Jeremiah 51:51

We are confounded, because we have heard reproach: shame hath covered our faces: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the LORD'S house.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(51) We are confounded, because we have heard reproach . . .—The answer which the prophet seems to hear from the lips of the exiles, is, however, for the present, of a different character. They are cast down and oppressed by the disgrace that has fallen on them and on the Holy City. Aliens in blood and faith have profaned their sanctuaries. Can anything wipe off the stain of that disgrace? The prophet had known the bitterness of that thought himself (Lamentations 1:10; Lamentations 2:7; Lamentations 4:12), and had learnt how to deal with it: “Yes,” he answers in the next verse, “there is comfort in the thought of retribution. The idol-temples which had been enriched with the spoils of their Temple shall be despoiled; the plunderers shall fall by the sword of the destroyer.”

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

Confounded - Or, ashamed. The verse is a statement of the wrong done to the exiles by Babylon, and so leads naturally to Babylon's punishment Jeremiah 51:52.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

51. The prophet anticipates the Jews' reply; I know you will say in despair, "We are confounded," &c. "Wherefore (God saith to you) behold, I will," &c. (Jer 51:52) [Calvin]. I prefer taking Jer 51:51 as the prayer which the Jews are directed to offer in exile (Jer 51:50), "let Jerusalem come into your mind" (and say in prayer to God), "We are confounded." This view is confirmed by Ps 44:15, 16; 79:4; 102:17-20; Isa 62:6, 7.

for strangers—The "reproach," which especially has stung us, came when they taunted us with the fact that they had burned the temple, our peculiar glory, as though our religion was a thing of naught.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The words of this verse seem to prove that the Jews were the persons intended in the former verse, whom God would have to go away, and not to stand still; for it is out of doubt that it is of them the prophet here speaketh, and whom the prophet brings in here, saying,

We are confounded, that is, ashamed (as it is expounded in the next words) to hear the enemies reproaching us for our God, or for our religion, as Psalm 137:3; and because pagans that were strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, who, Numbers 1:51, might not come near the tabernacle of the Lord, were come, and that not to worship, but to plunder and rifle in the sanctuaries of the Lord, even into the court of the priests and of the Israelites, and into the most holy place; those whose very presence in these places had been a pollution of them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

We are confounded, because we have heard reproach,.... These are the words of the Jews, either objecting to their return to their land; or lamenting the desolation of it; and complaining of the reproach it lay under, being destitute of inhabitants; the land in general lying waste and uncultivated; the city of Jerusalem and temple in ruins; and the worship of God ceased; and the enemy insulting and reproaching; suggesting, that their God could not protect and save them; and, under these discouragements, they could not bear the thoughts of returning to it:

shame hath covered our faces; they knew not which way to look when they heard the report of the state of their country, and the reproach of the enemy, and through shame covered their faces:

for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the Lord's house; the oracle, or the holy of holies; the temple, or the holy place, and the porch or court; so Kimchi and Abarbinel; into which the Chaldeans, strangers to God and the commonwealth of Israel, had entered, to the profanation of them, and had destroyed them.

Geneva Study Bible

We are {f} confounded, because we have heard reproach: shame hath covered our faces: for foreigners are come into the sanctuaries of the LORD'S house.

(f) He shows how they would remember Jerusalem by lamenting the miserable affliction of it.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

51. ashamed] The exiles answer that they are too deeply humiliated to obey the summons; for foreigners are in possession of the holy sites. Cp. Lamentations 1:10 with note.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 51. - We are confounded. A reflection of the exiles, expressing their deep shame at the ignominy which has been their lot. Are come; or, came. Jeremiah 51:51

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Final summing up of the offence and the punishment of Babylon. Jeremiah 51:50. "Ye who have escaped the sword, depart, do not stay! remember Jahveh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind. Jeremiah 51:51. We were ashamed, because we heard reproach; shame hath covered our face, for strangers have come into the holy places of the house of Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:52. Therefore, behold, days are coming, saith Jahveh, when I will take vengeance on her graven images; and through all her land shall the wounded groan. Jeremiah 51:53. Though Babylon ascended to heaven, and fortified the height of her strength, yet from me there shall come destroyers to her, saith Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:54. The noise of a cry [comes] from Babylon, and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans. Jeremiah 51:55. For Jahveh lays waste Babylon, and destroys out of her the great noise; and her waves sound like many waters: a noise of their voice is uttered. Jeremiah 51:56. For there comes against her, against Babylon, a destroyer, and her heroes are taken; each one of their bows is broken: for Jahveh is a God of retributions, He shall certainly recompense. Jeremiah 51:57. And I will make drunk her princes and her wise men, her governors and her lieutenant-governors, and her heroes, so that they shall sleep an eternal sleep, and not awake, saith the King, whose name is Jahveh of hosts. Jeremiah 51:58. Thus saith Jahveh of hosts: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly destroyed, and her high gates shall be burned with fire, so that nations toil for nothing, and peoples for the fire, and thus are weary."

Once more there is addressed to Israel the call to return immediately; cf. Jeremiah 51:45 and Jeremiah 50:8. The designation, "those who have escaped from the sword," is occasioned by the mention in Jeremiah 51:49 of those who are slain: it is not to be explained (with Ngelsbach) from the circumstance that the prophet sees before him the massacre of the Babylonians as something that has already taken place. This view of the matter agrees neither with what precedes nor what follows, where the punishment of Babylon is set forth as yet to come. It is those who have escaped from the sword of Babylon during the exercise of its sway that are meant, not those who remain, spared in the conquest of Babylon. They are to go, not to stand or linger on the road, lest they be overtaken, with others, by the judgment falling upon Babylon; they are also to remember, from afar, Jahveh the faithful covenant God, and Jerusalem, that they may hasten their return. הלכוּ is a form of the imperative from הלך; it occurs only here, and has probably been chosen instead of לכוּ, because this form, in the actual use of language, had gradually lost its full meaning, and become softened down to a mere interjection, while emphasis is here placed on the going. After the call there follows, in Jeremiah 51:51, the complaint, "We have lived to see the dishonour caused by the desecration of our sanctuary." This complaint does not permit of being taken as an answer or objection on the part of those who are summoned to return, somewhat in this spirit: "What is the good of our remembering Jahveh and Jerusalem? Truly we have thence a remembrance only of the deepest shame and dishonour" (Ngelsbach). Such an objection the prophet certainly would have answered with a reproof for the want of weakness of faith. Ewald accordingly takes Jeremiah 51:51 as containing "a confession which the exiles make in tears, and filled with shame, regarding the previous state of dishonour in which they themselves, as well as the holy place, have been." On this view, those who are exhorted to return encourage themselves by this confession and prayer to zeal in returning; and it would be necessary to supply dicite before Jeremiah 51:51, and to take בּשׁנוּ as meaning, "We are ashamed because we have heard scoffing, and because enemies have come into the holy places of Jahveh's house." But they might have felt no shame on account of this dishonour that befell them. בּושׁ signifies merely to be ashamed in consequence of the frustration of some hope, not the shame of repentance felt on doing wrong. Hence, with Calvin and others, we must take the words of Jeremiah 51:51 as a scruple which the prophet expresses in the name of the people against the summons to remember Jahveh and Jerusalem, that he may remove the objection. The meaning is thus something like the following: "We may say, indeed, that disgrace has been imposed on us, for we have experienced insult and dishonour; but in return for this, Babylon will now be laid waste and destroyed." The plural המּקדּשׁים denotes the different holy places of the temple, as in Psalm 68:36. The answer which settles this objection is introduced, Jeremiah 51:52, by the formula, "Therefore, behold, days are coming," which connects itself with the contents of Jeremiah 51:51 : "Therefore, because we were obliged to listen to scoffing, and barbarians have forced their way into the holy places of the house of our God, - therefore will Jahveh punish Babylon for these crimes," The suffixes in פּסיליה and ארצהּ refer to Babylon. חלל is used in undefined generality, "slain, pierced through."