Jeremiah 50

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The fall of Babylon

¹ The word that Yahweh spoke concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, by Jeremiah the prophet: ² Declare among the nations and proclaim, and set up a banner; proclaim, do not conceal it; say, "Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is shattered; her images are put to shame, her idols are shattered." ³ For out of the north a nation has come up against her; it shall make her land a desolation, and no one shall dwell in it; both man and beast have fled; they are gone.

Israel and Judah return

⁴ In those days and at that time, declares Yahweh, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together; weeping as they go, they shall come and seek Yahweh their Elohim. ⁵ They shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces turned toward it: "Come, and let us join ourselves to Yahweh in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten."

⁶ My people have been lost sheep; their shepherds have led them astray, they have turned them away on the mountains; they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting place. ⁷ All who found them have devoured them, and their adversaries said, "We are not guilty, because they have sinned against Yahweh, the dwelling of righteousness, Yahweh, the Hope of their fathers."

⁸ Flee from the midst of Babylon, go out from the land of the Chaldeans, and be like male goats before the flock. ⁹ For see, I am stirring up and bringing up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country; they shall set themselves in array against her; from there she shall be taken. Their arrows shall be like those of a skilled warrior who does not return empty-handed. ¹⁰ Chaldea shall become plunder; all who plunder her shall be satisfied, declares Yahweh.

¹¹ Because you rejoice, because you exult, you plunderers of My heritage, because you frisk about like a heifer threshing grain, and neigh like stallions, ¹² your mother shall be utterly put to shame; she who bore you shall be disgraced. See, she shall be the last of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert. ¹³ Because of the wrath of Yahweh she shall not be inhabited, but shall be wholly desolate; everyone who passes by Babylon will be appalled and will hiss because of all her plagues.

¹⁴ Set yourselves in array against Babylon all around, all you who bend the bow; shoot at her, spare no arrows, for she has sinned against Yahweh. ¹⁵ Raise a shout against her all around; she has surrendered; her bulwarks have fallen, her walls are thrown down. For this is the vengeance of Yahweh: take vengeance on her; as she has done, do to her. ¹⁶ Cut off from Babylon the sower and him who handles the sickle in the time of harvest; because of the sword of the oppressor each will turn to his own people, and each will flee to his own land.

¹⁷ Israel is a scattered sheep, driven away by lions. First the king of Assyria devoured him, and now at the last Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has gnawed his bones. ¹⁸ Therefore thus says Yahweh Tsevaot, the Elohim of Israel: See, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I punished the king of Assyria. ¹⁹ And I will bring Israel back to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied on the hill country of Ephraim and in Gilead. ²⁰ In those days and at that time, declares Yahweh, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found; for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant.

Judgment on the land of the Chaldeans

²¹ Go up against the land of Merathaim, against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod. Lay waste and devote them to destruction after them, declares Yahweh, and do according to all that I have commanded you. ²² The noise of battle is in the land, and great destruction. ²³ How the hammer of the whole earth is cut down and broken! How Babylon has become a horror among the nations! ²⁴ I set a snare for you, and you were caught, O Babylon, and you did not know it; you were found and also seized, because you strove against Yahweh. ²⁵ Yahweh has opened His armory and brought out the weapons of His indignation; for Adonai Yahweh Tsevaot has a work to do in the land of the Chaldeans. ²⁶ Come against her from the farthest border; open her granaries; pile her up like heaps of grain, and devote her to destruction; let nothing of her be left. ²⁷ Slay all her bulls; let them go down to the slaughter. Woe to them! For their day has come, the time of their punishment. ²⁸ Listen! Those who flee and escape from the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of Yahweh our Elohim, the vengeance for His temple!

²⁹ Summon archers against Babylon, all who bend the bow! Encamp around her; let none of her escape. Repay her according to her work; according to all that she has done, do to her; for she has acted arrogantly against Yahweh, against the Holy One of Israel. ³⁰ Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all her men of war shall be silenced in that day, declares Yahweh. ³¹ See, I am against you, O proud one, declares Adonai Yahweh Tsevaot; for your day has come, the time that I will punish you. ³² The proud one shall stumble and fall, with no one to raise him up; and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it will devour all that is around him.

Israel's strong Redeemer

³³ Thus says Yahweh Tsevaot: The children of Israel are oppressed, and the children of Judah with them; all who took them captive hold them fast; they refuse to let them go. ³⁴ Their Redeemer is strong; Yahweh Tsevaot is His name. He will surely plead their cause, that He may give rest to the earth, and unrest to the inhabitants of Babylon.

³⁵ A sword against the Chaldeans, declares Yahweh, and against the inhabitants of Babylon, and against her princes and her wise men! ³⁶ A sword against the liars, and they shall become fools! A sword against her mighty men, and they shall be dismayed! ³⁷ A sword against his horses and against his chariots, and against all the mixed people in her midst, and they shall become like women! A sword against her treasures, and they shall be plundered! ³⁸ A drought upon her waters, and they shall be dried up! For it is a land of carved images, and they are mad over their dreadful idols. ³⁹ Therefore desert creatures shall dwell there with hyenas, and ostriches shall dwell in her; she shall never again be inhabited, nor lived in from generation to generation. ⁴⁰ Like Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbors when Elohim overthrew them, declares Yahweh, no man shall dwell there, nor shall a son of man sojourn in it.

⁴¹ See, a people is coming from the north, and a great nation and many kings are stirred up from the farthest parts of the earth. ⁴² They grip bow and javelin; they are cruel and show no mercy. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride on horses, set in array like a man for battle against you, O daughter of Babylon. ⁴³ The king of Babylon has heard the report of them, and his hands grow weak; anguish has seized him, pain like a woman in labor.

⁴⁴ See, like a lion he will come up from the thicket of the Jordan against the perennial pasture; for in an instant I will make them run away from it, and I will appoint over it whom I choose. For who is like Me? Who will summon Me? And who is the shepherd who can stand before Me? ⁴⁵ Therefore hear the counsel of Yahweh which He has taken against Babylon, and His purposes which He has purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely they shall drag them away, even the little ones of the flock; surely the pasture shall be made desolate because of them. ⁴⁶ At the sound of Babylon's capture the earth shakes, and an outcry is heard among the nations.

Notes

• 50:1 Chapters 50-51, the longest of the oracles against the nations, are about Babylon, the empire that destroyed Jerusalem; 25:12 had already announced that its turn would come after seventy years. In the ancient Greek translation these chapters stand in another place, as chapters 27-28 (see the note at 1:1). Babylon fell to Cyrus in 539 BC; ancient accounts say the city was taken with little fighting, and its full ruin came slowly over the following centuries (see the note at Isaiah 13:17). Many lines echo Isaiah 13-14 and 47 and are taken up again in Revelation 17-18, and earlier oracles are turned against Babylon: verses 41-43 repeat what 6:22-24 said of the enemy coming against Zion, and verses 40 and 44-46 repeat 49:18-21 about Edom.
• 50:2 Bel, "lord," was the title of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, here called by his Hebrew name Merodach (see the note at Isaiah 46:1). The word for "idols" here is gillulim, a scornful term that many connect with galal, "dung"; Ezekiel uses it often. The gods who were supposed to guard the city share its shame.
• 50:4 In the very days that Babylon falls, the two houses come back together, the children of Israel and the children of Judah, weeping and seeking Yahweh (compare 3:18 and 31:9). They join themselves to Him "in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten" (verse 5; compare 32:40 and the new covenant of 31:31-34), and verse 20 adds that their iniquity will be sought and not found, "for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant."
• 50:6 Yahweh's people are "lost sheep," led astray by the shepherds who should have guided them, their kings, priests and prophets (23:1-2). Their true resting place was Yahweh Himself, whom even their enemies call "the dwelling of righteousness" (verse 7). Yeshua took up the same picture when He spoke of His mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:6; 15:24).
• 50:21 Merathaim means "double rebellion" and Pekod "punishment." Both are generally taken as plays on real names: Marratim, the marshy land by the Persian Gulf in southern Babylonia, and Puqudu, an Aramean people east of the Tigris (compare Ezekiel 23:23). The names themselves announce the verdict. "Devote to destruction" is the language once used of Canaan (see the note at 25:9): the empire that devastated the nations now receives the same sentence.
• 50:34 "Their Redeemer is strong" are the words of Proverbs 23:11, where Yahweh defends the fatherless; "Redeemer" is go'el, the next of kin who buys back and defends his relative (see the note at Isaiah 47:4). "They refuse to let them go" (verse 33) echoes Pharaoh, who "refuses to let the people go" (Exodus 7:14): Babylon is a new Egypt, and Yahweh will redeem His people again. "Rest" and "unrest" play on two similar Hebrew verbs, hirgia and hirgiz.
• 50:38 A wordplay runs through verses 35-38: "sword" (cherev) falls five times on Babylon's people, horses and treasures, and then "drought" (chorev), written with the same Hebrew consonants, falls on her waters. Babylon lived from the Euphrates and its canals; the Greek historian Herodotus tells that Cyrus entered the city by diverting the river, and Revelation pictures the Euphrates dried up (Revelation 16:12). "Dreadful idols" is eimim, "terrors."

Jeremiah 49 · Jeremiah 51

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