Jeremiah 51:20
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“You are My war club, My weapon for battle. With you I shatter nations; with you I bring kingdoms to ruin.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
The prophet, in this chapter, goes on with the prediction of Babylon's fall, to which other prophets also bore witness. He is very copious and lively in describing the foresight God had given him of it, for the encouragement of the pious captives, whose deliverance depended upon it and was to be the result of it. Here is, I. The record of Babylon's doom, with the particulars of it, intermixed with the grounds of God's controversy with her, many aggravations of her fall, and great encouragements given thence to the Israel of God, that suffered such hard things by her (v. 1-58). II. The representation and ratification of this by the throwing of a copy of this prophecy into the river Euphrates (Jer 51:59-64).
Open source ↗51:20 You: The Lord had chosen and empowered King Cyrus of Persia to turn the Babylonian Empire to dust.
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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Rise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion, for I will give you horns of iron and hooves of bronze to break to pieces many peoples. Then you will devote their gain to the LORD, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.
Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it; in days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble.
Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger; the staff in their hands is My wrath.
behold, I will summon all the families of the north, declares the LORD, and I will send for My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, whom I will bring against this land, against its residents, and against all the surrounding nations. So I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and contempt, an everlasting desolation.
The king was enraged, and he sent his troops to destroy those murderers and burn their city.
How the hammer of the whole earth lies broken and shattered! What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!
And this whole land will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
They are coming from faraway lands, from the ends of the heavens— the LORD and the weapons of His wrath— to destroy the whole country.
Does an axe raise itself above the one who swings it? Does a saw boast over him who saws with it? It would be like a rod waving the one who lifts it, or a staff lifting him who is not wood!