Yeremia 50:3

50:3 For a nation from the north ¹  will attack Babylon.

It will lay her land waste.

People and animals will flee out of it.

No one will inhabit it.’

Yeremia 50:13

50:13 After I vent my wrath on it Babylon will be uninhabited. ² 

It will be totally desolate.

All who pass by will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn

because of all the disasters that have happened to it. ³ 

Yeremia 50:23

50:23 Babylon hammered the whole world to pieces.

But see how that ‘hammer’ has been broken and shattered! ⁴ 

See what an object of horror

Babylon has become among the nations!

Yeremia 50:39-40

50:39 Therefore desert creatures and jackals will live there.

Ostriches ⁵  will dwell in it too. ⁶ 

But no people will ever live there again.

No one will dwell there for all time to come. ⁷ 

50:40 I will destroy Babylonia just like I did

Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns.

No one will live there. ⁸ 

No human being will settle in it,”

says the Lord. ⁹ 

Yeremia 50:45

50:45 So listen to what I, the Lord, have planned against Babylon,

what I intend to do to the people who inhabit the land of Babylonia. ¹⁰ 

Their little ones will be dragged off.

I will completely destroy their land because of what they have done.

Yeremia 51:25-26

51:25 The Lord says, ¹¹  “Beware! I am opposed to you, Babylon! ¹² 

You are like a destructive mountain that destroys all the earth.

I will unleash my power against you; ¹³ 

I will roll you off the cliffs and make you like a burned-out mountain. ¹⁴ 

51:26 No one will use any of your stones as a cornerstone.

No one will use any of them in the foundation of his house.

For you will lie desolate forever,” ¹⁵ 

says the Lord. ¹⁶ 

Yeremia 51:62-64

51:62 Then say, ‘O Lord, you have announced that you will destroy this place so that no people or animals live in it any longer. Certainly it will lie desolate forever!’ 51:63 When you finish reading this scroll aloud, tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates River. ¹⁷  51:64 Then say, ‘In the same way Babylon will sink and never rise again because of the judgments ¹⁸  I am ready to bring upon her; they will grow faint.’”

The prophecies of Jeremiah end here. ¹⁹ 

Yesaya 13:19

13:19 Babylon, the most admired ²⁰  of kingdoms,

the Chaldeans’ source of honor and pride, ²¹ 

will be destroyed by God

just as Sodom and Gomorrah were. ²² 

Yesaya 14:23

14:23 “I will turn her into a place that is overrun with wild animals ²³ 

and covered with pools of stagnant water.

I will get rid of her, just as one sweeps away dirt with a broom,” ²⁴ 

says the Lord who commands armies.

Yesaya 15:6

15:6 For the waters of Nimrim are gone; ²⁵ 

the grass is dried up,

the vegetation has disappeared,

and there are no plants.

Yesaya 20:1-6

20:1 The Lord revealed the following message during the year in which King Sargon of Assyria sent his commanding general to Ashdod, and he fought against it and captured it. ²⁶  20:2 At that time the Lord announced through ²⁷  Isaiah son of Amoz: “Go, remove the sackcloth from your waist and take your sandals off your feet.” He did as instructed and walked around in undergarments ²⁸  and barefoot. 20:3 Later the Lord explained, “In the same way that my servant Isaiah has walked around in undergarments and barefoot for the past three years, as an object lesson and omen pertaining to Egypt and Cush, 20:4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, both young and old. They will be in undergarments and barefoot, with the buttocks exposed; the Egyptians will be publicly humiliated. ²⁹  20:5 Those who put their hope in Cush and took pride in Egypt will be afraid and embarrassed. ³⁰  20:6 At that time ³¹  those who live on this coast ³²  will say, ‘Look what has happened to our source of hope to whom we fled for help, expecting to be rescued from the king of Assyria! How can we escape now?’”

Yesaya 47:1

Babylon Will Fall

47:1 “Fall down! Sit in the dirt,

O virgin ³³  daughter Babylon!

Sit on the ground, not on a throne,

O daughter of the Babylonians!

Indeed, ³⁴  you will no longer be called delicate and pampered.

Yehezkiel 35:9

35:9 I will turn you into a perpetual desolation, and your cities will not be inhabited. Then you will know that I am the Lord.

[50:3]  ¹ sn A nation from the north refers to Medo-Persia which at the time of the conquest of Babylon in 539 b.c. had conquered all the nations to the north, the northwest, and the northeast of Babylon forming a vast empire to the north and east of Babylon. Contingents of these many nations were included in her army and reference is made to them in 50:9 and 51:27-28. There is also some irony involved here because the “enemy from the north” referred to so often in Jeremiah (cf. 1:14; 4:6; 6:1) has been identified with Babylon (cf. 25:9). Here in a kind of talionic justice Judah’s nemesis from the north will be attacked and devastated by an enemy from the north.

[50:13]  ² tn Heb “From [or Because of] the wrath of the Lord it will be uninhabited.” The causal connection is spelled out more clearly and actively and the first person has been used because the speaker is the Lord. The referent “it” has been spelled out clearly from the later occurrence in the verse, “all who pass by Babylon.”

[50:13]  ³ sn Compare Jer 49:17 and the study note there and see also the study notes on 18:16 and 19:8.

[50:23]  ⁴ tn Heb “How broken and shattered is the hammer of all the earth!” The “hammer” is a metaphor for Babylon who was God’s war club to shatter the nations and destroy kingdoms just like Assyria is represented in Isa 10:5 as a rod and a war club. Some readers, however, might not pick up on the metaphor or identify the referent, so the translation has incorporated an identification of the metaphor and the referent within it. “See how” and “See what” are an attempt to capture the nuance of the Hebrew particle אֵיךְ (’ekh) which here expresses an exclamation of satisfaction in a taunt song (cf. BDB 32 s.v. אֵיךְ 2 and compare usage in Isa 14:4, 12; Jer 50:23).

[50:39]  ⁵ tn The identification of this bird has been called into question by G. R. Driver, “Birds in the Old Testament,” PEQ 87 (1955): 137-38. He refers to this bird as an owl. That identification, however, is not reflected in any of the lexicons including the most recent, which still gives “ostrich” (HALOT 402 s.v. יַעֲנָה) as does W. S. McCullough, “Ostrich,” IDB 3:611. REB, NIV, NCV, and God’s Word all identify this bird as “owl/desert owl.”

[50:39]  ⁶ tn Heb “Therefore desert creatures will live with jackals and ostriches will live in it.”

[50:39]  ⁷ tn Heb “It will never again be inhabited nor dwelt in unto generation and generation.” For the meaning of this last phrase compare the usage in Ps 100:5 and Isaiah 13:20. Since the first half of the verse has spoken of animals living there, it is necessary to add “people” and turn the passive verbs into active ones.

[50:40]  ⁸ tn Heb “‘Like [when] God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns,’ oracle of the Lord, ‘no man will live there.’” The Lord is speaking so the first person has been substituted for “God.” The sentence has again been broken up to better conform with contemporary English style.

[50:40]  sn Compare Jer 49:18 where the same prophecy is applied to Edom.

[50:40]  ⁹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[50:45]  ¹⁰ tn The words “of Babylonia” are not in the text but are implicit from the context. They have been supplied in the translation to clarify the referent.

[50:45]  sn The verbs in vv. 22-25 are all descriptive of the present, but all of this is really to take place in the future. Hebrew poetry has a way of rendering future actions as though they were already accomplished. The poetry of this section makes it difficult, however, to render the verbs as future as the present translation has regularly done.

[51:25]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:25]  ¹² tn The word “Babylon” is not in the text but is universally understood as the referent. It is supplied in the translation here to clarify the referent for the sake of the average reader.

[51:25]  ¹³ tn Heb “I will reach out my hand against you.” See the translator’s note on 6:12 for explanation.

[51:25]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “I am against you, oh destroying mountain that destroys all the earth. I will reach out my hand against you and roll you down from the cliffs and make you a mountain of burning.” The interpretation adopted here follows the lines suggested by S. R. Driver, Jeremiah, 318, n. c and reflected also in BDB 977 s.v. שְׂרֵפָה. Babylon is addressed as a destructive mountain because it is being compared to a volcano. The Lord, however, will make it a “burned-out mountain,” i.e., an extinct volcano which is barren and desolate. This interpretation seems to this translator to fit the details of the text more consistently than alternative ones which separate the concept of “destroying/destructive” from “mountain” and explain the figure of the mountain to refer to the dominating political position of Babylon and the reference to a “mountain of burning” to be a “burned [or burned over] mountain.” The use of similes in place of metaphors makes it easier for the modern reader to understand the figures and also more easily incorporates the dissonant figure of “rolling you down from the cliffs” which involves the figure of personification.

[51:25]  sn The figure here involves comparing Babylon to a destructive volcano which the Lord makes burned-out, i.e., he will destroy her power to destroy. The figure of personification is also involved because the Lord is said to roll her off the cliffs; that would not be applicable to a mountain.

[51:26]  ¹⁵ tn This is a fairly literal translation of the original which reads “No one will take from you a stone for a cornerstone nor a stone for foundations.” There is no unanimity of opinion in the commentaries, many feeling that the figure of the burned mountain continues and others feeling that the figure here shifts to a burned city whose stones are so burned that they are useless to be used in building. The latter is the interpretation adopted here (see, e.g., F. B. Huey, Jeremiah, Lamentations [NAC], 423; W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 2:426; NCV).

[51:26]  sn The figure here shifts to that of a burned-up city whose stones cannot be used for building. Babylon will become a permanent heap of ruins.

[51:26]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

[51:63]  ¹⁷ tn The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied for clarity.

[51:64]  ¹⁸ tn Or “disaster”; or “calamity.”

[51:64]  ¹⁹ sn The final chapter of the book of Jeremiah does not mention Jeremiah or record any of his prophecies.

[13:19]  ²⁰ tn Or “most beautiful” (NCV, TEV).

[13:19]  ²¹ tn Heb “the beauty of the pride of the Chaldeans.”

[13:19]  sn The Chaldeans were a group of tribes who lived in southern Mesopotamia. The established the so-called neo-Babylonian empire in the late seventh century b.c. Their most famous king, Nebuchadnezzar, conquered Judah in 605 b.c. and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 b.c.

[13:19]  ²² tn Heb “and Babylon…will be like the overthrow by God of Sodom and Gomorrah.” On מַהְפֵּכַת (mahpekhat, “overthrow”) see the note on the word “destruction” in 1:7.

[14:23]  ²³ tn Heb “I will make her into a possession of wild animals.” It is uncertain what type of animal קִפֹּד (qippod) refers to. Some suggest a rodent (cf. NASB, NRSV “hedgehog”), others an owl (cf, NAB, NIV, TEV).

[14:23]  ²⁴ tn Heb “I will sweep her away with the broom of destruction.”

[15:6]  ²⁵ tn Heb “are waste places”; cf. NRSV “are a desolation.”

[20:1]  ²⁶ tn Heb “In the year the commanding general came to Ashdod, when Sargon king of Assyria sent him, and he fought against Ashdod and captured it.”

[20:1]  sn This probably refers to the Assyrian campaign against Philistia in 712 or 711 b.c.

[20:2]  ²⁷ tn Heb “spoke by the hand of.”

[20:2]  ²⁸ tn The word used here (עָרוֹם, ’arom) sometimes means “naked,” but here it appears to mean simply “lightly dressed,” i.e., stripped to one’s undergarments. See HALOT 883 s.v. עָרוֹם. The term also occurs in vv. 3, 4.

[20:4]  ²⁹ tn Heb “lightly dressed and barefoot, and bare with respect to the buttocks, the nakedness of Egypt.”

[20:5]  ³⁰ tn Heb “and they will be afraid and embarrassed because of Cush their hope and Egypt their beauty.”

[20:6]  ³¹ tn Heb “in that day” (so KJV).

[20:6]  ³² sn This probably refers to the coastal region of Philistia (cf. TEV).

[47:1]  ³³ tn בְּתוּלַה (bÿtulah) often refers to a virgin, but the phrase “virgin daughter” is apparently stylized (see also 23:12; 37:22). In the extended metaphor of this chapter, where Babylon is personified as a queen (vv. 5, 7), she is depicted as being both a wife and mother (vv. 8-9).

[47:1]  ³⁴ tn Or “For” (NASB, NRSV).