Jeremiah 51:39

Jer 51:39 In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.

Ver. 39. In their heat I will make their feasts.] Or, I will dispose their drinkings - that is, I will pour into their cups the wine of my wrath. Now, poison mixed with wine worketh the more furiously. God can punish one kind of drunkenness with another worse.

That they may rejoice.] That they may revel it and sleep their last; and so they did, as being slain in a night of public solemn feasting and great dissoluteness, which was soon turned in moerorem et metum, into heaviness and horror. Ecce, hic compotationum est finis. Behold this is the end of the party.

And not wake.] Till awakened by the sound of the last trump. The Chaldee here hath it, They shall die the second death, and not be quickened in the world to come - sc., unto life everlasting.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

When they are inflamed with surfeiting and drinking, I will feast with them, alluding to Belshazzar’s banquet, Dan. 5:2.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

In their heat I will make their feasts--In the midst of their being heated with wine, I will give them "their" potions,--a very different cup to drink, but one which is their due, the wine cup of My stupefying wrath (Jer 25:15; Jer 49:12; Isa 51:17; Lam 4:21).

rejoice, and sleep . . . perpetual, &c.--that they may exult, and in the midst of their jubilant exultation sleep the sleep of death (Jer 51:57; Isa 21:4-5).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 39. In their heat I will make their feasts] It was on the night of a feast day, while their hearts were heated with wine and revelry, that Babylon was taken; see Da 5:1-3. This feast was held in honour of the goddess Sheshach, (or perhaps of Bel,) who is mentioned, Jer 51:41, as being taken with her worshippers. As it was in the night the city was taken, many had retired to rest, and never awoke; slain in their beds, they slept a perpetual sleep.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Here, also, he describes the manner in which Babylon was taken. And hence we learn, that the Prophet did not speak darkly or ambiguously, but so showed, as it were by the finger, the judgment of God, that the prophecy might be known by posterity, in order that they might understand that God’s Spirit had revealed these things by the mouth of the Prophet: for no mortal, had he been a hundred times endowed with the spirit of divination, could ever have thus clearly expressed a thing unknown. But as nothing is past or future with God, he thus plainly spoke of the destruction of Babylon by his Prophet, that posterity, confirmed by the event, might acknowledge him to have been, of a certainty, the instrument of the Holy Spirit. And Daniel afterwards sealed the prophecy of Jeremiah, when he historically related what had taken place; nay, God extorted from heathen writers a confession, so that they became witnesses to the truth of prophecy. Though Xenophon was not, indeed, by design a witness to Jeremiah, yet that unprincipled writer, whose object was flattery, did, notwithstanding, render service for God, and sealed, by a public testimony, what had been divinely predicted by Jeremiah.

In their heat, he says, I will make their feasts, that is, I will make them hot in their feasts; for when the king of Babylon was drunk, he was slain, together with his princes and counselors. I will inebriate them that they may exult, that is, that they may become wanton. This refers to their sottishness, for they thought that they should be always safe, and ridiculed Cyrus for suffering so many hardships. For he lived in tents, and the siege had been now long, and there was no want in the city. Thus, then, their wantonness destroyed them. And hence the Prophet says that God would make them hot, that they might become wanton in their pleasures; and then, that they might sleep a perpetual sleep, that is, that they might perish in their luxury: though they had despised their enemy, yet they should never awake; for Babylon, as we observed yesterday, might have resisted for a long time, but it was at once taken. The Babylonians were not afterwards allowed to have arms. Cyrus, indeed, suffered them to indulge in pleasures, but took away from them the use of arms, deprived them of all authority, so that they lived in a servile state, in the greatest degradation: and then, in course of time, they became more and more contemptible, until at length the city was so overthrown, that nothing remained but a few cottages, and it became a mean village. We hence see that whatever God had predicted by his servant Jeremiah was at length fulfilled, but at the appropriate time, — at the time of treading or threshing, as it has been stated. It follows, —

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(39) In their heat I will make their feasts . . .—The words are stern and bitter in their irony. When the revellers are hot with wine and lust (comp. Hos_7:4-7) Jehovah would call them to a banquet of another kind. The wine cup which He would give them would be that of His wrath (Jer_25:16-17), and their drunken joy should end in an eternal sleep. So Herodotus (i. 191) narrates that when Cyrus took the city by his stratagem the inhabitants were keeping a feast with their wonted revelry and license. (Compare Xenoph. Cyropœd. vii. 23.)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

39. While they are exulting over the spoil which they have won from the conquered nations I will prepare a feast for them, inducing a sleep that shall be endless.

When they are heated] referring either to the glow of passionate indulgence, or to murderous ferocity. But Gi. would read When I am hot (with anger).

may rejoice] The LXX, reading apparently one consonant differently from MT., render, may be stupefied.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

How is Sheshach taken!.... Not the city Shushan, as Sir John Marsham thinks (e); but Babylon, as is plain from a following clause; and so the Targum,

"how is Babylon subdued!''

called Sheshach, by a position and commutation of letters the Jews call "athbash"; so Jarchi, Kimchi, and Abarbinel account for it; or else from their idol Shach, the same with Bel, which was worshipped here, and had a temple erected for it; and where an annual feast was kept in honour of it, called the Sacchean feast; and which was observing the very time the city was taken; and may be the true reason of its having this name given it now; See Gill on Jer 25:26; the taking of which was very wonderful; and therefore this question is put by way of admiration; it being so well fortified and provided to hold out a long siege:

and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised? for it was taken by stratagem and surprise, before the king and his guards, the army, and the inhabitants of it, were aware; that city, which was matter and occasion of praise to all the world, and went through it; for the compass of it, and height and strength of its walls; the river Euphrates that ran through it, and flowed about it; the temple, palaces, and gardens in it:

how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations! or, "a desolation"; and indeed its being a desolation was the reason of its being an astonishment among the nations; who were amazed to see so strong, rich, and splendid a city brought to ruin in a very short time.

(e) Canon. Chron. p. 607.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

In their heat ... - While, like so many young lions, they are in the full glow of excitement over their prey, God prepares for them a drinking-bout to end in the sleep of death. Compare Dan 5:1.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

When they shall grow hot with wine, I will put, or give, or make them a feast of another nature. Interpreters judge that the prophet referreth to the feast made by Belshazzar, Dan 5:1,

to a thousand of his lords, when he and his wives and concubines drank wine in the vessels belonging to the temple, during which feast the city was taken. So they were made drunk with the wine cup of God’s fury, because the Lord had designed them to utter ruin and destruction, that as men filled with wine are merry, and shout, and then fall asleep; so the Chaldeans being drunk with the wine of the Lord’s wrath, while they were merry with their cups of wine, might fall into such a sleep as they should never awake out of.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Heat - When they shall grow hot with wine, I will make them a feast of another nature. Interpreters judge that Belshazzar, Dan. v, 1, made a feast to a thousand of his Lords, when he and his wives, and concubines, drank wine in the vessels belonging to the temple, during which feast the city was taken. And not awake - While they were merry with their wine, they fell into a sleep which they never awoke out of.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

in their heat, I will place their wine feasts I will intend that their wine feasts shall be in the hot season so that they become drunk.

in order that they become joyful and sleep Heb. וישנו, and sleep soundly.

a perpetual sleep Heb. שנתעולם, a perpetual sleep, and so it happened to them; out of their wine feast and drunkenness they were destroyed and slain, and the city was captured, as it is written in Daniel (5:2): “Belshazzar said while he tasted the wine, etc.”; (5:4), “They drank wine, etc.”; (5: 30), “On that night, Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, was slain”; (6:1), “And Darius the Mede received the kingship.”

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.