58 Thus says Yahweh of Armies: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the peoples shall labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they shall be weary.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The Prophet again introduces God as the speaker, that what he said might obtain more attention from the Jews; and for this reason he subjoined a eulogy to the last verse, and said that the king spoke, whose name is Jehovah of hosts We have stated elsewhere what is the design of such expressions, even that men may rise above everything seen in the world when God's power is mentioned, that they may not try to contain it in their own small measure. Then the Prophet now again repeats the name of God, that the Jews might receive with becoming reverence what he announced. And what he says is, The wall of Babylon, however wide it may be, shall yet be surely demolished. We have said that the walls were fifty feet wide, and the feet were indeed long, though Herodotus, as I have said, mentions cubits and not feet. The width, indeed, was such that four horses abreast meeting, could pass, there being space enough for them. It hence, then, appears, that their thickness was so great, that the Babylonians confidently disregarded whatever had been predicted by the Prophet; for no engines of war could have ever beaten down walls so thick, especially as they were made of bricks and cemented by bitumen. As, then, the material, beside the thickness, was so firm and strong, this prophecy was incredible. It did not indeed reach the Babylonians, but the Jews themselves regarded as a fable all that they had heard from the mouth of the Prophet. Yet God did not in vain refer to width of the wall, in order that the faithful might feel assured that the walls of Babylon could not possibly resist him, however firm they might be in their materials and thickness. The wall, he says, shall surely be demolished. He afterwards mentions the gates, which Herodotus says were of brass when Darius took them away. He, indeed, means the doors, but the Prophet includes the framework as well as the brazen doors. He then says, they shall be consumed with fire The Babylonians might have laughed at this threatening of Jeremiah, for brass could not have been consumed with fire, even if enemies had been permitted to set fire to them -- for brass could not have been so soon melted. But as the Prophet had predicted this by God's command, so at length his prophecy was verified when he was dead, because it was proved by the event that this proceeded from God; for when the doors were removed, the gates themselves were demolished; and it may have been that Darius put fire to them, that he might the sooner destroy the gates and the towers, which were very high, as well as the walls. He afterwards adds, Labor shall the people in vain, and the nations in the fire; they shall be wearied So this passage is commonly explained, as though the Prophet had said, that when the walls of Babylon had begun to burn, and the gates to be consumed with fire, there would be no remedy, though the Babylonians might greatly weary themselves and fatigue themselves in attempting to quench the fire. But this exposition seems to be forced and unnatural. I therefore take the words, though future, in the past tense. And as the walls of Babylon had not been erected without great labor, and a vast number of men had been hired, some to bring bitumen, others to heap up the earth, and others to make the bricks, the Prophet in this place intimates that all this labor would be in vain, even because it was spent for the fire, -- that whatever they did who had been either hired for wages or forced by authority to erect the walls, was labor for the fire; that is, they labored that their work might eventually be consumed by fire. This seems to me to be the real meaning of the Prophet. He then says that the people had labored in vain, or for nothing, and why? because they labored for the fire. The second clause is in my view an explanation of the former. [1] It now follows, --
1 - The v before ygv is evidently conversive, and may be rendered so that, or therefore, -- Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, The wall of Babylon, the brroad one, It shall be utterly laid in ruins; And her gates, the lofty ones, They shall be consumed with fire: So that people had labored for vanity, And nations for the fire, and wearied themselves. Several MSS. have chmt, wall, and so it is in the Sept., as required by "broad," which is in the singular number. "For vanity" is for the vain object; and "for the fire" means for what was to be consumed by fire. The last words may be rendered "though they wearied themselves." -- Ed
The broad walls - Herodotus makes the breadth of the walls 85 English feet.
Broken - See the margin. i. e., the ground beneath them shall be laid bare by their demolition.
The people - Or, peoples. Jeremiah concludes his prophecy with a quotation from Habakkuk; applying the words to the stupendous works intended to make Babylon an eternal city, but which were to end in such early and utter disappointment.
The broad walls of Babylon - Herodotus, who saw these walls, says, "The city was a regular square, each side of which was one hand red and twenty stadia, the circumference four hundred and eighty stadia. It was surrounded by a wall fifty cubits broad, and two hundred cubits high; and each side had twenty-five brazen gates." - Herod. lib. 1 c. 178. Had not Cyrus resorted to stratagem, humanly speaking, he could not have taken this city. For the destruction of this wall and its very vestiges, see on Isaiah 13:19 (note).
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The (i) broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labour in vain, and the people in the fire, and they shall be weary.
(i) The thickness of the wall was fifty feet.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts,.... Because what follows might seem incredible ever to be effected; it is introduced with this preface, expressed by him who is the God of truth, and the Lord God omnipotent:
the broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken; or rased up; the foundations of them, and the ground on which they stood made naked and bare, and open to public view; everyone of the walls, the inward and the outward, as Kimchi and Ben Melech interpret it. Curtius says (s) the wall of Babylon was thirty two feet broad, and that carriages might pass by each other without any danger. Herodotus (t) says it was fifty royal cubits broad, which were three fingers larger than the common measure; and both Strabo (u) and Diodorus Siculus (w) affirm, that two chariots drawn with four horses abreast might meet each other, and pass easily; and, according to Ctesias (x), the breadth of the wall was large enough for six chariots: or the words may be read, "the walls of broad Babylon" (y); for Babylon was very large in circumference; more like a country than a city, as Aristotle (z) says. Historians differ much about the compass of its wall; but all agree it was very large; the best account, which is that of Curtius (a), makes it to be three hundred and fifty eight furlongs (about forty five miles); with Ctesias it was three hundred and sixty; and with Clitarchus three hundred and sixty five, as they are both quoted by Diodorus Siculus (b); according to Strabo (c) it was three hundred and eighty five; and according to Dion Cassius (d) four hundred; by Philostratus (e) it is said to be four hundred and eighty; as also by Herodotus; and by Julian (f) the emperor almost five hundred. Pliny (g) reckons it sixty miles:
and her high gates shall be burnt with fire; there were a hundred of them, all of brass, with their posts and hinges, as Herodotus (h) affirms:
and the people shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary; which some understand of the builders of the walls, gates, and city of Babylon, whose labour in the issue was in vain, since the end of them was to be broken and burned; but rather it designs the Chaldeans, who laboured in the fire to extinguish and save the city and its gates, but to no purpose.
(s) Hist. l. 5. c. 1. (t) L. 1. sive Clio, c. 178. (u) Geograph l. 16. p. 508. (w) Bibl. l. 2. p. 96. (x) Apud Diodor. ib. (y) "mari Babelis lati", Schmidt. (z) Politic. l. 3. c. 3. (a) Hist. l. 5. c. 1. (b) Ut supra. (Bibl. l. 2. p. 96.) (c) Ut supra. (Geograph l. 16. p. 508.) (d) Apud Marsham Canon. p. 590. (e) Vita Apollon. l. 1. e. 18. (f) Orat. 3. p. 236. (g) Nat. Hist. l. 6. c. 26. (h) L. 1. sive Clio, c. 179.
broad walls--eighty-seven feet broad [ROSENMULLER]; fifty cubits [GROTIUS]. A chariot of four horses abreast could meet another on it without collision. The walls were two hundred cubits high, and four hundred and eighty-five stadia, or sixty miles in extent.
gates--one hundred in number, of brass; twenty-five on each of the four sides, the city being square; between the gates were two hundred and fifty towers. BEROSUS says triple walls encompassed the outer, and the same number the inner city. Cyrus caused the outer walls to be demolished. Taking the extent of the walls to be three hundred and sixty-five stadia, as DIODORUS states, it is said two hundred thousand men completed a stadium each day, so that the whole was completed in one year.
labour . . . in the fire--The event will show that the builders of the walls have "labored" only for the "fire" in which they shall be consumed, "In the fire" answers to the parallel, "burned with fire." Translate, "shall have labored in vain," &c. Compare Job 3:14, "built desolate places for themselves," that is, grand places, soon about to be desolate ruins. Jeremiah has in view here Habakkuk 2:13.
And not only are the defenders of the city to fall, but the strong ramparts also, the broad walls and the lofty towers, are to be destroyed. The adjective הרחבה is joined in the singular with the plural חמות, because the complex notion of the walls of Babylon, denoted by the latter word, is viewed as a unity; cf. Ewald, 318. ערר, in Hithpael, means "to be made bare," i.e., to be destroyed down to the ground; the inf. abs. Pilel is added to intensify the expression. Regarding the height and breadth and the extent of the walls of Babylon, cf. the collection of notices by the old writers in Duncker's Gesch. des Alt. i. S. 856ff. According to Herodotus (i. 178f.), they were fifty ells "royal cubits," or nearly 85 feet thick, and 200 ells 337 1/2 feet high; Ctesias assigns them a height of 300 feet, Strabo that of 50 ells cubits, or 75 feet, and a breadth of 32 feet. On this Duncker remarks: "The height and breadth which Herodotus gives to the walls are no doubt exaggerated. Since the wall of Media, the first line of defence for the country, had a height of 100 feet and a breadth of 20 feet, and since Xenophon saw in Nineveh walls 150 feet in height, we shall be able with some degree of certainty to assume, in accordance with the statement of Pliny (vi. 26), that the wall of Babylon must have had a height of 200 feet above the ditch, and a proportionate breadth of from 30 to 40 feet. This breadth would be sufficient to permit of teams of four being driven along the rampart, between the battlements, as Herodotus and Strabo inform us, without touching, just as the rampart on the walls of Nineveh is said to have afforded room for three chariots."
(Note: For details as to the number of the walls, and statistics regarding them, see Duncker, S. 858, Anm. 3, who is inclined to understand the notice of Berosus regarding a triple wall as meaning that the walls of the river are counted as the second, and those round the royal fortress as the third line of circumvallation. J. Oppert, Expd. en Msop. i. p. 220ff., has given a thorough discussion of this question. By carefully comparing the accounts of the ancient writers regarding the walls of Babylon, and those given in the inscriptions, lately discovered and deciphered, found on the buildings of Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar, with the vast extent of the long mounds of rubbish on the places where the ruins are met with, he has obtained this result, - that the city was surrounded by a strong double wall with deep ditches, an outer and an inner enceinte, and that the outer or large wall enclosed a space of 513 square kilometres, i.e., a piece of ground as large as the department of the Seine, fifteen times the extent of the city of Paris in the year 1859, seven times that of the same city in 1860, while the second or inner wall enclosed an area of 290 square kilometres, much larger than the space occupied by London.)
The gates leading into the city were, according to Herodotus, l.c., provided with beautifully ornamented gateways; the posts, the two leaves of the gates, and the thresholds, were of bronze. The prophecy concludes, Jeremiah 51:58, with some words from Habakkuk 2:13, which are to be verified by the destruction of Babylon, viz., that the nations which have built Babylon, and made it great, have laboured in vain, and only wearied themselves. Habakkuk probably does not give this truth as a quotation from an older prophet, but rather declares it as an ordinance of God, that those who build cities with blood, and strongholds with unrighteousness, make nations toil to supply food for fire. Jeremiah has made use of the passage as a suitable conclusion to his prophecy, but made some unimportant alterations; for he has transposed the words בּדי אשׁ and בּדי ריק, and changed יעפוּ into ויעפוּ, that he may conclude his address with greater emphasis. For, according to the arrangement here, וּלאמּים בּדי־אשׁ still depends on ויגעוּ, and ויעפוּ indicates the result of this toil for the enslaved nations, - they only weary themselves thereby. The genuineness of this reading is put beyond a doubt by the repetition of ויעפוּ at the close of the epilogue in Jeremiah 51:64. What Habakkuk said generally of the undertakings of the Chaldeans, Jeremiah applied specially to the fall of the city of Babylon, because it was to exhibit its fulfilment most plainly in that event.
Weary - Though the people should labour to quench this fire, or to rebuild this city, yet it would be all lost labour.
*More commentary available at chapter level.