And all the kings of the north, far and near, one with another, and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth: and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them.
Sheshach - Babylon; as the parallelism in Jeremiah 51:41 proves. In the Cabalistic system (called Athbash; the first Hebrew letter in the alphabet being expressed by the last) Sheshach would exactly answer to Babel. Jeremiah may have used this system (as perhaps in Jeremiah 51:41) for concealment at the time of this prediction, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, while Nebuchadnezzar was before Jerusalem. In Jeremiah 51:41 there can be no concealment, as Babylon is expressly mentioned. Michaelis more simply explains the term 'brazen-gated' (cf. Isaiah 45:2): others, from the Persian language, 'the house of a prince.' Rather it comes from the Babylonian goddess Shach, by reduplication of the first letter; from her Misael was named Meshach by the Babylonians. The term Shace was applied to a festival at Babylon, alluded to in Jeremiah 51:39; Jeremiah 51:57; Isaiah 21:5. It was during this feast that Cyrus took Babylon (Herodotus, 1:). Thus Jeremiah mystically denotes the time of its capture by this term (Glassius).