Jeremiah 51: against Babylon, part 2

 In Jeremiah 51 we read:

59 Jeremiah the prophet gave a job to Seraiah son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, when Seraiah went with Zedekiah king of Judah to Babylon. It was in the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign. Seraiah was in charge of travel arrangements.

60-62 Jeremiah had written down in a little booklet all the bad things that would come down on Babylon. He told Seraiah, “When you get to Babylon, read this out in public. Read, ‘You, O God, said that you would destroy this place so that nothing could live here, neither human nor animal—a wasteland to top all wastelands, an eternal nothing.’

63-64 “When you’ve finished reading the page, tie a stone to it, throw it into the River Euphrates, and watch it sink. Then say, ‘That’s how Babylon will sink to the bottom and stay there after the disaster I’m going to bring upon her.’”

In the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign, Babylon was the most powerful nation. Jeremiah was prophecying that the Jews should surrender to Babylon and live there, blessing the city; but here, Jeremiah says:


1-5 There’s more. God says more:
“Watch this:
    I’m whipping up
A death-dealing hurricane against Babylon—‘Hurricane Persia’—
    against all who live in that perverse land.
I’m sending a cleanup crew into Babylon.
    They’ll clean the place out from top to bottom.
When they get through there’ll be nothing left of her
    worth taking or talking about.
They won’t miss a thing.
    A total and final Doomsday!
Fighters will fight with everything they’ve got.
    It’s no-holds-barred.
They will spare nothing and no one.
    It’s final and wholesale destruction—the end!
Babylon littered with the wounded,
    streets piled with corpses.
It turns out that Israel and Judah
    are not widowed after all.
As their God, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, I am still alive and well,
    committed to them even though
They filled their land with sin
    against Israel’s most Holy God.

Many decades before the Jews returning from the exile, while Zedekiah was going to Babylon, Jeremiah wrote:

6-8 “Get out of Babylon as fast as you can.
    Run for your lives! Save your necks!
Don’t linger and lose your lives to my vengeance on her
    as I pay her back for her sins.
Babylon was a fancy gold chalice
    held in my hand,
Filled with the wine of my anger
    to make the whole world drunk.
The nations drank the wine
    and they’ve all gone crazy.
Babylon herself will stagger and crash,
    senseless in a drunken stupor—tragic!
Get anointing balm for her wound.
    Maybe she can be cured.”

Jeremiah knew that the Lord would not abandon Jerusalem:

10 “God has set everything right for us.
    Come! Let’s tell the good news
Back home in Zion.
    Let’s tell what our God did to set things right.

Jeremiah compares the Lord, the Creator, to the men-made gods of Babylon:

15-19 By his power he made earth.
    His wisdom gave shape to the world.
    He crafted the cosmos.
He thunders and rain pours down.
    He sends the clouds soaring.
He embellishes the storm with lightnings,
    launches the wind from his warehouse.
Stick-god worshipers look mighty foolish!
    god-makers embarrassed by their handmade gods!
Their gods are frauds, dead sticks—
    deadwood gods, tasteless jokes.
They’re nothing but stale smoke.
    When the smoke clears, they’re gone.
But the Portion-of-Jacob is the real thing;
    he put the whole universe together,
With special attention to Israel.
    His name? God-of-the-Angel-Armies!

The Lord is not friend fo Babylon:

25-26 “I’m your enemy, Babylon, Mount Destroyer,
    you ravager of the whole earth.
I’ll reach out, I’ll take you in my hand,
    and I’ll crush you till there’s no mountain left.
I’ll turn you into a gravel pit—
    no more cornerstones cut from you,
No more foundation stones quarried from you!
    Nothing left of you but gravel.” God’s Decree.