Jeremiah 51:7

Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD'S hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) Babylon hath been a golden cup . . .—The “golden cup” points to the splendour of Babylon, outwardly, as a vessel made to honour (see Notes on Jer. 1.37). But the “wine” in that cup was poisoned, intoxicating men with wild ambitions and dark idolatries. The same image re-appears in Revelation 14:8; Revelation 17:4, save that there the “golden cup” is in the hand of the harlot, “whose name is MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT.”

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

Literally, "A golden cup is Babel in the hand of Yahweh, intoxicating the whole earth." Jeremiah beholds her in her splendor, but the wine whereof she makes the nations drink is the wrath of God. As God's hammer Jeremiah 50:23, Babylon was strong: as His cup of gold, she was rich and beautiful, but neither saves her from ruin.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. Babylon is compared to a cup, because she was the vessel in the hand of God, to make drunken with His vengeance the other peoples (Jer 13:12; 25:15, 16). Compare as to spiritual Babylon, Re 14:8; 17:4. The cup is termed "golden," to express the splendor and opulence of Babylon; whence also in the image seen by Nebuchadnezzar (Da 2:38) the head representing Babylon is of gold (compare Isa 14:4).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

A golden cup, because of her great riches and plenty. God hitherto had made me of Babylon as a rod in his hand, and had given her riches, and power, and prosperity proportioned to the service he had for her to do; what she did she did by commission from God; therefore this golden cup is said to have been

in the Lord’s hand. She had made all the nations about her drunken with the Lord’s fury, conquering them all, and making them mad through the misery and smart they felt from her. Babylon in Daniel is compared to a head of gold; and, Revelation 17:4, she is said to have a golden cup in her hand; but the meaning is no more than this, that God had raised up Babylon to great degrees of dignity and splendour, intending to make use of her to execute his vengeance upon many other people; and he did accordingly so use her, to give the cup of his fury to many nations to the enraging of divers people; but now the course of his providence toward her was altering, &c.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Babylon hath been a golden cup in the hand of the Lord,.... Either so called from the liquor in it, being of a yellow colour, or pure as gold, as the Jewish commentators generally; or from the matter of it, being made of gold, denoting the grandeur, splendour, and riches of the Babylonian empire; which, for the same reason, is called the head of gold, Daniel 2:38; this was in the hand of the Lord, under his direction, and at his dispose; an instrument he make use of to dispense the cup of his wrath and vengeance to other nations, or to inflict punishment on them for their sins; see Jeremiah 25:15; or else the sense is, that, by the permission of God, Babylon had by various specious pretences drawn the nations of the earth into idolatry, and other sins, which were as poison in a golden cup, by which they had been deceived; and this suits best with the use of the phrase in Revelation 17:4;

that made all the earth drunken; either disturbed them with wars, so that they were like a drunken man that reels to and fro, and falls, as they did, into ruin and destruction; or made them drunk with the wine of her fornication, with idolatry, so that they were intoxicated with it, as the whore of Rome, mystical Babylon, is said to do, Revelation 17:2;

the nations have drunken of her wine, therefore the nations are mad: they drank of the wine of God's wrath by her means, being engaged in wars, which proved their ruin, and deprived theft of their riches, strength, and substance, as mad men are of their reason; or they drank in her errors, and partook of her idolatry, and ran mad upon her idols, as she did, Jeremiah 50:38; see Revelation 18:3.

Geneva Study Bible

Babylon hath been a golden cup in the {d} LORD'S hand, that made all the earth drunk: the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are {e} mad.

(d) By whom the Lord poured out the drink of his vengeance, to whom it pleased him.

(e) For the great afflictions that they have felt by the Babylonians.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. a golden cup] In ch. Jeremiah 25:15 f., Jeremiah was commanded to make the nations drink of the wine of God’s wrath. Babylon is here spoken of under the same figure, as having made all the nations drunk, but the wine in this case, as the epithet “golden” suggests, denotes the influence for evil which her brilliance and luxury have upon the nations. She is called a golden cup from the splendour and glory which belonged to her as an empire. For the N.T. application of the figure see Revelation 17:4. See also Nahum 3:4.

are mad] Cp. Jeremiah 25:16.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Babylon, as the instrument used by God for his judicial purposes, is likened to a wine cup, which "made all the earth drunken" (comp. Jeremiah 25:15, 16); and, more than this, to a golden cup, such was the impression made upon the Jewish prophets, by Babylon's unexampled splendour. (Golden cups were not unknown in Palestine; Jehu sent some to Shalmaneser; Smith, 'Assyrian Canon,' p. 114.) So, in Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the image, the head of the image is of gold (Daniel 2:32, 38). But neither her splendour nor her honourable position as God's minister could save her from merited destruction. Jeremiah 51:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Babylon, certainly, in its former power and greatness, was a golden goblet, by means of which Jahveh presented to the nations the wine of His wrath, and intoxicated them; but now it is fallen, and broken without remedy. Isaiah 21:9 finds an echo in the expression, "Babylon is fallen." The figure of the cup refers us back to Jeremiah 25:15., where, however, it is applied in a different way. The cup is said to be of gold, in order to point out the splendour and glory of Nebuchadnezzar's dominion. "In the hand of Jahveh," i.e., used by Him as His instrument for pouring out His wrath to the nations. But Babylon has suddenly fallen and been broken in pieces. At this point Jeremiah drops the figure of the cup, for a golden cup does not break when it falls. The fall is so terrible, that the nations in Babylon are summoned to participate in the lamentation, and to lend their aid in repairing her injuries. But they answer that their attempts to heal her are fruitless. (On צרי, cf. Jeremiah 46:11 and Jeremiah 8:22.) The terrible and irreparable character of the fall is thus expressed in a dramatic manner. We must neither think of the allies and mercenaries as those who are addressed (Schnurrer, Rosenmller, Maurer, Hitzig), nor merely the Israelites who had been delivered from Babylon (Umbreit). The latter view is opposed by the words which follow, "Let every one go to his own country;" this points to men out of different lands. And the former assumption is opposed by the consideration that not merely the mercenaries, but also the allies are to be viewed as fallen and ruined together with Babylon, and that Babylon, which had subdued all the nations, has no allies, according to the general way in which the prophet views these things. Those addressed are rather the nations that had been vanquished by Babylon and detained in the city, of which Israel was one. Inasmuch as these were the servants of Babylon, and as such bound to pay her service, they are to heal Babylon; and because the attempts to heal her prove fruitless, they are to leave the ruined city. They answer this summons by the resolve, "We will go every one to his own land;" cf. Jeremiah 50:8, Jeremiah 50:16. The motive for this resolution, "for her guilt reaches up to heaven," certainly shows that it is Israelites who are speaking, because it is only they who form their opinions in such a way; but they speak in the name of all the strangers who are in Babylon. משׁפּט is the matter upon which judgment is passed, i.e., the transgression, the guilt, analogous to משׁפּט דּמים, Ezekiel 7:23, and משׁפּט מות , Deuteronomy 19:6; Deuteronomy 21:22; it does not mean the punishment adjudged, of which we cannot say that it reaches up to heaven. On this expression, cf. Psalm 57:11; Psalm 108:5. Through the fall of Babylon, the Lord has made manifest the righteousness of Israel; the redeemed ones are to proclaim this in Zion. צדקות does not mean "righteous acts" (Judges 5:11), but proofs of the righteousness of Israel as opposed to Babylon, which righteousness Babylon, through tyrannical oppression of the people that had been delivered up to it merely for chastisement, has failed to perceive, and which, so long as the Lord did not take His people to Himself again in a visible manner, was hidden from the world; cf. Psalm 37:6.