JEREMIAH | Lesson 9 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

Read Jeremiah, chapters 50-51

MAKING THE CONNECTIONS & SETTING THE CONTEXT

1/ We have now come to the end of Jeremiah’s prophetic messages and writings here with chapters 50-51 [see ch 51.64]. And a most fitting end it is – both in terms of Jeremiah’s writings and the subject matter of the prophecies.

2/ The very last chapter, ch 52, will be another recounting of the final fall and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Babylonian armies. That event has been the primary focal point of everything Jeremiah has prophesied – and also a fitting backdrop and context to the next writings: The Lamentations of Jeremiah.

3/ These two chapters 50-51 will deliver Yahweh’s holy and just pronouncements against the Babylonian empire – the ones who had committed such violent and bloody atrocities against Judah and Jerusalem. Ch 51 will serve as an expanded commentary on the prophetic announcement Yahweh delivers in ch 50. Together, they contain 110 verses in our Bible. Of course, we won’t be able to treat both chapters in any detail, but what we will do is focus on ch 50.1-10 especially. In those few verses, all the themes will be introduced that will be expanded upon and explained in the remainder of chs 50-51.

4/ Habakkuk. We don’t have the time to bring in Habakkuk into our lesson or discussion, but Habakkuk was an early contemporary of Jeremiah.

• Habakkuk struggled with the moral dilemma and enigma that will be answered more fully here in our present lesson chapters.
• Habakkuk was prophesying during the days when the Babylonian empire was just beginning to ascend to power and turning their ominous threats toward Judah.
• Babylon had asserted their independence from the previous superpower of that part of the world, Assyria. They would conquer their former conquerors, Assyria, in 612 BC with the overthrow of Nineveh. Then they began their campaigns to conquer surrounding nations, and were turning their attention toward Judah.
• Habakkuk saw the threats of violence that would eventually destroy Judah, Yahweh’s covenant people. Habakkuk was confused, as he cries out to Yahweh for answers [see Habakkuk 1.1-6].
• His consuming confusion was reconciling the Holiness and justice of Yahweh with His allowing such a wicked and violent nation as Babylon to serve as His agent of punishment against Judah. YES! Judah had sinned against Yahweh. They had insistently and persistently rebelled against Yahweh for centuries. YES! They had stubbornly refused to listen to Yahweh’s repeated passionate calls for them to return to Him. YES! They had rebelled more and more instead of repenting and returning to Yahweh.
• BUT, Babylon was such a worse offender! How could Yahweh allow such a wicked people as the Babylonians to serve as His agents of punishment against His covenant people? He presents His questions to Yahweh in Habakkuk 1.12-13: Are you not from everlasting, O Yahweh my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Yahweh, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?
• The only answer Yahweh will give Habakkuk is: Trust Me!

5/ Vengeance / repay[ment]. So what Yahweh will do here in Jeremiah 50-51 is give a somewhat detailed and expanded response to Habakkuk’s moral dilemma: YES! Babylon is a wicked empire. YES! They have violated me and my covenant people. YES! They have arrogantly mocked me and boasted over me and destroyed my Temple [see especially 50.28 & 51.11]. BUT, their day is coming, too! I will do to them as they have done to you and to me! I will make it true for Babylon “What goes around, comes around”! If you go through chs 50-51, you will note that Yahweh announces His vengeance against Babylon no fewer than eight times. He will use the word repay five times.

6/ In other words: Babylon will not escape my Holy justice and vengeful judgments. What I have used them for against my covenant people, I will use other nations to exact the very same punishments against them. And these two chapters 50-51 will announce beforehand and describe in prophetic detail precisely how and by whom Yahweh will destroy Babylon and bring them to their deserved end.

7/ So what we will do here in ch 51.1-10 is point out the prominent themes that Yahweh will bring out in more detail in the succeeding messages…

I / vv 1-3 / Yahweh pronounces His Holy judgments against Babylon

1/ v 1 / Yahweh announces up front that this message He is giving to Jeremiah is concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chaldeans… This is the same Babylon that has already taken three waves of captives and deportees to Babylon – the latest one being during the reign of Zedekiah described again in ch 52. Yahweh has a sure and certain word concerning their own downfall and destruction which He will describe in detail in the next two chapters. See, for example, ch 51.12, 29.

2/ v 2 / Yahweh’s pronouncement and announcement goes out into all the then-known world. He wants to make it publicly known before it comes to pass so that everyone will know it came from Him … and He has done it. His declaration/proclamation is: Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed. Her images are put to shame, her idols are smashed. These two god-names are alternate and local names for Marduk, the supreme patron god of Babylon [see also Isaiah 46.1]. Yahweh will pronounce His own sovereignty, supremacy, and superiority not only over all the super-power nations of the world, but also over their preferred gods in which they trusted.

3/ v 3 / This is very interesting – and shows again the wisdom and sovereignty of Yahweh’s supremacy: He has been telling Judah from the very beginning that their invaders are coming against them from the north [see ch 1.13-16]. That was the direction from which the Babylonians came against Judah. Now, He pronounces that Babylon’s future invaders and conquerors will also come against them from out of the north – that is, north of them. Then, to make it more specific and precise, Yahweh even identifies who they will be – it will be the kings of the Medes [see ch 51.11 & 28]. This is awesome! The Medes, at that time, were not even a rising threat. They were a vassal state of Babylon – subject and subservient to Babylon. But He will raise them up in His time, and they come out of the north against Babylon to destroy and overthrow them. Hold this thought in mind because it will factor into the next pronouncement of this message of Babylon’s doom…

II / vv 4-6 / “…they shall ask the way to Zion…”

1/ v 4a / “In those days and in that time, declares Yahweh…” So what days and time is this? It is the days and time when Babylon has been destroyed and another super-power has taken over dominant rule in that part of the world. Who is that kingdom that has destroyed Babylon and taken the super-power reins? It is the kings of the Medes we just were prophetically introduced to. That overthrow of the Babylonians by the Medes is described by the account Daniel gives in Daniel 5, especially vv 30-31. Yahweh not only knows where all history is going, but He is the One who directing it, revealing it, and unfolding it in our real-time!

2/ vv 4-5 / So what is Yahweh going to do in those days and in that time? He is going to bring His people back home to Judah. He has already prophesied through Jeremiah that He will do this seventy years in the future! See chs 25.11-14 & 29.10-14. So, in those days and in that time, declares Yahweh, the people of Israel and the people of Judah shall come together, weeping as they come, and they shall seek Yahweh their God. They shall ask the way to Zion, with faces turned toward it, saying, ‘Come, let us join ourselves to Yahweh in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten.’ Yahweh will give them a spirit of repentance and brokenness over their sins that took them into captivity to begin with. AND, even that spirit of repentance, brokenness, and weeping over their sins will be the fruit of the New Covenant that He will make with them. This New Covenant is His preparation of His people for the coming of Jesus Christ and His Gospel – and will be accomplished and fulfilled in Christ and by Christ!

3/ Before we go to the next verses, we need to stop and marvel at Yahweh’s omniscience and omnipotence again! Do you remember who this future king of the Medes and Persians is who issued the proclamation for them to return to their beloved Homeland? It was Cyrus. This Cyrus is introduced to us by Isaiah [ch 45.1-4] even 100 years before Jeremiah! And he is the Persian king Yahweh calls ‘my anointed’ to fulfill His sovereign purposes to proclaim liberty to the captives in Babylon and commission all who wished to return to Judah and Jerusalem! And that’s exactly what he did! See 2 Chronicles 36.17-23 & Ezra 1.1-4.

4/ vv 6-7 / The covenant people of Yahweh had been driven like lost sheep into foreign mountains and folds far away from their Homeland.

• And those who had preyed upon them denied any guilt of their own for doing so. In fact, those who were knowledgeable of Judah’s centuries-long rebellion against Yahweh, their covenant God, justified themselves by saying, “We are not guilty, for they have sinned against Yahweh, their habitation of righteousness, Yahweh, the hope of their fathers.” You’ll find a good example of this self-justification of their volitional atrocities in our last lesson. In ch 40.2-3, when the captain of the Babylonian armies was extending leniency to Jeremiah during their invasion of Jerusalem, he proffered this reason for their being there: The captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, ‘Yahweh your God pronounced this disaster against this place. Yahweh has brought it about, and has done as He said. Because you sinned against Yahweh and did not obey His voice, this thing has come upon you.’ He was right. Yahweh had employed the Babylonians to come against Judah because of their sins.
• But that did not excuse the Babylonians! They did what they wanted to do. And they did what they did out of their disdain for Yahweh, His people, and His Temple. They are culpable and guilty of their own sins. And Yahweh will bring upon them His Holy vengeance and the just recompense that their sins deserve. But, in so doing, He will bring eventual destruction upon Babylon by the Medes in order to fulfill His purposes of saving His people from their captivity and bring them back to their Homeland … according to all His promises in every respect!     

III / vv 8-10 / “Flee from the midst of Babylon…” “Go out of the midst of her, my people!”

1/ v 8 / ‘Flee from the midst of Babylon!’ [see also ch 51.6 & 45; Isaiah 48.20] Not only will Yahweh command Cyrus to release His people from the captivity into which Babylon had taken them [“Let my people go!”], but He also wants His people to come back home to Him and to Judah because they want to. Their decision to return to Jerusalem was not one of compulsion – they were not required to return home. In fact, the vast majority of those who had been taken captive to Babylon, or who had been born in Babylon, chose to stay there. It had become their new home. They were comfortable there. But Yahweh wanted them to return to Him – to become once again His distinctive people in the Land He had given them. We saw in ch 29 how Yahweh had told them to settle in while they were in Babylon for the seventy years He had determined they would be there.But now, the seventy years have been fulfilled. It is now His purpose and plan for them to come back to Jerusalem. And He wants them to come back to Him and Judah with the spirit of repentance and reconciliation He is demanding and providing for.

2/ vv 9-10 / But there is another reason Yahweh commands His people to return home: because His next purpose and plan is to destroy Babylon for their sins they have committed against Him, His people, and His Temple … and He doesn’t want His people to be destroyed with Babylon!That’s the spirit and voice with which God commands His people to ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back as she herself has paid back to others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed’ [Revelation 18.4-6]. This is just one of numerous Revelation references where God goes back to His judgments against the ancient geopolitical Babylon delivered in Jeremiah … and applies them in principle to all those in succeeding generation and on to the last-day generation. God warns them and us not to have any part in any of the anti-God philosophies and activities that are practiced by the ‘Babylon’ worldview, mindset, and cult of every generation.

3/ So what does Yahweh purpose to do against Babylon? What is it that He wants His people to flee from, escape from, separate themselves [ourselves] from? Concerning [see v 1] that historical geopolitical Babylon, Yahweh pronounces: For behold, I am stirring up and bringing against Babylon a gathering of great nations, from the north country. And they shall array themselves against her. From there she shall be taken. Their arrows are like a skilled warrior who does not return empty-handed. Chaldea shall be plundered; all who plunder her shall be sated, declares Yahweh.

4/ In order to make a public pronouncement of His purposes, Yahweh instructed Jeremiah to write down all these prophetic messages and send them to Babylon by the hand of a royal ambassador who was going there on a personal mission from Judah King Zedekiah.

Jeremiah 51.59-64: The word that Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah king of Judah to Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign. Seraiah was the quartermaster. ⁶⁰ Jeremiah wrote in a book all the disaster that should come upon Babylon, all these words that are written concerning Babylon. ⁶¹ And Jeremiah said to Seraiah: “When you come to Babylon, see that you read all these words, ⁶² and say, ‘O LORD, you have said concerning this place that you will cut it off, so that nothing shall dwell in it, neither man nor beast, and it shall be desolate forever.’ ⁶³ When you finish reading this book, tie a stone to it and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, ⁶⁴ and say, ‘Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disaster that I am bringing upon her, and they shall become exhausted.’”

Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

IV / A brief survey of ‘Babylon’ in historical and prophetic Scripture  

1/ As I have already stated during this lesson, this Babylon was a geopolitical super-power that was dominating and terrorizing the then-known world with their barbarism, cruelty, and atrocities. Yahweh pronounces His condemnations and judgments against them. They were also, at that time, the most vicious enemies Israel and Judah were facing.

2/ However, this Babylon traces its roots, both in location and philosophy, back to the ancient Tower of Babel [Genesis 11.1-9]. Their names are the same. In fact, ‘in the land of Shinar’ [Genesis 11.2] is the same name retained even to Daniel’s time [Daniel 1.2] Babel, of course, was an exercise of rebellion against the Most High God and an effort to supplant and dethrone Him as the Supreme God and usurp for themselves the right to rule themselves and the world according to their own wills. They failed.

3/ There were many enemies who opposed, fought against, and attempted to war against Yahweh by directing their enmity against His covenant people: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon … and then later on, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and the kingdoms of the world who have come after Rome [see Daniel, chapters 2 & 7 especially]. The two most recent nations in Jeremiah’s day, Assyria and Babylon, are brought under Yahweh’s vengeful judgments in Jeremiah 50.17-18. God will raise them up in their own times to accomplish His purposes … and then in His times, He will bring them down and destroy them.

/4 But since Babylon is the most historical and inglorious example of them all, Babylon sort of stands out as the icon of all these God-opposing kingdoms. Rome will inherit this mantle to a large degree in the New Testament times [see 1 Peter 5.13].

5/ That’s why Yahweh’s judgments against Babylon will stand the test of world history times to serve as a kind of template for His final judgments against all the world’s anti-God governmental systems and powers. You will find these final judgments against ‘Babylon’ in Revelation, chs 14, 16, 17, and 18.

“HALLELUJAH! [Revelation 19]