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Selected Verse: Jeremiah 51:38 - King James
| Verse |
Translation |
Text |
| Jer 51:38 |
King James |
They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions' whelps. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
| A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
The capture of Babylon was effected on the night of a festival in honor of its idols.
roar . . . yell--The Babylonians were shouting in drunken revelry (compare Dan 5:4). |
| Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
| Yell - Or, growl. |
| Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch [1857-78] |
The inhabitants of Babylon fall; the city perishes with its idols, to the joy of the whole world. - Jer 51:38. "Together they roar like young lions, they growl like the whelps of lionesses. Jer 51:39. When they are heated, I will prepare their banquets, and will make them drunk, that they may exult and sleep an eternal sleep, and not awake, saith Jahveh. Jer 51:40. I will bring them down like lambs to be slaughtered, like rams with he-goats. Jer 51:41. How is Sheshach taken, and the praise of the whole earth seized! How Babylon is become an astonishment among the nations! Jer 51:42. The sea has gone up over Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves. Jer 51:43. Her cities have become a desolation, a land of drought, and a steppe, a land wherein no man dwells, and through which no son of man passes. Jer 51:44. And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed, and no longer shall nations go in streams to him: the wall of Babylon also shall fall. Jer 51:45. Go ye out from the midst of her, my people! and save ye each one his life from the burning of the wrath of Jahveh. Jer 51:46. And lest your heart be weak, and ye be afraid because of the report which is heard in the land, and there comes the [= this] report in the [= this] year, and afterwards in the [= that] year the [= that] report, and violence, in the land, ruler against ruler. Jer 51:47. Therefore, behold, days are coming when I will punish the graven images of Babylon; and her whole land shall dry up,
(Note: Rather, "shall be ashamed;" see note at foot of p. 311. - Tr.)
and all her slain ones shall fall in her midst. Jer 51:48. And heaven and earth, and all that is in them, shall sing for joy over Babylon: for the destroyers shall come to her from the north, saith Jahveh. Jer 51:49. As Babylon sought that slain ones of Israel should fall, so there fall, in behalf of Babylon, slain ones of the whole earth."
This avenging judgment shall come on the inhabitants of Babylon in the midst of their revelry. Jer 51:38. They roar and growl like young lions over their prey; cf. Jer 2:15; Amo 3:4. When, in their revelries, they will be heated over their prey, the Lord will prepare for them a banquet by which they shall become intoxicated, so that they sink down, exulting (i.e., staggering while they shout), into an eternal sleep of death. חמּם, "their heat," or heating, is the glow felt in gluttony and revelry, cf. Hos 7:4., not specially the result or effect of a drinking-bout; and the idea is not that, when they become heated through a banquet, then the Lord will prepare another one for them, but merely this, that in the midst of their revelry the Lord will prepare for them the meal they deserve, viz., give them the cup of wrath to drink, so that they may fall down intoxicated into eternal sleep, from which they no more awake. These words are certainly not a special prediction of the fact mentioned by Herodotus (i. 191) and Xenophon (Cyrop. vii. 23), that Cyrus took Babylon while the Babylonians were celebrating a feast and holding a banquet; they are merely a figurative dress given to the thought that the inhabitants of Babylon will be surprised by the judgment of death in the midst of their riotous enjoyment of the riches and treasure taken as spoil from the nations. In that fact, however, this utterance has received a fulfilment which manifestly confirms the infallibility of the word of God. In Jer 51:40, what has been said is confirmed by another figure; cf. Jer 48:5 and Jer 50:27. Lambs, rams, goats, are emblems of all the classes of the people of Israel; cf. Isa 34:6; Eze 39:18. |
| Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
| They - The Babylonians, upon the taking of their city. |
4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.
6 The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.
27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.
5 For in the going up of Luhith continual weeping shall go up; for in the going down of Horonaim the enemies have heard a cry of destruction.
40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats.
4 They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened.
4 Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing?
15 The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities are burned without inhabitant.
38 They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions' whelps.
49 As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth.
48 Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for Babylon: for the spoilers shall come unto her from the north, saith the LORD.
47 Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon: and her whole land shall be confounded, and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
46 And lest your heart faint, and ye fear for the rumour that shall be heard in the land; a rumour shall both come one year, and after that in another year shall come a rumour, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
45 My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of the LORD.
44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.
43 Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby.
42 The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.
41 How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised! how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!
40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats.
39 In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.
38 They shall roar together like lions: they shall yell as lions' whelps.