Day 236. Jeremiah 51-52

The theme that runs through these last chapters of the Book of Jeremiah is this--Do not forget your homeland, because God has not forgotten you.
In the face of growing feelings of rejection and abandonment, the exiles in Babylon are assured that, once chosen, the People of the Promise "have not been forsaken by their God, the LORD of hosts, though their land is full of guilt, before the Holy One of Israel" (51:5). He is faithful to his Chosen Ones, who are his unique creation. Other gods are incapable of faithfulness; they cannot create anything, because they are themselves the work of goldsmiths. "They are worthless, a work of delusion." When God punishes them they will perish utterly, forgotten. But the LORD is a deathless God; he cannot perish or break his promises, "and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance" (51:19).
This is not true of any other nation. God may use them to accomplish his purposes, but when they can no longer serve his purpose, he abandons them. This is what will happen to the nation of Babylon. Its people are beyond healing-- doomed for "all the wrong they have done in Zion, says the LORD" (51:24). Their destruction is on its way, the prophet tells the disheartened exiles. "The LORD has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose concerning Babylon is to destroy it' (51:11). The kingdom of Media was located in modern Iran, and the Medes, together with the Persians under the vigorous leadership Cyrus, will conquer the Babylonian empire in 539 B.C. Through them, the LORD who will "take vengeance" against Babylon for the outrages King Nebuchadrezzar perpetrated upon Jerusalem and its people, which he swallowed "like a monster" (51:34). Now God will "punish Bel," the chief god of Babylon, and "make him
disgorge what he has swallowed" (51:44). God will take vengeance on the evil empire not only for Israel but for all those who have suffered anguish because of her aggressions-- "Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, as the slain of all the earth have fallen because of Babylon" (51:49).
And when Babylon does at last fall, as it must, exiles of all nations are urged to flee her ruin—"Forsake her," says the LORD. Let each exile return to his or her own country, for the judgment of Babylon "has reached up to heaven and has been lifted up even to the skies" (51:9). In our text the exiles are repeatedly summoned to "come out of her" and save their lives (51:45). Obviously some are hesitating. Having lived in Babylon for a generation, many Jews were at home there. They were "fainthearted and fearful" about leaving and returning to the ruins of Jerusalem. But the voice of the prophet calls them to "remember the LORD in a distant land, and let Jerusalem come into your mind" (51:50). Do not forget your homeland, because God has not forgotten you.
A short narrative from the career of Jeremiah ends this section in which the destruction of Babylon is foretold. It hearkens back to an incident that occurred seven years before the fall of Jerusalem and represents another of Jeremiah's "visual parables." Jeremiah writes in a scroll "all the disasters that [will] come to Babylon," and he entrusts the scroll to a certain Seraiah, the quartermaster, an official of high standing in the court of King Zedekiah. With the scroll, he gives a command—when you are taken to Babylon as an exile, which you certainly will be, you must read the contents of this scroll to your fellow exiles. And "when you finish reading this scroll, tie a stone to it, and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates, and say, 'Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disasters that I am bringing on her'" (51:63). So the last word we hear from Jeremiah is this--this destroyer, like every other, shall
ultimately be destroyed, its stratagems unfulfilled, its priorities vain and worthless. "The peoples exhaust themselves for nothing," the prophet writes, "and the nations weary themselves only for fire" (51:58). Only the LORD's plans endure. And thus ends his prophesy.
Chapter 52 comes to us as a sort of anticlimax; it repeats history we have heard earlier—2 Kings 24:18-25:30—and it only recounts the story of the unhappy end of King Zedekiah and the fall and plundering of the city. But the prophecies of Jeremiah have already gazed far beyond destruction and defeat to the exiles' return and Jerusalem's rebuilding. We are left with one final note of hope. After the death of Nebuchadrezzar, his son Evil-merodach—the "man of Marduk"—released the exiled Judean king Jehoiachin after thirty- seven years of captivity, "and gave him a seat above the seats of the other kings who were with him in Babylon" (52:33) where he feasted for the rest of his life. The writer sees the release of the rightful Davidic king as a hopeful sign that God has not forgotten his promise to David—the exiles will all be freed at last to feast and rejoice and the rightful king will return to Jerusalem to sit upon his throne..