Jeremiah 50:35

These verses belong to the long word against Babylon that fills Jeremiah 50 and Jeremiah 51, the longest single prophecy in the book. Much of Jeremiah warns Judah of its coming destruction, and here God turns his judgment on the very empire he used to bring it about. Under Nebuchadnezzar the Neo-Babylonian Empire had become the great power of the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC. It conquered Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 586 BC, and carried the people away into exile.

The verses around this passage tell of Babylon’s coming desolation and the shame of its idols, and they call Israel to flee out of the land of the north. God speaks of the oppression of Israel and Judah (Jeremiah 50:33), and after these four verses the prophecy goes on to describe the armies that would bring Babylon down, the Medes and Persians, and the lasting ruin of its land. For the exiles this was a word of hope. Their suffering under Babylon would end, as God had promised when he spoke of restoring them to their home (Jeremiah 29:10–14).

Verse 35 opens with the words that sound through the passage: “A sword is upon…”. The Hebrew chereb means a sword or another cutting tool such as a knife, and it can stand for war itself. Strong’s ties the name to its destructive effect. Here it means the war that God brings on Babylon. Armies would carry it out, the Medes and Persians of the chapters that follow, but the one who sends it is the LORD.

“Saith the LORD” sets this down as the declaration of Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant God of Israel, and that makes it certain. He is the righteous judge of the nations (Psalm 9:16), and Daniel says of him, “he removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21). The God who raised Babylon up as the instrument of his judgment now declares its end.

The small word “upon” comes four times in this verse, and each time it marks another part of Babylon on which the sword falls. The Chaldeans, Kasdîy, were the people who ruled the Neo-Babylonian Empire. They were known for their military strength, their observation of the stars and their arts of divination and magic, and Strong’s notes that their name came to be linked with astrologers. The inhabitants of Babylon are the people of the city and empire at large, so the judgment reaches every level of its life. Babylon itself was a magnificent city, famous for its massive walls, its wealth and the Euphrates flowing through its heart.

Verse 36 turns the sword on two more of Babylon’s supports, its lies and its warriors.

The word for liars, bad, means a brag or a lie, and also a liar. In Babylon the liars were the false prophets, the diviners and the deceiving officials who advised its kings, giving counsel drawn from their idols in place of the truth of God. Behind them stood a whole nation built on the lies of idolatry and on its own self-deception.

“They shall dote” uses yâʼal, which properly means to be slack and in a figurative sense to be foolish. The men whose cunning Babylon boasted of would lose their sound judgment. Their plans would turn foolish and their counsel would fail, and that confusion comes from God as part of his judgment. Isaiah describes the same thing in Egypt: “The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof” (Isaiah 19:14). A psalm says that the LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing (Psalm 33:10).

The mighty men, gibbôwr, are the powerful ones: warriors, champions, valiant men. These were Babylon’s elite soldiers, the backbone of an army the nations thought invincible. “They shall be dismayed” means that terror takes hold of them and their courage fails, so that the strongest men of the empire are helpless to defend it. The same psalm says this of all such strength: “There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength. An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength” (Psalm 33:16–17). Daniel tells of the night Babylon fell, at the feast of Belshazzar (Daniel 5).

Babylon is “her” in this verse, as she is all through the prophecy, for the prophets often speak of a city or a nation as a woman.

Verse 37 names the rest of what Babylon leaned on. Horses and chariots were the height of military power in that day, the strength and speed of an army, and the sword falls on them too. The “mingled people that are in the midst of her” are the many foreign peoples within Babylon: hired soldiers, allied troops, and the various nations of a vast empire, which drew strength from them as ancient empires commonly did. Native or foreign, everyone in the city falls under the judgment.

Then the sword is upon “her treasures”, ʼôwtsâr, a word for treasure and also for the places it is kept: a storehouse, treasury, armory, granary or cellar. Babylon’s wealth had been gathered by conquest and trade, and “they shall be robbed” means the conquerors will carry it away as plunder. The empire that plundered others is plundered in its turn. Nahum foretold the same plunder for Nineveh, the capital of Assyria (Nahum 2:9–10), and a psalm gives the reason great cities fall, that God is the judge, who “putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:6–7).

The last verse moves from the sword to a drought. The Hebrew chôreb means drought, dryness or desolation, and Strong’s gives it as a form derived from chereb, the word for sword, so the drought of verse 38 is close kin in Hebrew to the sword of the verses before it.

Babylon’s waters were the Euphrates, which flowed straight through the city, and the network of canals, moats and irrigation channels it fed. They watered the fields, carried the trade, sustained the people and formed part of the city’s defence. To a people who lived by such plenty, a drought on their waters meant the loss of everything their prosperity and security rested on, and “they shall be dried up” leaves the city open and desolate.

Verse 38 ends with the reason for all of this: “for it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols.” The word for graven images, pᵉçîyl, means an idol or carved image, a figure shaped by human hands. Babylon was a land of many gods, with Marduk at their head, and its grand temples and countless images stood at the centre of its religious and civic life. Its people believed these gods gave them their power and protection.

“Mad” translates hâlal, a verb whose meanings include to shine, to boast, to rave and to be foolish. Here it pictures a frenzied, deluded devotion, a people so carried away by their idols that they are blind to the judgment coming on them.

A psalm mocks such gods: “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not … They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them” (Psalm 115:4–8). Paul describes the same exchange in every age, when people who knew God changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped the creature more than the Creator (Romans 1:21–25), and he calls covetousness idolatry (Colossians 3:5). Babylon’s gods and Babylon’s waters failed it together, because security and life come from the living God alone.

Babylon’s arrogance, idolatry and oppression of God’s people make it the pattern for “Babylon the Great” in Revelation, the picture of every world system that defies God and persecutes his saints (Revelation 17–18). Revelation’s account of her fall echoes this prophecy of Jeremiah (Revelation 18:2–8).

The sword of these verses falls on Babylon’s princes and wise men, and in Revelation a sharp sword goes out of the mouth of Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, to smite the nations (Revelation 19:15). That sword is his righteous word. At the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15), and he told his disciples that he has overcome the world (John 16:33).

Babylon trusted in lies and in mighty men. Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), who conquered sin and death by his obedience on the cross and his resurrection. His is “a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44), and his people receive “a kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:28).

Babylon’s waters dried up, and Christ gives living water. He promised that whoever drinks the water he gives “shall never thirst” (John 4:14), and that rivers of living water would flow from those who believe in him (John 7:37–38). At the end of Scripture he gives “of the fountain of the water of life freely” (Revelation 21:6), and a pure river of water of life flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1).

The LORD rules the nations, the greatest of them included. Babylon had armies, a river, wise men, treasure and a crowd of gods, and in four verses God names each one and sets his sword or his drought upon it. Everything a great empire can gather for its safety lies open to him.

For the exiles in Babylon these verses were a promise that God saw their suffering and would bring justice, and the same God sees the oppressed today. His judgment also reaches the root of Babylon’s sin, its idols, and what these verses say about them holds for every heart: trust given to anything in place of God ends in drought, and life and safety come from him alone. The God who dried up Babylon’s rivers is the God who gives living water freely to all who come to him.