Wesley Corpus

Chapter LI The severe judgment of God against voluptuous, covetous, tyrannical and idolatrous Babel, in the revenge, and for the redemption of Israel, ver. 1 - 58. Jeremiah delivers the book of this prophecy to Seraiah, to be cast into Euphrates, in token of the perpetual sinking of Babylon, ver. 59 - 64. Forsaken - Not utterly forsaken. Soul - By soul is meant life, and by iniquity the punishment of the Babylonian's iniquity. Drunken - She had made all the nations about her drunken with the Lord's fury. Mad - Through the misery they felt from her. We - The prophet seems to personate the mercenary soldiers, saying, they would have helped Babylon, but there was no healing for her. Some - These words are spoken in the person of the Jews, owning the destruction of Babylon to be the mighty work of God, and an act of justice, revenging the wrongs of his people. Set up - These seem to be the prophet's words to the Babylonians, rousing them out of their security. Historians tell us that the city was fortified by walls of fifty cubits high, and two hundred cubits broad, and by a very deep and large ditch. Waters - Babylon is said to dwell upon many waters, because the great river Euphrates, did not only run by it, but almost encompass it branching itself into many smaller rivers, which made several parts of the city, islands. Break in pieces - The sense of all these three verses is the same; that God had made use, and was still making use of the Babylonians to destroy many nations, to spoil much people, wasting their goods, routing their armies, killing all sorts of their inhabitants. Mountain - Babylon was very high for its power, and greatness, and had very high walls and towers, that it looked at a distance like an high rocky mountain. They had destroyed many people. Burnt - Thy cities and towers which appear like a mountain shall be burnt. As caterpillars - The Median horses are compared to their insects, either with respect to their numbers, or in regard of the terror caused by them when they came, being a great plague to the places which they infected. The land - Babylon, or the land of Chaldea.