Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 51:58
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.
58. The broad walls of Babylon ] better than mg. The walls of broad Babylon, We should, with LXX, read wall. According to Herodotus, the outer wall of Babylon was 200 royal cubits (about 373 English feet) high, while it was fifty cubits wide. This, however, both from the nature of the case, and from the conflicting testimony of other writers, seems exaggerated. Probably the height was about 60 or 70 English feet, and the walls perhaps 30 or 40 feet wide, as they allowed of a team of four horses being driven along them. See Herod. I. 178, and Rawlinson’s notes there.
utterly overthrown ] lit. (as mg.) made bare, destroyed, so that the very foundations shall be uncovered.
high gates ] “In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts.” Herod. I. 179.
the peoples shall labour, etc.] almost identical with Hab 2:13 (referred to in mg.), transposing, however, the words for “vanity” and for “the fire.” It appears in both places to be a quotation from an older source, and to express a general truth. We should therefore render (with a slight change of text) by present tenses, the peoples labour for vanity, and the nations weary themselves for the fire.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
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.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 58. The broad walls of Babylon] Herodotus, who saw these walls, says, “The city was a regular square, each side of which was one hundred 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. i. 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 Clarke on Isa 13:19.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Incredible things are told us by historians of this great city. They say the compass of it was threescore miles about; that her walls were in height two hundred feet, her breadth such as two chariots might drive abreast upon the top of them; that it had a hundred great gates, many of then of brass. God threatens the breaking down of these walls and the burning of these high gates and towers; and that though the people should labour to quench this fire, or to rebuild this city, yet it would be all lost labour, and they should give over their enterprise, as being weary.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
58. broad wallseighty-sevenfeet broad [ROSENMULLER];fifty cubits [GROTIUS]. Achariot of four horses abreast could meet another on it withoutcollision. The walls were two hundred cubits high, and four hundredand eighty-five stadia, or sixty miles in extent.
gatesone hundred innumber, of brass; twenty-five on each of the four sides, the citybeing square; between the gates were two hundred and fifty towers.BEROSUS says triple wallsencompassed the outer, and the same number the inner city. Cyruscaused the outer walls to be demolished. Taking the extent of thewalls to be three hundred and sixty-five stadia, as DIODORUSstates, it is said two hundred thousand men completed a stadium eachday, so that the whole was completed in one year.
labour . . . in the fireTheevent will show that the builders of the walls have “labored”only for the “fire” in which they shall be consumed, “Inthe fire” answers to the parallel, “burned with fire.”Translate, “shall have labored in vain,” &c.Compare Job 3:14, “builtdesolate places for themselves,” that is, grand places, soonabout to be desolate ruins. Jeremiah has in view here Hab2:13.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
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.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
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 is joined in the singular with the plural , because the complex notion of the walls of Babylon, denoted by the latter word, is viewed as a unity; cf. Ewald, 318. , 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, Jer 51:58, with some words from Hab 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 and , and changed into , that he may conclude his address with greater emphasis. For, according to the arrangement here, still depends on , and 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 at the close of the epilogue in Jer 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.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
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. (109) It now follows, —
(109) The ו before יגעו 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 חמת, 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
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(58) Her high gates shall be burned with fire.These were part of the works on which Nebuchadnezzar prided himself as the restorer of the city. The inscription already quoted refers to these as well as to the walls: Babylon is the refuge of the god Merodach. I have finished Imgur Bel, his great enclosure. In the threshold of the great gates I have adjusted folding-doors in brass. (Oppert, ut supra; Comp. also Records of the Past, v. pp. 125, 127).
The people shall labour in vain.The words are all but verbally identical, in some MSS. absolutely so, with those of Hab. 2:13. In both the thought is that the stately edifices which had been raised with so much toil by the slave-labour of Nebuchadnezzars subjects and captives should all be fruitless. The walls of Babylon are described by Herod. (1, 173), possibly with some exaggeration, as 50 cubits (= 75 feet) thick and 200 high.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
58. Broad walls high gates See the descriptions of Babylon by Strabo and others. According to Herodotus the walls were eighty-five feet thick and three hundred and thirty-seven and a half feet high. Ctesias makes them three hundred feet high. Strabo, seventy-five feet high and thirty-two feet thick. Xenophon saw in Babylon walls a hundred and fifty feet in height. Duncker concludes that these walls must have had a height of two hundred feet above the ditch, and a proportionate breadth of from thirty to forty feet. This breadth would be sufficient to permit of teams being drawn along the rampart between the battlements, as Herodotus and Strabo inform us, without touching. The rampart on the walls of Nineveh is said to have afforded room for the driving abreast of three chariots. As to the “gates,” Herodotus represents them as most elaborately constructed and ornamented; the posts, the folding doors, and the thresholds being of bronze. Oppert quotes an inscription in which Nebuchadrezzar says, “In the thresholds of the great gates, I inserted folding doors of brass, with very strong palings and gratings.” There were one hundred of these gates, twenty-five in each of the four sides of the wall. (The remainder of the verse is quoted from Habakkuk.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jer 51:58. The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken See Isa 47:7-8; Isa 47:13. Houbigant reads the latter part of the verse, And the people shall labour for a thing of nought, and exhaust their strength for the flames, &c.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jer 51:58 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The 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 folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.
Ver. 58. The broad walls of Babylon. ] See on Jer 51:44 . Or, The walls of broad Babylon, that greatest of all cities, saith Strabo; a the compass whereof within the walls was near upon seventy miles, saith Pliny. b
a Lib. xvi.
b Lib. vi. cap. 26.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
walls. Some codices, with two early printed editions, Septuagint, and Vulgate, read “wall”.
people = peoples.
be weary = faint.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The broad walls of Babylon: or, The walls of broad Babylon, According to the testimony of Herodotus, the circumference of the walls of Babylon was 480 stadia, or 60 miles, their breadth 50 cubits, and their height 200 cubits; but when Darius became master of the place, bc 516, he took away all their 100 gates of brass, and beat down their walls to 50 cubits; and now not a vestige of these immense fortifications remains, to mark the site of this once mighty city! Jer 51:44, Jer 50:15
broken: or, made naked
high gates: Jer 51:30, Isa 45:1, Isa 45:2
the people: Jer 51:9, Jer 51:64, Psa 127:1, Isa 65:23, Hab 2:13
Reciprocal: Job 12:14 – he breaketh Isa 13:2 – go into Isa 25:12 – the fortress Jer 51:25 – O destroying Jer 51:53 – mount Eze 24:12 – wearied Rev 18:8 – and she
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jer 51:58. The broad walls of Babylon. The walls of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and they are referred to in this verse. In view of the importance of the subject I shall copy a description of these walls out of authentic historians. The reader should take careful interest In this quotation for it will not be again produced in full in this COMMENTARY. First, the walls were very prodigious [of vast dimensions]: for they were in thickness eighty-seven feet, and in compass four hundred and eighty furlongs, which make sixty of our miles. This is Herodotus’s account of them, who was himself in Babylon, and is the most ancient author that hath written of this matter. And although there are others that differ from him herein, yet the most that agree In any measure of those walls give us the same, or very near the same, that he doth . . . These walls were drawn round the city in the form of an exact square, each side of which was one hundred and twenty furlongs, or fifteen miles in length, and all built of large bricks, cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous slime arising out of the earth in that country, which binds in building much stronger and firmer than lime, and soon grows much harder than the brick or stones themselves which It cements together. These walls were surrounded on the outside with a vast ditch filled with water, after the manner of scarp [a steep wall] or counterscarp, and the earth, which was dug out of it, made the bricks, wherewith the walls were built; and therefore, from the vast height and breadth of the walls may be inferred the greatness of the ditch. In every side of this great square were twenty-five gates, that is, a hundred in all, which were all made of solid brass; and hence it is, that when God promised Cyrus (the Persian commander] the conquest of Babylon, he tells him, that he would break In pieces before him the gates of brass’ (Ialah 45: 2). Between every two of these gates were three towers, and four more at the four corners of this great square, and three between each of these corners and the next gate on either side; and every one of these towers was ten feet hlgher than the walls. But this is to be understood only of those parts of the wall where there was need of towers; for some parts of them lying against morasses always full of water, where they could not be approached by an enemy, they had there no need of any towers at all for their defence; and therefore in them there were none built; for the whole number of them amounted to no more than two hundred and fifty; whereas, had the same uniform order been observed in tbeir disposition all round, there must have been many more. From the twenty-five gates on each side of this great square, went twenty-five streets in straight lines to the gates, which were directly over against them in the other side opposite to it. So that the whole number of the streets was fifty, each fifteen miles long, whereof twenty-five went one way, and twenty-five the other, directly crossing each other at right angles.”- Prideauxs Connexion, 570 B. C.
The magnitude of the feat of Cyrus in taking Babylon may the better be realized after we ponder this description of the walls and gates. The people shall labor in vain means the labor the people had put on this vast structure will prove to have been in vain, for it was all destined to be lost in destruction that the Persians would bring to the city.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jer 51:58. The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, &c. That the walls of Babylon were of a prodigious height and thickness, Herodotus tells, who says, they were 200 cubits high, and 50 cubits in breadth, lib. 1. cap. 178. We are astonished, says Bishop Lowth, in his note on Isa 13:19, at the accounts which ancient historians of the best credit give, of the immense extent, height, and thickness of the walls of Nineveh and Babylon; nor are we less astonished, when we are assured by the concurrent testimony of modern travellers, that no remains, not the least traces, of these prodigious works, are to be found. Our wonder will, I think, be moderated in both respects, if we consider the fabric of these celebrated walls, and the nature of the materials of which they consisted. Buildings in the East have always been, and are to this day, made of earth or clay mixed, or beat up with straw, to make the parts cohere, and dried only in the sun. This is their method of making bricks. The walls of the city were built of the earth, digged out of the spot, and dried upon the place; by which means both the ditch and the wall were at once formed; the former furnishing materials for the latter. That the walls of Babylon were of this kind is well known; and Berosus expressly says, (apud Joseph. Antiq. Jer 10:11,) that Nebuchadnezzar added three new walls, both to the old and new city, partly of brick and bitumen, and partly of brick alone. A wall of this sort must have a great thickness in proportion to its height, otherwise it cannot stand. The thickness of the walls of Babylon is said to have been one-fourth of their height; which seems to have been no more than was absolutely necessary. Her high gates shall be burned, and the people shall labour in vain, &c. If the Chaldeans take never so much pains to quench the fire, it shall be to no purpose; and all their efforts to preserve their empire and city shall be as insignificant as if men wrought in the fire, which immediately destroys all the fruits of their labours. The words may be better translated, And the people have laboured for a thing of naught, and the folks have wearied themselves for that which shall be fuel for the fire; that is, the works which have been erected with such incredible labour and expense, shall be a prey to the flames.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
51:58 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.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
The enemy will raze Babylon’s broad wall and set her many huge gates on fire. The captive peoples who will have toiled, building Babylon’s defenses, would have done so for nothing. They will have exhausted themselves constructing these edifices, only for them to go up in flames (cf. Jer 51:64; Hab 2:13).