Scripture Daily

Context No. 1541 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 51:33-48: in context

33For the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says: “The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time when it is trodden. Yet a little while, and the time of harvest comes for her.” 34“Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has devoured me. He has crushed me. He has made me an empty vessel. He has, like a monster, swallowed me up. He has filled his mouth with my delicacies. He has cast me out. 35May the violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon!” the inhabitant of Zion will say; and, “May my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea!” will Jerusalem say. 36Therefore the LORD says: “Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry. 37Babylon will become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant. 38They will roar together like young lions. They will growl as lions’ cubs. 39When they are inflamed, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the LORD. 40“I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats. 41“How Sheshach is taken! How the praise of the whole earth is seized! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations! 42The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves. 43Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it. 44I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. The nations will not flow any more to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall. 45“My people, go away from the middle of her, and each of you save yourselves from the LORD’s fierce anger. 46Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t fear for the news that will be heard in the land. For news will come one year, and after that in another year news will come, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler. 47Therefore behold, the days come that I will execute judgment on the engraved images of Babylon; and her whole land will be confounded. All her slain will fall in the middle of her. 48Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says the LORD.

Jeremiah prophesies the fall of Babylon, the great empire that had crushed Jerusalem. Zion had cried out that Nebuchadnezzar had devoured her, swallowed her up, made her an empty vessel. And God answers: I will plead your cause and take vengeance for you; I will dry up Babylon's sea and make her a desolation. Come out of her, my people, he says, and save yourselves from my fierce anger. Babylon, the praise of the whole earth, will fall, and heaven and earth will sing over her fall.

The words of comfort for the crushed are God's: I will plead your cause and take vengeance for you. Zion had been devoured by Babylon, wronged, swallowed up, left an empty vessel, and could do nothing to right it; the oppressor was far too strong. And God says he himself will take up their cause, will plead it, will avenge the wrong done to them. The wronged and helpless have an advocate; the crushed have someone who will act on their behalf. This is a deep comfort for anyone who has been wronged and cannot right it, oppressed by a power too strong to resist, unable to secure their own justice. God says, I will plead your cause. We do not have to avenge ourselves, exhausting ourselves in bitterness against wrongs we cannot undo; God takes up the cause of the wronged and will see justice done in his time. The great empire that seemed unassailable, the praise of the whole earth, would fall; and God himself would be the one to plead the cause of those it had crushed. There is release in handing our wrongs to the God who says he will plead our cause. We are not left to be our own avengers against powers stronger than ourselves; the advocate of the oppressed will act. Babylon fell, and the God who pleaded Zion's cause is the same God who takes up the cause of every one of his people who has been wronged and cannot right it themselves.

When I have been wronged by a power too strong for me to resist, and cannot secure my own justice, can I hand the wrong to the God who says, I will plead your cause and take vengeance for you, and be released from being my own bitter avenger?

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