Jeremiah 50:13 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Because of the wrath of the Lord, it shall not be inhabited— See Isaiah 13:19 to which the following remarkable passage from Rollin's Ancient History, vol. 2: book 4: may be added: "After its capture by Cyrus, Babylon ceased to be a royal city; the kings of Persia choosing some other place for their residence. The Macedonians, who succeeded the Persians, did not only neglect it, but built Seleucia in its neighbourhood, on purpose to draw away its inhabitants, and caused it to be deserted: the new kings of Persia completed its ruin by building Ctesiphon, which carried away all the remainder of its inhabitants. She was so totally forsaken, that, in the time of Pausanias, nothing remained but the bare walls. The kings of Persia, finding the place deserted, converted it into a park, chace, or menagerie, in which they kept wild beasts for hunting. But it was still too much that the walls of Babylon were standing: at length they fell down in several places, and never were repaired. The animals which were kept for the pleasure of the Persian monarchs, abandoned the place, and were succeeded by serpents and scorpions. In the time of Alexander the Great, the river had quitted its ordinary channel by means of the sluices made by Cyrus; which sluices and outlets being ill-stopped, had occasioned a great inundation, and the place where Babylon stood was covered by an inaccessible pool. By all these changes Babylon became an absolute desart, and all the country round fell into the same state of horror and desolation; so that the most able geographers at this day cannot ascertain the place where it stood."