7 And all the nations will be servants to him and to his son and to his son's son, till the time comes for his land to be overcome: and then a number of nations and great kings will take it for their use.
Said to him, Go quickly and say to this young man, Jerusalem will be an unwalled town, because of the great number of men and cattle in her. For I, says the Lord, will be a wall of fire round about her, and I will be the glory inside her.
That you will take up this bitter song against the king of Babylon, and say, How has the cruel overseer come to an end! He who was lifted up in pride is cut off; The stick of the evil-doers, the rod of the rulers, is broken by the Lord; He whose rod was on the peoples with an unending wrath, ruling the nations in passion, with an uncontrolled rule.
And this is the writing which was recorded, Mene, tekel, peres. This is the sense of the words: Mene; your kingdom has been numbered by God and ended. Tekel; you have been put in the scales and seen to be under weight. Peres; your kingdom has been cut up and given to the Medes and Persians. Then, by the order of Belshazzar, they put a purple robe on Daniel, and a gold chain round his neck, and a public statement was made that he was to be a ruler of high authority in the kingdom. That very night Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldaeans, was put to death.
And he gave a loud cry, saying, Babylon the great has come down from her high place, she has come to destruction and has become a place of evil spirits, and of every unclean spirit, and a hole for every unclean and hated bird. For through the wine of the wrath of her evil desires all the nations have come to destruction; and the kings of the earth made themselves unclean with her, and the traders of the earth had their wealth increased by the power of her evil ways. And another voice from heaven came to my ears, saying, Come out of her, my people, so that you may have no part in her sins and in her punishments. For her sins have gone up even to heaven, and God has taken note of her evil-doing. Give to her as she gave, even an increased reward for her works; in the cup which was mixed by her, let there be mixed as much again for herself. As she gave glory to herself, and became more evil in her ways, in the same measure give her pain and weeping: for she says in her heart, I am seated here a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see sorrow. For this reason in one day will her troubles come, death and sorrow and need of food; and she will be completely burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who is her judge.
And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will be turned against the evil woman, and will make her waste and uncovered, and will take her flesh for food, and will have her burned with fire. Because God has put it in their hearts to do his purpose, and to be of one mind, giving their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God have effect and are complete.
And another angel came out from the house of God, crying with a loud voice to him who was seated on the cloud, Put in your blade, and let the grain be cut: because the hour for cutting it is come; for the grain of the earth is over-ready. And he who was seated on the cloud sent in his blade on the earth; and the grain of the earth was cut. And another angel came out from the house of God which is in heaven, having a sharp curved blade. And another angel came out from the altar, who has power over fire; and he gave a loud cry to him who had the sharp curved blade, saying, Put in your sharp blade, and let the grapes of the vine of the earth be cut; for her grapes are fully ready. And the angel sent his blade into the earth, and the vine of the earth was cut, and he put it into the great wine-crusher of the wrath of God. And the grapes were crushed under foot outside the town, and blood came out from them, even to the head-bands of the horses, two hundred miles.
And there was given to him a mouth to say words of pride against God; and there was given to him authority to go on for forty-two months. And his mouth was open to say evil against God, and against his name and his Tent, even against those who are in heaven. And it was given to him to make war on the saints and to overcome them: and there was given to him authority over every tribe and people and language and nation. And all who are on the earth will give him worship, everyone whose name has not been from the first in the book of life of the Lamb who was put to death. If any man has ears, let him give ear. If any man sends others into prison, into prison he will go: if any man puts to death with the sword, with the sword will he be put to death. Here is the quiet strength and the faith of the saints.
And all who had not come to death by the sword he took away prisoners to Babylon; and they became servants to him and to his sons till the kingdom of Persia came to power: So that the words of the Lord, which he said by the mouth of Jeremiah, might come true, till the land had had pleasure in her Sabbaths; for as long as she was waste the land kept the Sabbath, till seventy years were complete.
The word which the Lord said about Babylon, about the land of the Chaldaeans, by Jeremiah the prophet. Give it out among the nations, make it public, and let the flag be lifted up; give the word and keep nothing back; say, Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is broken, her images are put to shame, her gods are broken. For out of the north a nation is coming up against her, which will make her land waste and unpeopled: they are in flight, man and beast are gone. In those days and in that time, says the Lord, the children of Israel will come, they and the children of Judah together; they will go on their way weeping and making prayer to the Lord their God. They will be questioning about the way to Zion, with their faces turned in its direction, saying, Come, and be united to the Lord in an eternal agreement which will be kept in mind for ever. My people have been wandering sheep: their keepers have made them go out of the right way, turning them loose on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, having no memory of their resting-place. They have been attacked by all those who came across them: and their attackers said, We are doing no wrong, because they have done evil against the Lord in whom is righteousness, against the Lord, the hope of their fathers. Go in flight out of Babylon, go out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and be like he-goats before the flocks. For see, I am moving and sending up against Babylon a band of great nations from the north country: and they will put their armies in position against her; and from there she will be taken: their arrows will be like those of an expert man of war; not one will come back without getting its mark. And the wealth of Chaldaea will come into the hands of her attackers: all those who take her wealth will have enough, says the Lord. Because you are glad, because you are lifted up with pride, you wasters of my heritage, because you are playing like a young cow put out to grass, and you make a noise like strong horses; Your mother will be put to shame; she who gave you birth will be looked down on: see, she will be the last of the nations, a waste place, a dry and unwatered land. Because of the wrath of the Lord no one will be living in it, and it will be quite unpeopled: everyone who goes by Babylon will be overcome with wonder, and make sounds of fear at all her punishments. Put your armies in position against Babylon on every side, all you bowmen; let loose your arrows at her, not keeping any back: for she has done evil against the Lord. Give a loud cry against her on every side; she has given herself up, her supports are overturned, her walls are broken down: for it is the payment taken by the Lord; give her payment; as she has done, so do to her. Let the planter of seed be cut off from Babylon, and everyone using the curved blade at the time of the grain-cutting: for fear of the cruel sword, everyone will be turned to his people, everyone will go in flight to his land. Israel is a wandering sheep; the lions have been driving him away: first he was attacked by the king of Assyria, and now his bones have been broken by Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon. So this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said: See, I will send punishment on the king of Babylon and on his land, as I have given punishment to the king of Assyria. And I will make Israel come back to his resting-place, and he will get his food on Carmel and Bashan, and have his desire in full measure on the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead. In those days and in that time, says the Lord, when the evil-doing of Israel is looked for, there will be nothing; and in Judah no sins will be seen: for I will have forgiveness for those whom I will keep safe. Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the people of Pekod; put them to death and send destruction after them, says the Lord, and do everything I have given you orders to do. There is a sound of war in the land and of great destruction. How is the hammer of all the earth cut in two and broken! how has Babylon become a waste among the nations! I have put a net for you, and you have been taken, O Babylon, without your knowledge: you have been uncovered and taken because you were fighting against the Lord. From his store-house the Lord has taken the instruments of his wrath: for the Lord, the Lord of armies, has a work to do in the land of the Chaldaeans. Come up against her one and all, let her store-houses be broken open: make her into a mass of stones, give her to the curse, till there is nothing of her to be seen. Put all her oxen to the sword; let them go down to death: sorrow is theirs, for their day has come, the time of their punishment. The voice of those who are in flight, who have got away safe from the land of Babylon, to give news in Zion of punishment from the Lord our God, even payment for his Temple. Send for the archers to come together against Babylon, all the bowmen; put up your tents against her on every side; let no one get away: give her the reward of her work; as she has done, so do to her: for she has been uplifted in pride against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel. For this cause her young men will be falling in her streets, and all her men of war will be cut off in that day, says the Lord. See, I am against you, O pride, says the Lord, the Lord of armies, for your day has come, the time when I will send punishment on you. And pride will go with uncertain steps and have a fall, and there will be no one to come to his help: and I will put a fire in his towns, burning up everything round about him. This is what the Lord of armies has said: The children of Israel and the children of Judah are crushed down together: all those who took them prisoner keep them in a tight grip; they will not let them go. Their saviour is strong; the Lord of armies is his name: he will certainly take up their cause, so that he may give rest to the earth and trouble to the people of Babylon. A sword is on the Chaldaeans, says the Lord, and on the people of Babylon, and on her rulers and on her wise men. A sword is on the men of pride, and they will become foolish: a sword is on her men of war, and they will be broken. A sword is on all the mixed people in her, and they will become like women: a sword is on her store-houses, and they will be taken by her attackers. A sword is on her waters, drying them up; for it is a land of images, and their minds are fixed on false gods. For this reason the beasts of the waste land with the wolves will make their holes there and the ostriches will be living in it: never again will men be living there, it will be unpeopled from generation to generation. As when Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbouring towns were overturned by God, says the Lord, so no man will be living in it, and no son of man will have a resting-place there. See, a people is coming from the north; a great nation and a number of kings will be put in motion from the inmost parts of the earth. Bows and spears are in their hands; they are cruel and have no mercy; their voice is like the thunder of the sea, and they go on horses; everyone in his place like men going to the fight, against you, O daughter of Babylon. The king of Babylon has had news of them, and his hands have become feeble: trouble has come on him and pain like the pain of a woman in childbirth. See, he will come up like a lion from the thick growth of Jordan against the resting-place of Teman: but I will suddenly make them go in flight from her; and I will put over her the man of my selection: for who is like me? and who will put forward his cause against me? and what keeper of sheep will keep his place before me? So give ear to the decision of the Lord which he has made against Babylon, and to his purposes designed against the land of the Chaldaeans; Truly, they will be pulled away by the smallest of the flock; truly, he will make waste their fields with them. At the cry, Babylon is taken! the earth is shaking, and the cry comes to the ears of the nations.
All this land will be a waste and a cause of wonder; and these nations will be the servants of the king of Babylon for seventy years. And it will come about, after seventy years are ended, that I will send punishment on the king of Babylon, and on that nation, says the Lord, for their evil-doing, and on the land of the Chaldaeans; and I will make it a waste for ever. And I will make that land undergo everything I have said against it, even everything recorded in this book, which Jeremiah the prophet has said against all the nations. For a number of nations and great kings will make servants of them, even of them: and I will give them the reward of their acts, even the reward of the work of their hands.
Come and take your seat in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; come down from your seat of power, and take your place on the earth, O daughter of the Chaldaeans: for you will never again seem soft and delicate. Take the crushing-stones and get the meal crushed: take off your veil, put away your robe, let your legs be uncovered, go through the rivers. The shame of your unclothed condition will be seen by all: I will give punishment without mercy, Says the Lord who takes up our cause; the Lord of armies is his name, the Holy One of Israel. Be seated in the dark without a word, O daughter of the Chaldaeans: for you will no longer be named, The Queen of Kingdoms.
For I will come up against them, says the Lord of armies, cutting off from Babylon name and offspring, son and son's son, says the Lord. And I will make you a heritage for the hedgehog, and pools of water: and I will go through it with the brush of destruction, says the Lord of armies.
Their hearts will be full of fear; pains and sorrows will overcome them; they will be in pain like a woman in childbirth; they will be shocked at one another; their faces will be like flames. See, the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with wrath and burning passion: to make the land a waste, driving the sinners in it to destruction. For the stars of heaven and its bright armies will not give their light: the sun will be made dark in his journey through the heaven, and the moon will keep back her light. And I will send punishment on the world for its evil, and on the sinners for their wrongdoing; and I will put an end to all pride, and will make low the power of the cruel. I will make men so small in number, that a man will be harder to get than gold, even the best gold of Ophir. For this cause the heavens will be shaking, and the earth will be moved out of its place, in the wrath of the Lord of armies, and in the day of his burning passion. And it will be that, like a roe in flight, and like wandering sheep, they will go every man to his people and to his land. Everyone who is overtaken will have a spear put through him, and everyone who goes in flight will be put to the sword. Their young children will be broken up before their eyes; their goods will be taken away, and their wives made the property of others. See, I am driving the Medes against them, who put no value on silver and have no pleasure in gold. In their hands are bows and spears; they are cruel, violently putting the young men to death, and crushing the young women; they have no pity for children, and no mercy for the fruit of the body. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beautiful town which is the pride of the Chaldaeans, will be like God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. People will never be living in it again, and it will have no more men from generation to generation: the Arab will not put up his tent there; and those who keep sheep will not make it a resting-place for their flocks. But the beasts of the waste land will have their holes there; and the houses will be full of crying jackals, and ostriches will have their place there, and evil spirits will be dancing there. And wolves will be answering one another in their towers, and jackals in their houses of pleasure: her time is near, and her days of power will quickly be ended.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Jeremiah 27
Commentary on Jeremiah 27 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 27
Jer 27:1-22. The Futility of Resisting Nebuchadnezzar Illustrated to the Ambassadors of the Kings, Desiring to Have the King of Judah Confederate with Them, under the Type of Yokes. Jeremiah Exhorts Them and Zedekiah to Yield.
1. Jehoiakim—The prophecy that follows was according to this reading given in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, fifteen years before it was published in the reign of Zedekiah to whom it refers; it was thus long deposited in the prophet's bosom, in order that by it he might be supported under trials in his prophetic career in the interim [Calvin]. But "Zedekiah" may be the true reading. So the Syriac and Arabic Versions. Jer 27:3, 12; Jer 28:1, confirm this; also, one of Kennicott's manuscripts. The English Version reading may have originated from Jer 26:1. "Son of Josiah" applies to Zedekiah as truly as to "Jehoiakim" or "Eliakim." The fourth year may, in a general sense here, as in Jer 28:1, be called "the beginning of his reign," as it lasted eleven years (2Ki 24:18). It was not long after the fourth year of his reign that he rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 51:59; 52:3; 2Ki 24:20), in violation of an oath before God (2Ch 36:13).
2. bonds—by which the yoke is made fast to the neck (Jer 5:5).
yokes—literally, the carved piece of wood attached at both ends to the two yokes on the necks of a pair of oxen, so as to connect them. Here the yoke itself. The plural is used, as he was to wear one himself, and give the others to the ambassadors; (Jer 27:3; 28:10, 12) proves that the symbolical act was in this instance (though not in others, Jer 25:15) actually done (compare Isa 20:2, &c.; Eze 12:3, 11, 18).
3. And send them to the king of Edom, &c.—Appropriate symbol, as these ambassadors had come to Jerusalem to consult as to shaking off the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar. According to Pherecydes in Clement of Alexandria [Miscellanies, 567], Idanthura, king of the Scythians, intimated to Darius, who had crossed the Danube, that he would lead an army against him, by sending him, instead of a letter, a mouse, a frog, a bird, an arrow, and a plough. The task assigned to Jeremiah required great faith, as it was sure to provoke alike his own countrymen and the foreign ambassadors and their kings, by a seeming insult, at the very time that all were full of confident hopes grounded on the confederacy.
5. God here, as elsewhere, connects with the symbol doctrine, which is as it were its soul, without which it would be not only cold and frivolous, but even dead [Calvin]. God's mention of His supreme power is in order to refute the pride of those who rely on their own power (Isa 45:12).
given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me—(Ps 115:15, 16; Da 4:17, 25, 32). Not for his merits, but of My own sole good pleasure [Estius].
6. beasts of the field—not merely the horses to carry his Chaldean soldiers, and oxen to draw his provisions [Grotius]; not merely the deserts, mountains, and woods, the haunts of wild beasts, implying his unlimited extent of empire [Estius]; but the beasts themselves by a mysterious instinct of nature. A reproof to men that they did not recognize God's will, which the very beasts acknowledged (compare Isa 1:3). As the beasts are to submit to Christ, the Restorer of the dominion over nature, lost by the first Adam (compare Ge 1:28; 2:19, 20; Ps 8:6-8), so they were appointed to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, the representative of the world power and prefigurer of Antichrist; this universal power was suffered to be held by him to show the unfitness of any to wield it "until He come whose right it is" (Eze 21:27).
7. son … son's son—(2Ch 36:20). Nebuchadnezzar had four successors—Evil-merodach, his son; Neriglissar, husband of Nebuchadnezzar's daughter; his son, Labosodarchod; and Naboned (with whom his son, Belshazzar, was joint king), son of Evil-merodach. But Neriglissar and Labosodarchod were not in the direct male line; so that the prophecy held good to "his son and his son's son," and the intermediate two are omitted.
time of his land—that is, of its subjugation or its being "visited" in wrath (Jer 27:22; Jer 25:12; 29:10; 50:27; Da 5:26).
serve themselves of him—make him their servant (Jer 25:14; Isa 13:22). So "his day" for the destined day of his calamity (Job 18:20).
8. until I have consumed them by his hand—until by these consuming visitations I have brought them under his power.
9. ye—the Jews especially, for whom the address to the rest was intended.
enchanters—augurs [Calvin], from a root, the "eyes," that is, lookers at the stars and other means of taking omens of futurity; or another root, a "fixed time," observers of times: forbidden in the law (Le 19:26; De 18:10, 11, 14).
10. to remove you—expressing the event which would result. The very thing they profess by their enchantments to avert, they are by them bringing on you. Better to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, and remain in your land, than to rebel, and be removed from it.
11. serve … till it—The same Hebrew root expresses "serve" and "till," or "cultivate." Serve ye the king of Babylon, and the land will serve you [Calvin].
12. I spake also—translate, "And I spake," &c. Special application of the subject to Zedekiah.
13. Why … die—by running on your own ruin in resisting Nebuchadnezzar after this warning (Eze 18:31).
14. lie—(Jer 14:14).
15. in my name—The devil often makes God's name the plea for lies (Mt 4:6; 7:22, 23; Jer 27:15-20, the test whereby to know false prophets).
16. The "vessels" had been carried away to Babylon in the reign of Jeconiah (2Ki 24:13); also previously in that of Jehoiakim (2Ch 36:5-7).
18. at Jerusalem—that is, in other houses containing such vessels, besides the house of God and the king's palace. Nebuzara-dan, captain of the guard under Nebuchadnezzar, carried all away (2Ki 25:13-17; 2Ch 36:18). The more costly vessels had been previously removed in the reigns of Jehoiakim and Jeconiah.
19. (Jer 52:17, 20, 21).
22. until … I visit them—in wrath by Cyrus (Jer 32:5). In seventy years from the first carrying away of captives in Jehoiachin's reign (Jer 29:10; 2Ch 36:21).
restore them—by the hand of Cyrus (Ezr 1:7). By Artaxerxes (Ezr 7:19).