Jeremiah 50:18, commentary and pictures

The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, declares that he will punish the king of Babylon and his land just as he punished the king of Assyria, placing Babylon's fall within his judgment of successive empires. It is divine recompense for her sins and pride that proves God true against her perverted principles, bringing her system, city, and nation to overthrow and utter desolation without inhabitants. It was fulfilled when Belshazzar in idolatrous revelry was weighed and found wanting, and Babylon was taken by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus, God's appointed instrument, who entered the walled city by drying the Euphrates and ended the empire. That judgment opened the way for Israel and Judah to leave Babylon, return to their land, and be restored and pardoned. The ancient city serves as a type with double application to antitypical Babylon, the great apostate system and confused religious world whose final destruction comes in the day of the Lord.

Punishment of Ancient Babylon

The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, declares that he will punish the king of Babylon and his land just as he punished the king of Assyria, placing the fall of Babylon within his judgment of successive empires. That coming desolation is set forth as heaps lying without inhabitants. The judgment is divine recompense for Babylon's sins and pride and ends in utter desolation. It proves God true against her perverted principles of right, bringing her confusion of error and her system, city, and nation to overthrow by divine judgment.

The verse belongs to Jeremiah's message of impending judgment that offered warning and mercy to ancient Babylon, but the warning was ignored. She refused to be healed, and she was not healed, and judgment followed her refusal and fulfilled the destruction foretold against her. The punishment fell when Belshazzar, weak, dissolute, riotous, idolatrous, and blaspheming God and worshiping Babylon and her deities, held festivals over her greatness and drank from the plundered gold and silver vessels of the temple at Jerusalem to gods of gold and wood and stone. Then the handwriting of Numbered, numbered, Weighed, Divisions meant God had numbered his kingdom and finished it, weighed him in the balances and found him wanting, and divided his kingdom and given it to the Medes and Persians. Before the night ended Babylon was taken on every quarter and the cry went out Babylon is fallen, is fallen, showing that no might or scheme or power or wealth of man can save a city or nation that sows within herself the seeds of error, confusion, destruction, and death.

The overthrow came by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus as God's appointed instrument though Cyrus did not know God, after Cyrus had been called by name over two hundred and sixty years before, and the fall of Babylon to the Persians is the historical event connected with the prophecy. It was fulfilled when Cyrus besieged Babylon for nearly two years and took the great walled city by drying the Euphrates and entering through the river gates left open during the annual feast-night of revelry, when Belshazzar was slain and Darius the Median took the kingdom in 538 B.C., ending the Babylonish empire after two hundred and nine years. The prophecy gave a sign that a first rumor would be followed about a year later by another rumor and the city's destruction. The first rumor came as Cyrus marched toward Babylon, after delaying his advance for a year he resumed it, and the second rumor and destruction followed.

The prophecy of destruction was not exhausted when the Persians overthrew the city. Babylon's eventual ruin came later as the city gradually decayed and became desolate, fulfilling the prophecy literally. It means the sudden fall of the Babylonian empire, not merely the city, while Belshazzar and his lords felt secure. So there will be no rebuilding of old Babylon on the Euphrates followed by sudden destruction.

Israel's Return and Vindication

The punishment of the king of Babylon and his land, just as Assyria had been punished before, was accomplished at the Medes' overthrow of its kingdom and forms the setting for Israel and Judah to leave Babylon and return to their own land. There God would restore them and provide for them in their former regions, pardoning the sins of Israel and Judah.

The chapter stands as proof that what was foretold concerning Israel and Judah was fulfilled, and not as a prediction of a future return to Canaan. A remnant from every tribe returned, though not all returned at once, and those who remained in Babylon blended into the local population.

The same prophecy sets forth the character of Babylon in its persecution of God's faithful people. Against that persecution stands God's defense of His people and His disfavor toward Babylon and its system, whose city and nation were overthrown by divine judgment.

Type of Mystical Babylon

The prophecy against Babylon pronounces judgment upon her, describes her fallen condition and foretells her destruction. The historical Babylon of Jeremiah's day serves as a type of the great mystical Babylon described in Revelation. As a sign, a first rumor was to be followed about a year later by another rumor and then by the city's destruction, and this came when Cyrus marched toward Babylon, delayed his advance for a year, then resumed it, with the second rumor and destruction following.

There will be no rebuilding of old Babylon on the Euphrates followed by sudden destruction. What is meant is the sudden fall of the Babylonian empire, not merely the city, while Belshazzar and his lords felt secure. The verse has a double application to the fall of the ancient city and empire and to the fall of antitypical Babylon. That antitypical Babylon is the great apostate harlot-system that rules over the nations of the earth, which alone is the Babylon of Revelation, the prophecy making a sudden transition from type to antitype.

In that antitypical application it applies to modern Babylon, the confused religious world, and to all sinners punished in the day of the Lord. God's judgment on Babylon followed her refusal to be healed and fulfilled the destruction foretold against her. The fall of ancient Babylon also portrays the final destruction of modern Babylon, the confused religious world, when God closes all earthly accounts. The daughters of Babylon form a part of Babylon itself, just as the daughters of Jerusalem are part of Jerusalem and the daughters of Rabbah are part of Rabbah. So great mystic Babylon embraces all corrupt Christianity, mother and daughters together, and when she rejects the announcement that the hour of judgment is come she is left without the Spirit and God's people are called out of her before her destruction as a millstone cast into the sea. The chapter is also cited as part of Scripture describing the final overthrow of the nations, in which not all beasts and birds are destroyed, but they survive and multiply among the earth's ruins during the thousand years.