Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The devastation of Babylon and glory of Israel. - Jer 50:11. "Thou ye rejoice, though ye exult, O ye plunderers of mine inheritance, though ye leap proudly like a heifer threshing, and neigh like strong horses, Jer 50:12. Your mother will be very much ashamed; she who bare you will blush: behold, the last of the nations [will be] a wilderness, a desert, and a steppe. Jer 50:13. Because of the indignation of Jahveh it shall not be inhabited, and it shall become a complete desolation. Every one passing by Babylon will be astonished, and hiss because of all her plagues. Jer 50:14. Make preparations against Babylon round about, all ye that bend the bow; shoot at her, do not spare an arrow, for she hath sinned against Jahveh. Jer 50:15. Shout against her round about; she hath given herself up: her battlements are fallen, her walls are pulled down; for it is Jahveh's vengeance: revenge yourselves on her; as she hath done, do ye to her. Jer 50:16. Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handles the sickle in the time of harvest. From before the oppressing sword each one will turn to his own nation, and each one will flee to his own land. Jer 50:17. Israel is a scattered sheep [which] lions have driven away: the first [who] devoured him [was] the king of Babylon; and this, the last, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, hath broken his bones. Jer 50:18. Therefore thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon ad his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria. Jer 50:19. And I will bring back Israel to his pasture-ground, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and on the mountains of Ephraim his soul shall be satisfied. Jer 50:20. In those days, and at that time, saith Jahveh, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, but it shall not be; and the sins of Judah, but they shall not be found: for I will pardon those whom I will leave remaining." Jer 50:11-13 Jer 50:11 does not permit of being so closely connected with what precedes as to separate it from Jer 50:12 (De Wette, Ngelsbach). Not only is the translation, "for thou didst rejoice," etc., difficult to connect with the imperfects of all the verbs in the verse, but the direct address also does not suit Jer 50:10, and rather demands connection with Jer 50:12, where it is continued. כּי, of course, introduces the reason, yet not in such a way that Jer 50:11 states the cause why Chaldea shall become a spoil, but rather so that Jer 50:11 and Jer 50:12 together give the reason for the threatening uttered. The different clauses of Jer 50:11 are the protases, to which Jer 50:12 brings the apodosis. "You may go on making merry over the defeat of Israel, but shame will follow for this." The change of the singular forms of the verbs into plurals (Qeri) has been caused by the plural 'שׁסי , but is unnecessary, because Babylon is regarded as a collective, and its people are gathered into the unity of a person; see on Jer 13:20. "Spoilers of mine inheritance," i.e., of the people and land of the Lord; cf. Jer 12:7; Isa 17:14. On פּוּשׁ, to gallop (of a horse, Hab 1:8), hop, spring (of a calf, Mal. 3:20), see on Hab 1:8. דּשׁא is rendered by the lxx ἐν βοτάνη, by the Vulgate super herbam; after these, Ewald also takes the meaning of springing like a calf through the grass, since he explains דּשׁא as exhibiting the correct punctuation, and remarks that פּוּשׁ, like הלך, can stand with an object directly after it; see 282, a. Most modern expositors, on the other hand, take דּשׁא as the fem. participle from דּוּשׁ, written with א instead of ה: "like a threshing heifer." On this, A Schultens, in his Animadv. philol., on this passage, remarks: Comparatio petita est a vitula, quae in area media inter frumenta, ore ex lege non ligato (Deu 25:10), prae pabuli abundantia gestit ex exsultat. This explanation also gives a suitable meaning, without compelling us to do violence to the language and to alter the text. As to אבּירים, stallions, strong horses (Luther), see on Jer 8:16 and Jer 47:3. "Your mother" is the whole body of the people, the nation considered as a unity (cf. Isa 50:1; Hos 2:4; Hos 4:5), the individual members of which are called her sons; cf. Jer 5:7, etc. In Jer 50:12, the disgrace that is to fall on Babylon is more distinctly specified. The thought is gathered up into a sententious saying, in imitation of the sayings of Balaam. "The last of the nations" is the antithesis of "the first of the nations," as Balaam calls Amalek, Num 24:20, because they were the first heathen nation that began to fight against the people of Israel. In like manner, Jeremiah calls Babylon the last of the heathen nations. As the end of Amalek is ruin (Num 24:20), so the end of the last heathen nation that comes forward against Israel will be a wilderness, desert, steppe. The predicates (cf. Jer 2:6) refer to the country and kingdom of Babylon. But if the end of the kingdom is a desert, then the people must have perished. The devastation of Babylon is further portrayed in Jer 50:13, together with a statement of the cause: "Because of the anger of Jahveh it shall not be inhabited;" cf. Isa 13:20. The words from והיתה onwards are imitated from Jer 49:17 and Jer 19:8. Jer 50:14-16 In order to execute this judgment on Babylon, the nations are commanded to conquer and destroy the city. The archers are to place themselves round about Babylon, and shoot at the city unsparingly. ערך does not mean to prepare oneself, but to prepare מלחמה, the battle, combat. The archers are mentioned by synecdoche, because the point in question is the siege and bombardment of Babylon; cf. Isa 13:18, where the Medes are mentioned as archers. ידה is used only here, in Kal, of the throwing, i.e., the shooting of arrows, instead of ירה, which is elsewhere the usual word for this; and, indeed, some codices have the latter word in this passage. "Spare not the arrow," i.e., do not spare an arrow; cf. Jer 51:3. הריע, to cry aloud; here, to raise a battle-cry; cf. Jos 6:16. The effect and result of the cry is, "she hath given her hand," i.e., given herself up. נתן יד usually signifies the giving of the hand as a pledge of faithfulness (Kg2 10:15; Eze 17:18; Ezr 10:19), from which is derived the meaning of giving up, delivering up oneself; cf. Ch2 30:8. Cf. Cornelius Nepos, Hamilc. c. 1, donec victi manum dedissent. The ἁπ. λεγ. אשׁויתיה (the Kethib is either to be read אשׁויּתיה, as if from a noun אשׁוית, or to be viewed as an error in transcription for אשׁיותיה, which is the Qeri) signifies "supports," and comes from אשׁה, Arab. asâ, to support, help; then the supports of a building, its foundations; cf. אשּׁיּא, Ezr 4:12. Here the word signifies the supports of the city, i.e., the fortifications of Babylon, ἐπάλξεις, propugnacula, pinnae, the battlements of the city wall, not the foundations of the walls, for which נפל is unsuitable. "It (sc., the destruction of Babylon) is the vengeance of Jahveh." "The vengeance of Jahveh" is an expression derived from Num 31:3. "Avenge yourselves on her," i.e., take retribution for what Babylon has done to other nations, especially to the people of God; cf. 27f. and Jer 51:11. The words, "cut off out of Babylon the sower and the reaper," are not to be restricted to the fields, which, according to the testimonies of Diod. Sic. ii. 7, Pliny xviii. 17, and Curtius Jer 51:1, lay within the wall round Babylon, but "Babylon" is the province together with its capital; and the objection of Ngelsbach, that the prophet, in the whole context, is describing the siege of the city of Babylon, is invalid, because Jer 50:12 plainly shows that not merely the city, but the province of Babylon, is to become a wilderness, desert, and steppe. The further threat, also, "every one flees to his own people from before the oppressing sword" (cf. Jer 25:38; Jer 46:16), applies not merely to the strangers residing in Babylon, but generally to those in Babylonia. Hitzig would arbitrarily refer these words merely to the husbandmen and field-workers. The fundamental passage, Isa 13:14, which Jeremiah had before his mind and repeats verbatim, tells decidedly against this view; cf. also Jer 51:9, Jer 51:44. Jer 50:17-19 This judgment comes on Babylon because of her oppression and scattering of the people of Israel, whom the Lord will now feed in peace again on their native soil. Israel is like שׂה פזוּרה, a sheep which, having been scared away out of its stall or fold, is hunted into the wide world; cf. פּזּרוּ בגּוים, Joe 3:2. Although פּזר, "to scatter," implies the conception of a flock, yet we cannot take שׂה as a collective (Graf), since it is nomen unitatis. The point in the comparison lies on the fact that Israel has been hunted, like a solitary sheep, up and down among the beasts of the earth; and pizeer is more exactly specified by the following clause, "lions have chased after it." The object of הדּיחוּ is easily derived from the context, so that we do not need to follow Hitzig in changing הדּיחוּ הראשׁון into הדּיחוּה ראשׁון. These kings are, the king of Assyria first, and the king of Babylon last. The former has dispersed the ten tribes among the heathen; the latter, by destroying the kingdom of Judah, and carrying away its inhabitants, has shattered the theocracy. The verbs apply to the figure of the lion, and the suffixes refer to Israel. אכל is used of the devouring of the flesh; עצּם is a denominative from עצם, and means the same as גּרם, Num 24:8, to break bones in pieces, not merely gnaw them. So long as the flesh only is eaten, the skeleton of bones remains; if these also be broken, the animal is quite destroyed. Jer 50:18-20 The Assyrian has already received his punishment for that-the Assyrian kingdom has been destroyed; Babylon will meet with the same punishment, and then (Jer 50:19) Israel will be led back to his pasture-ground. נוה, pasture-ground, grass-plot, where sheep feed, is the land of Israel. Israel, led back thither, will feed on Carmel and Bashan, the most fertile tracts of the country, and the mountains of Ephraim and Gilead, which also furnish fodder in abundance for sheep. As to Gilead, see Num 32:1; Mic 7:14; and in regard to the mountains of Ephraim, Exo 34:13., where the feeding on the mountains of Israel and in the valleys is depicted as fat pasture. The mountains of Israel here signify the northern portion of the land generally, including the large and fertile plain of Jezreel, and the different valleys between the several ranges of mountains, which here and there show traces of luxuriant vegetation even yet; cf. Robinson's Physical Geography, p. 120. Then also the guilt of the sins of Israel and Judah shall be blotted out, because the Lord grants pardon to the remnant of His people. This promise points to the time of the New Covenant; cf. Jer 31:34 and Jer 33:8. The deliverance of Israel from Babylon coincides with the view given of the regeneration of the people by the Messiah, just as we find throughout the second portion of Isaiah. On the construction 'יבקּשׁ את־עון ישׂ, cf. 35:14, and Gesenius, 143, 1. On the form תּמּצאינה, with y after the manner of verbs ה''ל, cf. Ewald, 198, b.