev, “sword.” A sword, of course, would be an odd weapon to use against water, hence the punning substitution of “drought.”
and through the gods they fear, they madden. The Hebrew says merely “the terrors,” though the firm consensus of interpreters, medieval and modern, is that the reference is to their deities—hence “gods” in the translation. (One epithet for God in Genesis is “Fear of Isaac”). The maddening may be their behavior in ecstatic pagan rites, as some medieval commentators have proposed, or it could mean that they become wildly distraught in the crisis of destruction because their gods can in no way help them.
39. wildcats and hyenas. All that is certain about the identity of these two groups of beasts is that they are indigenous to wasteland terrain.
41. from the far corners of the earth. In the geographical perspective of the ancient Hebrews—which encompasses India but nothing as distant as the Far East—the lands to the north of the Mesopotamian valley qualify as “the far corners of the earth.”
42. and on horses they do ride. The detail about mounted troops adds to the general sense of terrific clamor and speed in the attacking army, and the horses may have been especially scary to an Israelite audience whose armies were thin in cavalry.
44–45. Look, as a lion comes up. These two verses approximately replicate 49:19–20. See the comments on those verses.
46. the sound of “Babylonia is captured.” The two Hebrew words that immediately follow “the sound” (or “the sound of”) are most plausibly understood as the words cried out when the realization of Babylonia’s defeat is grasped (hence the quotation marks in the translation). This is how Lundbom understands it. All are dumbfounded, or perhaps aghast, at the fall of the powerful empire—hence all the earth shakes, the outcry is heard among all the nations.