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 labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(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 Habakkuk 2:13. In both the thought is that the stately edifices which had been raised with so much toil by the slave-labour of Nebuchadnezzar’s 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.

Benson Commentary

Jeremiah 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 Isaiah 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. Jeremiah 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.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

51:1-58 The particulars of this prophecy are dispersed and interwoven, and the same things left and returned to again. Babylon is abundant in treasures, yet neither her waters nor her wealth shall secure her. Destruction comes when they did not think of it. Wherever we are, in the greatest depths, at the greatest distances, we are to remember the Lord our God; and in the times of the greatest fears and hopes, it is most needful to remember the Lord. The feeling excited by Babylon's fall is the same with the New Testament Babylon, Re 18:9,19. The ruin of all who support idolatry, infidelity, and superstition, is needful for the revival of true godliness; and the threatening prophecies of Scripture yield comfort in this view. The great seat of antichristian tyranny, idolatry, and superstition, the persecutor of true Christians, is as certainly doomed to destruction as ancient Babylon. Then will vast multitudes mourn for sin, and seek the Lord. Then will the lost sheep of the house of Israel be brought back to the fold of the good Shepherd, and stray no more. And the exact fulfilment of these ancient prophecies encourages us to faith in all the promises and prophecies of the sacred Scriptures.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

58. 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 Hab 2:13.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

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.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire 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.

Geneva Study Bible

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.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

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 Habakkuk 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.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 58. - The broad walls of Babylon... and her high gates. See Herod., 1:179, 181, and the parallel accounts from other authors, cited by Duncker ('Hist. of Antiquity,' 3:373, etc.), who taxes Herodotus with exaggeration, but admits as probable that the walls were not less than forty feet broad. Utterly broken; rather, destroyed even to the ground (literally, made bare). The people; rather, peoples. Jeremiah 51:58

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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.