Jeremiah 51:40

I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(40) I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter . . .—The figure is changed, and the revellers appear as themselves destined to be the victims of the slaughter-house (Jeremiah 48:15; Jeremiah 50:27). As the “bullocks” of Jeremiah 50:27 are the chosen warriors, so the lambs, sheep, he-goats represent the different classes of the population of Babylon (Isaiah 34:6; Ezekiel 39:18). All alike are given over to the sword.

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

Lambs ... rams ... he goats - i. e., all classes of the population (see Isaiah 34:6 note).

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

39. In their heat I will make their feasts—In the midst of their being heated with wine, I will give them "their" potions,—a very different cup to drink, but one which is their due, the wine cup of My stupefying wrath (Jer 25:15; 49:12; Isa 51:17; La 4:21).

rejoice, and sleep … perpetual, &c.—that they may exult, and in the midst of their jubilant exultation sleep the sleep of death (Jer 51:57; Isa 21:4, 5).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

That is, they shall be destroyed before they are aware of it.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,.... To the place of slaughter; who shall be able to make no more resistance than lambs. This explains what is meant by being made drunk, and sleeping a perpetual sleep, even destruction and death:

like rams with he goats; denoting the promiscuous destruction of the prince and common people together.

Geneva Study Bible

I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

40. lambs … rams … he-goats] Cp. Jeremiah 50:27; Isaiah 34:6.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 40. - I will bring them down, etc. (comp. Isaiah 34:6; Ezekiel 39:18). Jeremiah 51:40

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The inhabitants of Babylon fall; the city perishes with its idols, to the joy of the whole world. - Jeremiah 51:38. "Together they roar like young lions, they growl like the whelps of lionesses. Jeremiah 51:39. When they are heated, I will prepare their banquets, and will make them drunk, that they may exult and sleep an eternal sleep, and not awake, saith Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:40. I will bring them down like lambs to be slaughtered, like rams with he-goats. Jeremiah 51:41. How is Sheshach taken, and the praise of the whole earth seized! How Babylon is become an astonishment among the nations! Jeremiah 51:42. The sea has gone up over Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves. Jeremiah 51:43. Her cities have become a desolation, a land of drought, and a steppe, a land wherein no man dwells, and through which no son of man passes. Jeremiah 51:44. And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and will bring out of his mouth what he has swallowed, and no longer shall nations go in streams to him: the wall of Babylon also shall fall. Jeremiah 51:45. Go ye out from the midst of her, my people! and save ye each one his life from the burning of the wrath of Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:46. And lest your heart be weak, and ye be afraid because of the report which is heard in the land, and there comes the [ equals this] report in the [ equals this] year, and afterwards in the [ equals that] year the [ equals that] report, and violence, in the land, ruler against ruler. Jeremiah 51:47. Therefore, behold, days are coming when I will punish the graven images of Babylon; and her whole land shall dry up,

(Note: Rather, "shall be ashamed;" see note at foot of p. 311. - Tr.)

and all her slain ones shall fall in her midst. Jeremiah 51:48. And heaven and earth, and all that is in them, shall sing for joy over Babylon: for the destroyers shall come to her from the north, saith Jahveh. Jeremiah 51:49. As Babylon sought that slain ones of Israel should fall, so there fall, in behalf of Babylon, slain ones of the whole earth."

This avenging judgment shall come on the inhabitants of Babylon in the midst of their revelry. Jeremiah 51:38. They roar and growl like young lions over their prey; cf. Jeremiah 2:15; Amos 3:4. When, in their revelries, they will be heated over their prey, the Lord will prepare for them a banquet by which they shall become intoxicated, so that they sink down, exulting (i.e., staggering while they shout), into an eternal sleep of death. חמּם, "their heat," or heating, is the glow felt in gluttony and revelry, cf. Hosea 7:4., not specially the result or effect of a drinking-bout; and the idea is not that, when they become heated through a banquet, then the Lord will prepare another one for them, but merely this, that in the midst of their revelry the Lord will prepare for them the meal they deserve, viz., give them the cup of wrath to drink, so that they may fall down intoxicated into eternal sleep, from which they no more awake. These words are certainly not a special prediction of the fact mentioned by Herodotus (i. 191) and Xenophon (Cyrop. vii. 23), that Cyrus took Babylon while the Babylonians were celebrating a feast and holding a banquet; they are merely a figurative dress given to the thought that the inhabitants of Babylon will be surprised by the judgment of death in the midst of their riotous enjoyment of the riches and treasure taken as spoil from the nations. In that fact, however, this utterance has received a fulfilment which manifestly confirms the infallibility of the word of God. In Jeremiah 51:40, what has been said is confirmed by another figure; cf. Jeremiah 48:5 and Jeremiah 50:27. Lambs, rams, goats, are emblems of all the classes of the people of Israel; cf. Isaiah 34:6; Ezekiel 39:18.