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Jeremiah 50: What the Passage Says

193 claims across 46 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Jeremiah 50 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Jeremiah a message against Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans: an army from the north will capture the city, her gods Bel and Merodach will be shattered, and her land will be left empty. Woven through the announcement of Babylon's fall are promises about Israel and Judah, who will come back weeping to seek the LORD, join him in a lasting covenant, and be pardoned as the remnant he preserves. The chapter repeats the reason for Babylon's punishment: she plundered God's people, crushed them, and set herself against the LORD, so what she did will be done to her.

Claim by Claim

  1. 50:1
    • The LORD spoke a word against Babylon.
    • The LORD spoke this word against the land of the Chaldeans.
    • The word was spoken by the hand of Jeremiah the prophet.
  2. 50:2
    • A command is given to declare among the nations.
    • A command is given to publish the message.
    • A command is given to set up a signal-pole.
    • A command is given to publish and not conceal it.
    • A command is given to say that Babylon is taken.
    • Bel is put to shame.
    • Merodach is shattered.
    • Babylon's idols are put to shame.
    • Babylon's images are shattered.
  3. 50:3
    • A nation comes up against Babylon out of the north.
    • That nation will make Babylon's land a desolation.
    • No one will dwell in Babylon's land.
    • Both man and beast have fled away.
  4. 50:4
    • In those days and at that time, says the LORD, the children of Israel will come.
    • The children of Judah will come with them together.
    • They will go along weeping as they go.
    • They will seek the LORD their God.
  5. 50:5
    • They will ask the way to Zion.
    • Their faces will be turned toward Zion.
    • They say: Come and join yourselves to the LORD.
    • The covenant is everlasting.
    • The covenant will not be forgotten.
  6. 50:6
    • The LORD's people have been lost sheep.
    • Their shepherds caused them to go astray.
    • The shepherds turned them away on the mountains.
    • They went from mountain to hill.
    • They forgot their resting place.
  7. 50:7
    • All who found them devoured them.
    • Their adversaries said, We are not guilty.
    • The adversaries said this because the people had sinned against the LORD.
    • The LORD is called the habitation of righteousness.
    • The LORD is the hope of their fathers.
  8. 50:8
    • A command is given to flee from the midst of Babylon.
    • A command is given to go out of the land of the Chaldeans.
    • A command is given to be like he-goats before the flock.
  9. 50:9
    • The LORD says he is stirring up and bringing against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country.
    • They will set themselves in array against her.
    • From there she will be taken.
    • Their arrows will be like those of a skilled mighty man.
    • None of the arrows will return empty.
  10. 50:10
    • Chaldea will become plunder.
    • All who plunder her will be satisfied, says the LORD.
  11. 50:11
    • The addressed ones were glad.
    • The addressed ones rejoiced.
    • The addressed ones are plunderers of the LORD's heritage.
    • They have grown fat like a heifer treading grain.
    • They neigh like stallions.
  12. 50:12
    • Your mother will be greatly ashamed.
    • She who bore you will be disgraced.
    • The last of the nations will be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.
  13. 50:13
    • Because of the LORD's wrath Babylon will not be inhabited.
    • Babylon will become wholly desolate.
    • Everyone who passes by Babylon will be astonished.
    • Everyone who passes by will hiss at all her wounds.
  14. 50:14
    • A command is given to set in array against Babylon all around.
    • The command is addressed to all who bend the bow.
    • A command is given to shoot at her.
    • A command is given to spare no arrows.
    • She has sinned against the LORD.
  15. 50:15
    • A command is given to shout against her all around.
    • She has given her hand in surrender.
    • Her foundations have fallen.
    • Her walls are thrown down.
    • This is the vengeance of the LORD.
    • A command is given to take vengeance on her.
    • A command is given to do to her as she has done.
  16. 50:16
    • A command is given to cut off the sower from Babylon.
    • A command is given to cut off the one who handles the sickle at harvest time.
    • Because of the oppressing sword each will turn to his own people.
    • Each will flee to his own land.
  17. 50:17
    • Israel is a scattered sheep.
    • Lions have driven Israel away.
    • The king of Assyria devoured Israel first.
    • Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon last broke his bones.
  18. 50:18
    • Therefore the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says this.
    • The LORD will punish the king of Babylon and his land.
    • The LORD will punish him as he punished the king of Assyria.
  19. 50:19
    • The LORD will bring Israel back to his pasture.
    • Israel will feed on Carmel and Bashan.
    • Israel's soul will be satisfied on mount Ephraim and Gilead.
  20. 50:20
    • In those days and at that time, says the LORD, the iniquity of Israel will be sought.
    • There will be no iniquity of Israel found.
    • The sins of Judah will be sought.
    • The sins of Judah will not be found.
    • The LORD will pardon those whom he leaves as a remnant.
  21. 50:21
    • A command is given to go up against the land of Merathaim.
    • A command is given to go against the inhabitants of Pekod.
    • A command is given to slay and utterly destroy after them, says the LORD.
    • A command is given to do according to all that the LORD commanded.
  22. 50:22
    • A sound of battle is in the land.
    • There is great destruction.
  23. 50:23
    • The hammer of the whole earth is cut apart and broken.
    • Babylon has become a desolation among the nations.
  24. 50:24
    • The LORD says he laid a snare for Babylon.
    • Babylon was also taken.
    • Babylon was not aware of it.
    • Babylon was found.
    • Babylon was also caught.
    • Babylon had contended against the LORD.
  25. 50:25
    • The LORD has opened his armoury.
    • The LORD has brought out the weapons of his indignation.
    • This is the work of the Lord GOD of hosts in the land of the Chaldeans.
  26. 50:26
    • A command is given to come against her from the farthest border.
    • A command is given to open her storehouses.
    • A command is given to pile her up like heaps.
    • A command is given to utterly destroy her.
    • A command is given that nothing of her be left.
  27. 50:27
    • A command is given to slay all her bulls.
    • The bulls are to go down to the slaughter.
    • Woe is pronounced upon them.
    • Their day has come.
    • The time of their visitation has come.
  28. 50:28
    • There is the sound of those who flee and escape from the land of Babylon.
    • They come to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God.
    • The vengeance is vengeance for his temple.
  29. 50:29
    • A command is given to summon many archers against Babylon.
    • The command is addressed to all who bend the bow.
    • A command is given to camp against her all around.
    • A command is given that none of her escape.
    • A command is given to repay her according to her work.
    • A command is given to do to her according to all she has done.
    • She has acted arrogantly against the LORD.
    • She has acted arrogantly against the Holy One of Israel.
  30. 50:30
    • Therefore her young men will fall in her streets.
    • All her men of war will be silenced in that day, says the LORD.
  31. 50:31
    • The LORD says he is against the arrogant one, says the Lord GOD of hosts.
    • Your day has come.
    • The time when I will punish you has come.
  32. 50:32
    • The arrogant one will stumble and fall.
    • No one will raise him up.
    • The LORD will kindle a fire in his cities.
    • The fire will devour everything around him.
  33. 50:33
    • The LORD of hosts says this.
    • The children of Israel and the children of Judah are oppressed together.
    • All who took them captive hold them fast.
    • The captors refuse to let them go.
  34. 50:34
    • Their Redeemer is strong.
    • The LORD of hosts is his name.
    • He will thoroughly plead their cause.
    • He will give rest to the land.
    • He will bring turmoil to the inhabitants of Babylon.
  35. 50:35
    • A sword is against the Chaldeans, says the LORD.
    • A sword is against the inhabitants of Babylon.
    • A sword is against her princes.
    • A sword is against her wise men.
  36. 50:36
    • A sword is against the boasting diviners.
    • They will become fools.
    • A sword is against her mighty men.
    • They will be dismayed.
  37. 50:37
    • A sword is against her horses.
    • A sword is against her chariots.
    • A sword is against all the mixed multitude in her midst.
    • They will become like women.
    • A sword is against her treasures.
    • Her treasures will be plundered.
  38. 50:38
    • A drought is upon her waters.
    • Her waters will be dried up.
    • It is a land of carved images.
    • They go mad over their dreadful idols.
  39. 50:39
    • Therefore desert creatures with hyenas will dwell there.
    • Ostriches will dwell in her.
    • She will never again be inhabited.
    • She will not be dwelt in from generation to generation.
  40. 50:40
    • God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighbouring cities, says the LORD.
    • So no man will dwell there.
    • No son of man will sojourn in her.
  41. 50:41
    • A people is coming from the north.
    • A great nation and many kings are stirred up from the farthest parts of the earth.
  42. 50:42
    • They hold the bow and the lance.
    • They are cruel.
    • They will show no mercy.
    • Their voice roars like the sea.
    • They ride upon horses.
    • They are set in array like a man for the battle against you, daughter of Babylon.
  43. 50:43
    • The king of Babylon has heard the report of them.
    • His hands went limp.
    • Anguish took hold of him.
    • Pangs took hold of him like a woman in labor.
  44. 50:44
    • One will come up like a lion from the thickets of the Jordan to the strong habitation.
    • The LORD says he will suddenly make them run away from her.
    • The LORD asks who is the chosen man he may appoint over her.
    • The LORD asks who is like him.
    • The LORD asks who will summon him to appointed time.
    • The LORD asks what shepherd can stand before him.
  45. 50:45
    • A command is given to hear the counsel of the LORD which he has taken against Babylon.
    • A command is given to hear his purposes which he has purposed against the land of the Chaldeans.
    • Surely the least of the flock will drag them away.
    • Surely he will make their habitation desolate over them.
  46. 50:46
    • At the noise of Babylon's capture the earth is shaken.
    • A cry is heard among the nations.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

50:1
"Chaldeans" were the people of southern Babylonia; by Jeremiah's day their dynasty ruled the empire, so the word is simply another name for the Babylonians. Babylon was the power that captured Jerusalem and deported much of Judah, and this chapter is the last and longest of Jeremiah's messages about foreign nations. Where "LORD" is printed in capitals it stands in for God's personal name in Hebrew, which readers traditionally did not say aloud.
50:2
Bel means "lord" and is the title of Marduk, spelled Merodach here, the chief god of Babylon, so the two names refer to the same god. His statue was paraded through the city at the New Year festival. In the ancient world a nation's gods were reckoned defeated along with the nation, and captured images were carried off or smashed; that is what "shamed" and "broken to pieces" describe.
50:3
Babylon lay east of Judah, but armies moving between the two had to follow the arc of settled land and arrive from the north. Throughout Jeremiah "the north" is the direction disaster comes from; earlier it meant Babylon attacking Judah, and here the same phrase is turned back on Babylon.
50:4
After Solomon the kingdom split in two. The northern kingdom, called Israel, fell to Assyria in 722 BC; the southern kingdom, Judah, fell to Babylon in 587 BC. Both sets of exiles are pictured coming home together.
50:5
Zion was originally the ridge in Jerusalem where the temple stood, and the name came to stand for the whole city. The "agreement" is a covenant, a formal, sworn, binding arrangement of the kind made between a king and his people or between two states, with obligations on both sides, not a casual promise.
50:6
"Shepherd" was the ordinary word for a king or ruler across the ancient Near East; the complaint is against Judah's leaders, not against herdsmen. Wandering "from mountain to hill" also carries an echo of the hilltop shrines where other gods were worshiped.
50:7
The King James "habitation of justice" is literally "pasture of righteousness," keeping the sheep picture going: the LORD was the safe grazing ground the flock strayed from. The enemies' claim is a legal one, the sheep had wandered off, so seizing them was no crime.
50:8
Male goats walked out ahead when a flock moved. Telling people to be like them means: be the first ones out, and do not wait around.
50:10
To "spoil" a city meant taking everything valuable in it after winning the battle. Soldiers expected this as their pay.
50:11
Cattle used for threshing walked over the cut grain unmuzzled and ate as they worked, so a heifer treading grain is a well-fed, frisky animal. "My heritage" is God's people and land spoken of as inherited family property, so plundering them counts as robbing him.
50:12
"Your mother" is Babylon herself, spoken of as the mother of her citizens; her shame is the city's fall. "The hindermost of the nations" means the last and lowest of them.
50:13
Hissing here is the whistling noise onlookers made at a ruined place, shock and scorn together. It is not the modern sense of hissing at a performance.
50:15
"She hath given her hand" describes an ancient gesture of surrender and of pledging submission to a victor. The Hebrew word behind "towers" (King James "foundations") is uncertain; it names some part of the city's fortifications.
50:16
Much of the farm labor in Babylonia was done by deported foreigners. Removing the sower and the reaper means both famine for the city and those workers streaming back to their own countries once the invaders arrive.
50:17
Assyria wiped out the northern kingdom and deported its people in 722 BC; Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC. "Nebuchadrezzar" is Jeremiah's usual spelling and is closer to the Babylonian form of the name; other books spell it Nebuchadnezzar.
50:18
"The LORD of Hosts" is a title meaning roughly "the LORD who commands the armies", armies of heaven rather than of Israel. It is a standing phrase, not a description of a particular moment.
50:19
Carmel, Bashan, Ephraim and Gilead were the best grazing country in the region: the coastal ridge, the high plateau east of the Sea of Galilee, the central hill country, and the uplands east of the Jordan. Listing them is a way of saying the flock will feed on the richest land there is.
50:20
"The ones I keep alive" is the remnant, the survivors left after a catastrophe. The idea runs through Jeremiah: the nation is not wiped out, but what returns is a fraction of what went into exile.
50:21
Merathaim and Pekod are real districts of Babylonia, the marshlands near the head of the Persian Gulf and the Puqudu tribal area east of the Tigris, chosen because in Hebrew the names sound like "double rebellion" and "punishment." "Destroy them completely" translates a technical term for putting captured people and goods under a ban: devoted to destruction rather than kept as plunder.
50:23
Babylon is called the hammer because it was the tool that smashed one nation after another. The image of the hammer itself being broken is the tool turning into the thing that gets broken.
50:24
A snare was a hidden trap, a net or spring device set for birds or game, designed to be sprung before the animal notices anything is there.
50:25
"Lord GOD" with GOD in capitals marks a place where the Hebrew has the title "Lord" followed by God's personal name; printers used the odd capitalisation to show which underlying word is which.
50:26
Threshed grain was piled into mounds on the threshing floor before being stored. The picture is Babylon's contents (her goods, or her dead) heaped up the same way. Her "storehouses" are granaries.
50:27
"Young bulls" stands for Babylon's fighting men and leading citizens, the strongest of the herd. "The time for their punishment" translates a word meaning a visit of inspection, the moment an overlord comes to check accounts and settle them.
50:28
Babylonian troops burned the Jerusalem temple in 587 BC and carried off its fittings. "Vengeance for his temple" is payback for that specific act.
50:29
"The Holy One of Israel" is a fixed title for God, especially common in Isaiah. "Holy" in Hebrew means set apart, wholly other, rather than morally well behaved.
50:31
The Hebrew here is a noun, "Arrogance" or "Insolence", used almost as a nickname, so the line reads something like "Look, I am against you, Arrogance." Readers have taken it as a name either for the city or for its king.
50:33
These were prisoners of war, carried far from home and not allowed to leave. Babylon moved whole populations on purpose, so they could not rebel.
50:34
"Redeemer" translates go'el, a term from Israelite family law: the nearest male relative, who was obliged to buy a kinsman out of debt-slavery, buy back land the family had been forced to sell, and take up a relative's lawsuit or blood claim. Calling the LORD Israel's redeemer places him in that family role against Babylon. "Argue their case" is courtroom language for acting as someone's advocate.
50:35
Babylon's wise men watched the stars and read old books. They told the king what they thought would happen next.
50:36
The word rendered "liars" is rare; elsewhere it is used of diviners and their empty talk, so it most likely means Babylon's fortune tellers and oracle-readers. In 1611 English "dote" meant to behave like a fool, not to be fond of someone.
50:37
"The foreigners living among her" (King James "the mingled people") are the mixed foreign population of Babylon, including hired troops from other nations. "They shall become as women" was a standard ancient taunt for fighting men who lose their nerve.
50:38
Babylon's wealth rested on the Euphrates and its canal network, so drying up her waters strikes at the city's life. In Hebrew the word for "drought" is almost identical to the word for "sword" repeated in the previous verses, so the line lands as a deliberate twist on them.
50:39
The animal names in this verse are uncertain and translations differ, desert creatures, howling animals such as hyenas or jackals, and ostriches or owls. They are the creatures imagined haunting abandoned places; the point is a site fit only for wildlife.
50:40
Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities destroyed by fire in Genesis 19. By Jeremiah's time they were a byword for a place so completely wiped out that it was never rebuilt or resettled.
50:42
"Daughter of Babylon" is a standard way of speaking of a city and its inhabitants as a single woman. It does not refer to an individual person.
50:43
Hands hanging limp is a Hebrew idiom for panic: strength drains out and a person cannot hold a weapon. Comparing a king's terror to labor pains was a common way of describing pain that arrives suddenly and cannot be stopped.
50:44
The "thick growth along the Jordan" is the dense scrub on the river's banks, flooded each spring when the water rose. Lions lived there and were driven out by the floods, so a lion coming up out of the thickets was a stock picture of sudden, unavoidable danger. "Who can challenge me" is legal language: who can summon me to court to answer. Verses 44–46 repeat, almost word for word, lines used against Edom in chapter 49.
50:45
This line is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew. It can mean that even the smallest of the flock will be dragged off, or that the least of the flock will be the ones who drag the enemy away. Translations split between the two.

Read Jeremiah 50