Jeremiah 51:57-64

Verse 57 – 64 “And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary. The word which Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Neriah, the son of Maaseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah into Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. And this Seraiah was a quiet prince. So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, even all these words that are written against Babylon. And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, and shalt see, and shalt read all these words; Then shalt thou say, O LORD, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever. And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates: And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.”

God declares that he will make drunk, all of the men of any kind of power in Babylon. While this may mean that he has them partying and actually drunk, as they do not think they can possibly be overthrown, just as ancient Babylon was literally partying and getting drunk when they were overthrown by Persia, it also has the sense of them behaving as if they were drunk, reeling from the shock and awe of what is happening to them. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, in other words, death. Her walls will be broken. The walls of an ancient city were the means of keeping an invader out. They were her first line of defense. Babylon will lose her first line of defense. The walls that surround her (all the waters) will not pose an obstacle to her enemy. They will breach the “walls” of her defense and easily get in to defeat her. We already have had our walls breached. The enemy has been infiltrating and setting up camp (literally) within our walls. We do not keep them out, in the name of political correctness, and it is this lax attitude which will destroy us. Her high gates will burn with fire. Actually all of her will burn with fire. People will try to stop what is going on and fight against it, but in vain.

Now the passage returns to the time when it was written and Jeremiah tells how he gave these words to Seraiah to take with him when he went with Zedekiah to Babylon. Seraiah was charged with reading the words to Babylon and telling them the prophecies about Babylon's demise. Then he is to take the book, bind a stone to it and cast it into the Euphrates as a picture demonstration of Babylon's future. Just as the book sinks never to rise, so Babylon will never rise from the evil that God has planned against her. We see that God does reference Babylon here as being a woman, even though He earlier called her by the name Bel, which is said to be another name for Baal, who is thought of as a masculine god. Bel is the goddess of Babylon's name. Possibly Baal originally was a female god, or maybe she is Baal's wife. It appears that through various pagan cultures, it is a god/goddess duo that reign – Osiris/Isis, Shiva/Kali, Nimrod/Semiramis, etc. While this prophecy was aimed at ancient Babylon, we see that it is also aimed at Bel, who still exists. It may be that Baal is the demon who inhabited all of the heads (kings of the nations [mountains]) on the beast that she rides in Revelation and he is presently imprisoned, which is why this is addressed solely to her. Possibly it is he who comes from the abyss to inhabit the beast in Revelation. She has been riding that beast all along. They have been a pair. He now hates her and seeks to destroy her. Possibly because she has been free, while he has been imprisoned. Naturally this is just a hypothesis based on the commonality of myths and hinted at by the Bible, but not verifiable by facts. Babylon is yet to be punished to the extent outlined in this book of Jeremiah, and God has promised that everything He has prophesied against her will happen.