Jeremiah 51 explained: Babylon Will Sink and Not Rise

Babylon's fall announced (vv. 1-10)

Leb Kamai is a coded name for Babylonia, made by swapping letters from the end of the Hebrew alphabet with those at the start. Babylon had been the gold cup God used to make other nations reel under judgment, but now her own wound cannot be healed, and Judah's exiles are told to get out and tell the news in Jerusalem.

Armies called against Babylon (vv. 11-19)

The Medes, a people from what is now Iran who were allied with the Persians, are named as the attackers, and the reason given is payback for the Jerusalem temple that Babylon burned. The poem then repeats a hymn from chapter 10, setting the Creator who commands storm and sea against idols that have no breath in them.

The war club and the mountain (vv. 20-26)

The war club that smashes everyone is probably Babylon itself, the tool God had used against other nations, though some read it as the coming conqueror, and the long list of victims echoes the real slaughter Babylon carried out in Judah. Babylon, towering over the nations like a mountain, will end as a burned-out volcano whose stones are useless for building again.

The city taken (vv. 27-44)

Peoples from the northern mountains, around modern Armenia, join the Medes, and runners rush to tell the king his city has fallen, while Jerusalem cries out for its own blood to be repaid and God promises to do it. The images are harsh, with Babylon's people drunk at a feast and never waking; Sheshak is another coded name for Babylon, and Bel is a title of Marduk, its chief god.

Get out and remember (vv. 45-58)

The exiles are urged to leave, not to panic at years of rumors, and to keep Jerusalem in mind, even as they voice their shame that foreigners entered the temple. Babylon's famous thick walls are said to fall; historically the Persians took the city in 539 BC with little fighting, and it emptied out slowly over centuries rather than all at once.

A scroll sunk in the river (vv. 59-64)

Around 594 BC, Jeremiah gave these words to Seraiah, an officer travelling with King Zedekiah, to be read aloud in Babylon. Tying a stone to the scroll and sinking it in the Euphrates acted out the message: Babylon would go down and not come back up.

Key verse: Jeremiah 51:24

Where Christians differ

Some Christians read Babylon here only as the ancient empire, with the prophecy fulfilled when it fell, while others, following the book of Revelation's use of 'Babylon' and 'come out of her,' see it also pointing to a future or symbolic power opposed to God.

Something to think about

When a people who have been crushed pray for their oppressor to suffer what they suffered, what do you make of that cry for payback?