Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary

The pride of Babylon is humbled through the utter destruction of the people and the land. - Jer 50:29. "Summon archers against Jerusalem, all those who bend the bow; encamp against her round about. Let there be no escape for her; recompense to her according to her work; according to that which she hath done, do ye to her: for she hath presumed against Jahveh, against the Holy One of Israel. Jer 50:30. Therefore shall her young men fall in her streets, and all her men of war shall fail in that day, saith Jahveh. Jer 50:31. Behold, I am against thee, O Pride! said the Lord, Jahveh of hosts; for thy day hath come, the time [when] I visit thee. Jer 50:32. And Pride shall stumble and fall, and he shall have none to lift him up; and I will kindle fire in his cities, and it shall devour all that is round about him. Jer 50:33. Thus saith Jahveh of hosts, the Children of Israel and the children of Judah are oppressed together, and all who led them captive kept hold of them; they refused to let them go. Jer 50:34. Their Redeemer is strong; Jahveh of hosts is His name: He shall surely plead their cause, that He may give rest to the earth, and make the inhabitants of Babylon tremble. Jer 50:35. A sword [is] against the Chaldeans, saith Jahveh, and against the inhabitants of Babylon, and against her princes, and against her wise men. Jer 50:36. A sword [is] against the liars, and they shall become fools; a sword is against her heroes, and they shall be confounded. Jer 50:37. A sword [is] against his horses, and against his chariots, and against all the auxiliaries which [are] in the midst of her, and they shall become women; a sword is against her treasures, and they shall be plundered. Jer 50:38. A drought is against her waters, and they shall become dry; for it is a land of graven images, and they are mad upon idols. Jer 50:39. Therefore shall wild beasts dwell [there] with jackals, and ostriches shall dwell in it; and it shall no more be inhabited for ever, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. Jer 50:40. As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and their inhabitants, saith Jahveh, no man shall dwell there, nor shall a son of man sojourn in it." Further description of the execution of God's wrath. Archers shall come and besiege Babylon round about, so that no one shall escape. The summons, "Call archers hither," is a dramatic turn in the thought that the siege is quickly to ensue. השׁמיע is used here as in Jer 51:27, to summon, call by making proclamation, as in Kg1 15:22. רבּים does not signify "many," as the ancient versions give it; this agrees neither with the apposition which follows, "all that bend the bow," nor with Jer 50:26, where all, to the last, are summoned against Babylon. Raschi, followed by all the moderns, more correctly renders it "archers," and derives it from רבה = רבב, Gen 49:23, cf. with Jer 21:10, like רב, Job 16:13. The apposition, "all those who bend the bow," gives additional force. חנה with accus. means to besiege; cf. Psa 53:6. "Let there be no escape" is equivalent to saying, "that none may escape from Babylon." The Qeri להּ after יהי is unnecessary, and merely taken from Jer 50:26. On the expression "render to her," etc., cf. Jer 25:14; and on "according to all," etc., f. Jer 50:15. "For she hath acted presumptuously against Jahveh," by burning His temple, and keeping His people captive: in this way has Babylon offended "against the Holy One of Israel." This epithet of God is taken from Isaiah, cf. Isa 51:5. This presumption must be punished. Jer 50:30-32 Jer 50:30 is a repetition of Jer 49:26. - Jer 50:31. The Lord will now visit the presumption of Babylon. The day of punishment has arrived. On "behold, I am against thee," cf. Jer 21:13. "O arrogance, pride!" is directly addressed to Babylon: in Jer 50:32 also there is a like designation of Babylon as the personification of pride. On the words "for thy day is come," cf. Jer 50:27. "And I will kindle a fire," etc., stands as in Jer 21:14, where, however, "in its forest" is found instead of "in his cities." The former, indeed, is the reading rendered by the lxx in this passage; but they have acted quite arbitrarily in this, since Jeremiah, for the most part, varies individual words when he repeats a thought. "In his cities" does not suit very well, inasmuch as the other cities of the country belonged to Babylon, the μητρόπολις as hers, and in Jer 51:43 they are spoken of as hers; cf. Jer 19:15; Jer 34:1; Jer 49:13, etc. Jer 50:33-38 Further description of the guilt and punishment of Babylon. The presumptuous pride manifests itself in the fact that Israel and Judah still languish in exile. All those who have been seized and carried away they have kept hold of. שׁביהם is used as in Isa 14:2. They refuse to let them go, as Pharaoh once did, Exo 7:14, 27; Exo 9:2; cf. Isa 14:17. Jahveh, the deliverer of Israel, cannot endure this. As the strong One, the God of hosts, He will lead them in the fight; as their advocate, He will obtain their dues for them; cf. Jer 25:31; Isa 49:25. Dahler, Ewald, and Umbreit follow the Vulgate and the Chaldee in taking 'למען הרגּיע as synonymous with הרגּיז, in the sense of shaking, rousing, a meaning which רגע has in the Kal, but which cannot be made out for the Hiphil. In the Hiphil it means to give rest, to come to rest, Deu 28:65; Isa 34:14; Isa 61:4; Jer 31:2; and in the Niphal, to rest, keep quiet, Jer 47:6. This is the meaning given by the Syriac, Raschi, Kimchi, Rosenmller, Maurer, Hitzig, etc., and supported by a comparison with Isa 14:7, Isa 14:3,Isa 14:16. Babylon has hitherto kept the earth in unrest and anxiety (Isa 14:16); now it is to get rest (Isa 14:3, Isa 14:7), and trembling or quaking for fear is to come on Babylon. The two verbs, which have similar sounds, express a contrast. On the form of the infinitive הרגּיע, cf. Ewald, 238, d. In order to conduct the case of Israel as against Babylon, the Lord (Jer 50:35-38) calls for the sword against the Chaldeans, the inhabitants of Babylon, on their princes, wise men, heroes, and the whole army, the treasures and the waters. There is no verb following חרב, but only the object with על, the words being put in the form of an exclamation, on account of the passion pervading them. The sword is to come and show its power on the Chaldeans, i.e., the population of the rural districts, on the inhabitants of the capital, and further, on the princes and wise men (magicians). A special class of the last named are the בּדּים, properly "babblers," those who talk at random, here "soothsayers" and lying prophets, the astrologers of Babylon; see Delitzsch on Isa 44:25 [Clark's translation, For. Theol. Lib.]. ונאלוּ, "And they shall be as fools;" see on Jer 5:4. Further, on the warriors, the horses, and war-chariots, the main strength of the Asiatic conquerors, cf. Jer 46:9, Isa 43:17; Psa 20:8. כּל־הערב, "all the mixed multitude" in the midst of Babylon: these are here the mercenaries ad allies (as to this word, see on Jer 25:20). These shall become women, i.e., weak and incapable of resistance; see Nah 3:13. The last objects of vengeance are the treasures and the waters of Babylon. In Jer 50:38 the Masoretes have pointed חרב, because חרב, "sword," seemed to be inapplicable to the waters. But indeed neither does the sword, in the proper sense of the word, well apply to treasures; it rather stands, by synecdoche, for war. In this improper meaning it might also be used with reference to the waters, in so far as the canals and watercourses, on which the fertility of Babylonia depended, were destroyed by war. Hence many expositors would read חרב here also, and attribute the employment of this word to the rhetorical power connected with enumeration. Others are of opinion that חרב may also mean aridity, drought, in Deu 28:22; but the assumption is erroneous, and cannot be confirmed by that passage. Neither can it be denied, that to confine the reference of the expression "her waters" to the canals and artificial watercourses of Babylonia seems unnatural. All these received their water from the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, the volume of water in which remained uninfluenced by war. We therefore follow Hitzig in holding that חרב is the correct punctuation; in the transition from חרב into חרב, with its similar sound, we neither perceive any injury done to rhetorical force, derived from an enumeration of objects, nor any need for referring the following clause, which assigns the reason merely to such rhetorical considerations as Graf does. In the drying up of the water there is no allusion to the diversion of the Euphrates, by which Cyrus opened up for himself an entrance into the city (Herodotus, i. 190); the drying up is merely appointed by God, as a consequence of continued drought, for the purpose of destroying the land. Hitzig's opinion neither suits the context, nor can be justified otherwise; he holds that water is the emblem of the sea on nations, the surging multitude of people in the streets of the city, and he refers for proof to Jer 51:36 and Isa 21:1 (!). The clauses in Jer 50:38, which assign the reason, refer to the whole threatening, Jer 50:35-38. Babylon is to be destroyed, with its inhabitants and all its means of help, because it is a land of idols (cf. Jer 51:52 and Isa 21:9), and its inhabitants suffer themselves to be befooled by false gods. התהולל means to act or behave like a madman, rave, Jer 25:16; here, to let oneself be deprived of reason, not (as Graf thinks) to fall into a sacred frenzy. אימים, terrors, Psa 88:16; here, objects of fear and horror, i.e., idols. Jer 50:39 Therefore shall Babylon become an eternal waste, where none but beasts of the desert find shelter, where no human being dwells. This threat is formed out of reminiscences from Isa 13:20-22 and Isa 34:14. For ציּים and איּים, see on Isa 34:14; for בּנות יענה, see on Isa 13:21. The second half of the verse agrees word for word with Isa 13:20. Jer 50:40 Jer 50:40 is a repetition of Jer 49:18, and in its first half is founded on Isa 13:19.