Jeremiah 50:3 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Out of the north there cometh up a nation. — It is significant that the very phrase which had described the danger that threatened Judah from Babylon (Jeremiah 1:10) is now used for the danger that threatened Babylon itself from Media. It is as though the prophet watched that northern quarter of the heavens, and saw storm after storm, torrent after torrent, bursting out upon the south. The nations are named in Jeremiah 51:27-28. We are almost irresistibly reminded of the language in which the historians of the fourth and fifth centuries speak of the Gothic and Teutonic tribes that poured down upon the Roman Empire.