Jeremiah 50
“Destroy her utterly; let nothing be left.
The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken,
Her high gates will be burned,
Babylon shall become heaps.
A drought is upon her waters;
And they shall be dried up…”As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and
the neighboring cities thereof, said the Lord;“So shall no man abide there,
Neither shall any son of man dwell there.
All nations shall serve (Nebuchadnezzar) and his son,
And his son’s son
Until the very time of his land come;
And then many nations and Kings
Shall serve themselves of him.”
Very exact details given by Jeremiah here in this 620BC writing of his now famous prophesy. That was before 586BC when the fall of Jerusalem occurred when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took over Jerusalem by force. It must have been laughable to the people of 620 BC to think of the extremely mighty stronghold city of Babylon also falling into ‘heaps’ as a result of the actions against Jerusalem. Well we now know that it did happen and exactly in the time of the reign of the “son’s son” of Nebuchadnezzar.
Amazing facts to note here:
- Jeremiah gave this prophecy even before the 586BC attack on Jerusalem. Though given, it was not headed and Nebuchadnezzar went ahead with the attack.
- Still to this day, not one abides in the “heaps” of the prophesied fall of the mighty city of Babylon, just as Jeremiah outlined over 2500 years ago.
- Jeremiah’s specific noting of whose reign the dissolving of the city of Babylon would occur in, is a fascinating complexity of historical study that could not have been reasonably expected either.
- It occurred 75 years after Jeremiah said that it would. Biblical study reveals that King Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son Merodach who was soon assassinated.
- Then a twist of history occurred when the husband of Nebuchadnezzar’s sister became king.
- Then the son of the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar took the throne next. But although he was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, he was not the son’s son that Jeremiah had so specifically recorded about.
- Jeremiah was exact in his divine statement of prophesy.
- The rule was taken over then by another son of Merodach called Belshazzar who was the son’s son of Nebuchadnezzar.
- Under Belshazzar, the Babylonian empire ended just as Jeremiah claimed 75 years earlier.
- Jeremiah had spoken of the waters at Babylon drying up and the waters of the Euphrates were great at the time of Jeremiah so that would have been another laughable concern for the local populace to mock Jeremiah over at that time.
- The great Euphrates River later dried up at that city and bypassed Babylon to form another channel miles away as Jeremiah had told would occur.
- The Arabs still refuse to pitch their tents there even today.