YHWH Promises That They Will Be Avenged (Jeremiah 51:36-40).
God acknowledges the justice of their plea, and assures them that He will take vengeance on their behalf. Evil cannot be allowed to triumph, and therefore Babylon, that representative of all evil, must reap what she has sown. Babylon must be destroyed. This is in the end God's verdict on all that is evil, and we must remember that to Jeremiah and Israel/Judah Babylon represented all that was anti-God, with its enforcement of the worship of its own gods and its destruction of God's Temple. It had to be destroyed.
“Therefore thus says YHWH,
Behold, I will plead your cause,
And take vengeance for you,
And I will dry up her sea,
And make her fountain dry,
And Babylon will become heaps,
A dwelling-place for jackals,
An astonishment, and a hissing,
Without inhabitant.”
YHWH promises that He will take up the cause of His people, first as defending counsel, and then as the exacter of retribution. He will ‘dry up her (Babylon's) sea and make her fountain dry.' This probably refers to the River Euphrates and all the multiplicity of channels which had been built for irrigation purposes or for defence of the city, which would make Babylon look as though it was in the midst of the sea, especially when the river was at its highest (compare the description of the River Nile as ‘the sea' in Isaiah 18:2; Isaiah 19:5). Indeed the rise of the river would often turn Babylon into a sea as the waters overflowed its banks. But the main idea is that He will take away the means of her sustenance, dependent at it was on water. And whilst the Euphrates itself did not dry up as far as we know, certainly all the channels which were fed from it did cease to exist. Babylon would no longer be established on waters, and as a consequence it would not survive. Indeed it would become ‘heaps', the mounds or ‘tels' that grew up when a city was destroyed and nature was left to take its course.
The picture is of a ruined and desolate city, inhabited by jackals, which has become an astonishment to the world, which would draw in its breath and hiss when it saw what had happened to great Babylon. That once well populated city would be deserted. This did not happen as a result of Cyrus' invasion, for he preserved its main buildings, but the destruction was completed by Xerxes as a result of later rebellion, and whilst Alexander the Great planned to restore the city he died before he could do so. Babylon did therefore finally literally become ‘heaps'. Note how the same judgment had previously been exacted on Jerusalem (Jeremiah 9:11; Jeremiah 19:8; Jeremiah 25:9; Jeremiah 25:18). What Nebuchadrezzar had done to Jerusalem would now be done to Babylon (Jeremiah 50:15; Jeremiah 50:29).
“They will roar together like young lions,
They will growl as lions' whelps,
When they are heated, I will make their feast,
And I will make them drunk,
That they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep,
And not wake,
The word of YHWH,
I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,
Like rams along with he-goats.”
In vivid terminology YHWH describes the demise of the leading citizens of Babylon. They will roar together like young lions (compare Amos 3:4), prowling around and feasting, having made a prey of nations, until they are fully ‘heated' in their pride. Then YHWH will make a feast for them, resulting in more drinking, leading on to drunkenness, as they drank of the cup of YHWH's wrath (Jeremiah 25:15-28, and note that Sheshach in Jeremiah 51:26 = Babylon). Then in their drunken revelry death would come suddenly to them, and they would sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake. It is no doubt intended ironically that Babylon will drink of her own golden cup (Jeremiah 51:7). We could have no better description of the feast to which Belshazzar called for a thousand of his lords, a feast which ended in death as the city was taken (Daniel 5). Herodotus confirms that on the night of the taking of Babylon the city was engaged in feasting and revelry. Thus the roaring young lions would become as lambs, rams and he-goats to the slaughter.