Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 51:39
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.
39. While they are exulting over the spoil which they have won from the conquered nations I will prepare a feast for them, inducing a sleep that shall be endless.
When they are heated ] referring either to the glow of passionate indulgence, or to murderous ferocity. But Gi. would read When I am hot (with anger).
may rejoice ] The LXX, reading apparently one consonant differently from MT., render, may be stupefied.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
In their heat … – While, like so many young lions, they are in the full glow of excitement over their prey, God prepares for them a drinking-bout to end in the sleep of death. Compare Dan 5:1.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 39. In their heat I will make their feasts] It was on the night of a feast day, while their hearts were heated with wine and revelry, that Babylon was taken; see Da 5:1-3. This feast was held in honour of the goddess Sheshach, (or perhaps of Bel,) who is mentioned, Jer 51:41, as being taken with her worshippers. As it was in the night the city was taken, many had retired to rest, and never awoke; slain in their beds, they slept a perpetual sleep.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
When they shall grow hot with wine, I will put, or give, or make them a feast of another nature. Interpreters judge that the prophet referreth to the feast made by Belshazzar, Dan 5:1,
to a thousand of his lords, when he and his wives and concubines drank wine in the vessels belonging to the temple, during which feast the city was taken. So they were made drunk with the wine cup of Gods fury, because the Lord had designed them to utter ruin and destruction, that as men filled with wine are merry, and shout, and then fall asleep; so the Chaldeans being drunk with the wine of the Lords wrath, while they were merry with their cups of wine, might fall into such a sleep as they should never awake out of.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
39. In their heat I will make theirfeastsIn the midst of their being heated with wine, I willgive them “their” potions,a very different cup to drink,but one which is their due, the wine cup of My stupefyingwrath (Jer 25:15; Jer 49:12;Isa 51:17; Lam 4:21).
rejoice, and sleep . . .perpetual, c.that they may exult, and in the midst oftheir jubilant exultation sleep the sleep of death (Jer 51:57Isa 21:4; Isa 21:5).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
In their heat I will make their feasts,…. I will order it that their feasts shall be id the time of heat, that so they may be made drunk; so Jarchi: or when they are hot with feasting, I will disturb their feast by a handwriting on the wall; so Kimchi; see Da 5:1; to which he directs: or when they are inflamed with wine, I will put something into their banquets, into their cups; I will mingle their potions with the wine of my wrath; and, while they are feasting, ruin shall come upon them; and so it was, according to Herodotus and Xenophon, that the city of Babylon was taken, while the inhabitants were feasting; and this account agrees with Da 5:1. This text is quoted in the Talmud c, where the gloss on it says,
“this is said concerning Belshazzar and his company, when they returned from a battle with Darius and Cyrus, who besieged Babylon, and Belshazzar overcame that day; and they were weary and hot, and sat down to drink, and were drunken, and on that day he was slain;”
and the Targum is,
“I will bring tribulation upon them:”
and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice; in a riotous and revelling way; or that they may be mad and tremble, as R. Jonah, from the use of the word d in the Arabic language, interprets it; so drunken men are oftentimes like mad men, deprived of their senses, and their limbs tremble through the strength of liquor; and here it signifies, that the Chaldeans should be so intoxicated with the cup of divine wrath and vengeance, that they should be at their wits’ end; in the utmost horror and trembling; not able to stand, or defend themselves; and so the Targum,
“they shall be like drunken men, that they may not be strong;”
but as weak as they:
and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord; not only fall asleep as drunken men do, and awake again; but sleep, and never awake more; or die, and not live again, until the resurrection morn; no doubt many of the Chaldeans, being in a literal sense drunk and asleep when the city was taken, were slain in their sleep, and never waked again. The Targum is,
“and die the second death, and not live in the world to come;”
see Re 21:8.
c T. Bab. Megilia, fol. 15. 2. d “furor ac repentina mors”, Camus apud Golium, col. 1634. “tremor, timor mortis aegroto contingens”, Giggeius apud Castel. col. 2772. So R. Sol. Urbiu. Ohel Moed, fol. 32. 1. interprets the words of trembling.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Here, also, he describes the manner in which Babylon was taken. And hence we learn, that the Prophet did not speak darkly or ambiguously, but so showed, as it were by the finger, the judgment of God, that the prophecy might be known by posterity, in order that they might understand that God’s Spirit had revealed these things by the mouth of the Prophet: for no mortal, had he been a hundred times endowed with the spirit of divination, could ever have thus clearly expressed a thing unknown. But as nothing is past or future with God, he thus plainly spoke of the destruction of Babylon by his Prophet, that posterity, confirmed by the event, might acknowledge him to have been, of a certainty, the instrument of the Holy Spirit. And Daniel afterwards sealed the prophecy of Jeremiah, when he historically related what had taken place; nay, God extorted from heathen writers a confession, so that they became witnesses to the truth of prophecy. Though Xenophon was not, indeed, by design a witness to Jeremiah, yet that unprincipled writer, whose object was flattery, did, notwithstanding, render service for God, and sealed, by a public testimony, what had been divinely predicted by Jeremiah.
In their heat, he says, I will make their feasts, that is, I will make them hot in their feasts; for when the king of Babylon was drunk, he was slain, together with his princes and counselors. I will inebriate them that they may exult, that is, that they may become wanton. This refers to their sottishness, for they thought that they should be always safe, and ridiculed Cyrus for suffering so many hardships. For he lived in tents, and the siege had been now long, and there was no want in the city. Thus, then, their wantonness destroyed them. And hence the Prophet says that God would make them hot, that they might become wanton in their pleasures; and then, that they might sleep a perpetual sleep, that is, that they might perish in their luxury: (101) though they had despised their enemy, yet they should never awake; for Babylon, as we observed yesterday, might have resisted for a long time, but it was at once taken. The Babylonians were not afterwards allowed to have arms. Cyrus, indeed, suffered them to indulge in pleasures, but took away from them the use of arms, deprived them of all authority, so that they lived in a servile state, in the greatest degradation: and then, in course of time, they became more and more contemptible, until at length the city was so overthrown, that nothing remained but a few cottages, and it became a mean village. We hence see that whatever God had predicted by his servant Jeremiah was at length fulfilled, but at the appropriate time, — at the time of treading or threshing, as it has been stated. It follows, —
(101) “In their heat,” that is, as it appears, of rage, while they were roaring like lions. The word rendered “feasts” by Calvin and in our version, properly means drinking, and it is so rendered in the early versions, and more suitably here, —
In their heat I will set for them their drink, And will make them drunk, that they may leap for joy; And they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, And shall not awake, saith Jehovah.
It is a clear allusion to the feast celebrated in Babylon the very night it was taken. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(39) In their heat I will make their feasts . . .The words are stern and bitter in their irony. When the revellers are hot with wine and lust (comp. Hos. 7:4-7) Jehovah would call them to a banquet of another kind. The wine cup which He would give them would be that of His wrath (Jer. 25:16-17), and their drunken joy should end in an eternal sleep. So Herodotus (i. 191) narrates that when Cyrus took the city by his stratagem the inhabitants were keeping a feast with their wonted revelry and license. (Compare Xenoph. Cyropd. vii. 23.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Jer 51:39. In their heat I will make their feasts I will give them their cup when they are now heated, and I will make them drunken, that they may be sick, and sleep, &c. “While they are feasting themselves, I will provide them another cup to drink; namely, that of my fury and indignation.” See the note on Jer 51:7. It is very well known, that Babylon was taken on a night of public rejoicing, in honour of the goddess Sheshach, mentioned in the next note.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jer 51:39 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.
Ver. 39. In their heat I will make their feasts. ] Or, I will dispose their drinkings – that is, I will pour into their cups the wine of my wrath. Now, poison mixed with wine worketh the more furiously. God can punish one kind of drunkenness with another worse.
That they may rejoice.
And not wake.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
feasts = banquets.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
their heat: Jer 25:27, Isa 21:4, Isa 21:5, Isa 22:12-14, Dan 5:1-4, Dan 5:30, Nah 1:10, Nah 3:11
and sleep: Jer 51:57, Psa 13:3, Psa 76:5, Psa 76:6
Reciprocal: Ecc 7:4 – the heart Isa 47:11 – thou shalt not be Jer 25:16 – General Jer 48:26 – ye him Jer 50:35 – upon her princes Jer 51:55 – destroyed Nah 3:18 – Thy shepherds Hab 2:5 – he transgresseth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
51:39 In their {x} heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.
(x) When they are inflamed with surfeiting and drinking, I will feast with them, alluding to Belshazzar’s banquet, Dan 5:2 .