Jeremiah 51:36-39 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Thus saith the Lord, I will plead thy cause This is, as it were, God's answer to the prayers and imprecations of the Jewish people, mentioned in the two foregoing verses. I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry This some think is spoken figuratively, meaning, I will exhaust her multitudes of people, and dry up all those sources from whence she derived her immense wealth and power. But this was literally fulfilled in Cyrus's draining the river, and thereby gaining an entrance into the city. All great waters are called seas in the Hebrew language. And Babylon shall become heaps See note on Jeremiah 50:39-40. They shall roar together like lions, &c. This is either expressive of their grief and anguish of mind, or else the prophet describes the revels and riotous noise which they made upon the night of that public festival in which the city was taken: see below. In their heat I will make their feasts Or, I will supply them with drink, as Blaney renders משׁתיהם, observing, that all the ancient versions give the word that sense, and that it agrees with the use of it, Daniel 1:8; Daniel 1:10; Daniel 1:16. And I will make them drunken I will suffer them to give a loose to joy in their feasts, and to be intoxicated with wine: God is frequently said in Scripture to do those things which he permits to be done. Or the words may be taken figuratively, as signifying, While they are feasting I will prepare for them another cup to drink, namely, that of my fury and indignation. History informs us that Babylon was taken at a time when the Babylonians were so engaged in feasting and revelling, and so intoxicated with liquor, that the gates leading down to the river, which used to be shut every night, were left open, which gave a free passage to Cyrus and his army into the city. That they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual sleep That, in the midst of their jollity and security, they may sleep the sleep of death.