The word which Jeremiah ... commanded Seraiah. A special copy of the prophecy prepared by Jeremiah was delivered to Seraiah, to console the Jews in their Babylonian exile. Though he was to throw it into the Euphrates, a symbol of Babylon's fate, no doubt he retained the substance in memory, so as to be able orally to communicate it to his countrymen.
When he went with Zedekiah - rather, 'when he went in behalf of Zedekiah;' sent by Zedekiah to appease Nebuchadnezzar's anger at his revolt (Calvin).
In the fourth year of his reign - so that Jeremiah's prediction of Babylon's downfall was thus solemnly written, and sealed by a symbolical action, six whole years before the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.
A quiet prince - cf. 1 Chronicles 22:9, "a man of rest." Seraiah was not one of the courtiers hostile to God's prophets, but "quiet" and docile, ready to execute Jeremiah's commission, notwithstanding the risk attending it. Glassius translates, 'prince of Menuchah,' (cf. 1 Chronicles 2:52, margin) Maurer translates, 'commander of the caravan,' on whom it devolved to appoint the resting-place for the night. The English version suits the context best [ mªnuwchaah (H4496), from nuwach, to be quiet].
Verse 61. When thou comest to Babylon, and shalt ... read - not in public for the Chaldeans would not have understood Hebrew; but in private, as is to be inferred from his addressing himself altogether to God (Jeremiah 51:62). (Calvin.)
Verse 62. Then shalt thou say, O Lord, thou hast spoken against this place - and not merely Jeremiah, or any man, is the author of this prophecy; I therefore here, in thy presence, embrace as true all that I read.
Verse 63. Bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates. So in the case of spiritual Babylon, "A mighty angel took up a stone (not merely a mortal man as Seraiah) like a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all" (Revelation 18:21). So the Phoceans, in leaving their country, when about to found Marseilles, threw lead into the sea, binding themselves not to return until the lead should swim.
Verse 64. They shall be weary - the Babylonians shall be worn out, so as not to be able to recover their strength.
Thus far are the words of Jeremiah. Hence, it is to be inferred that the last chapter is not included in Jeremiah's writings, but was added by some inspired man, mainly from 2 Kings 24:18 to 2 Kings 25:1 to explain and confirm what precedes (Calvin).
Remarks: (1) The ungodly that rise up against the Lord and His people (Jeremiah 51:1) are "like the chaff which the wind driveth away" (Psalms 1:4).) The Lord's fan is in His hand (Jeremiah 51:2), and He will soon make an everlasting difference between the refuse chaff-spiritual Babylon, and all who essentially in heart and life belong to her-and the wheat-Israel the elect people, and all who are by faith of the true Israel of God.
(2) Israel may seem for a time "forsaken" of God as a wife put away from her husband (Jeremiah 51:4); but the severance between her and her God is but for a time not forever. Though her land has been temporarily filled with the consequences of her sin against the Holy One of Israel, yet in God's own time He will receive her back to His favour, never to be cast away again, while Babylon her enemy is to be doomed to eternal separation from God.
(3) Meanwhile the duty of Israel, literal and spiritual, is to "flee out of the Babylon" of the world and the apostate Church, and to "deliver every man his soul" (Jeremiah 51:6; Jeremiah 51:45), lest we should partake of her sins and consequent plagues. Her case is incurable; she must be left to her just doom, and to drink forever of the unmixed cup of the Lord's indignation herself, which she made so many to drink of in her time of golden prosperity and pride (Jeremiah 51:7; Jeremiah 51:9). Then shall the elect people glorify the riches of the grace of God in saving them, while He condemns the apostate world and Church. They shall joyfully say, "The Lord hath brought forth" His righteousness, which is "our righteousness" (Jeremiah 51:10; Jeremiah 23:6). "Come and let us declare in Zion the work of the Lord our God." God's faithfulness to His own everlastings covenant of love to His elect is their justification against their proud and cruel enemy (Micah 7:9).
(4) Babylon, though guarded by many waters from without, and though having within her abundant treasures, cannot defer for a moment the appointed "end," or pass "the measure" or limit to her covetousness which God has fixed (Jeremiah 51:13). Riches will not profit any sinner in the day of wrath, nor can the treasures of the whole world gain for the covetous man the respite of a day, when his end is come. How infinitely wiser, then, is it for us to make "the Former of all things," who is the eternal and all-satisfying "portion" of His people, our portion, than to trust in uncertain riches, and to give our hearts to covetousness (Jeremiah 51:15).
(5) Babylon, "the battle ax" of the nations, must at last feel its deadly stroke herself. She who showed no pity to age, sex, or rank, shall have no pity showed to her. Her evil is to recoil on herself (Jeremiah 51:20). Like a once-destructive volcano, which sinks into the vacuum made by the pouring out of its lava from within upon the surrounding country (Jeremiah 51:25), so Babylon, the destroyer of the earth, is to be destroyed herself; and that because God is against her. None of her materials shall be available for future edifices. She shall be desolate forever. Such is the eternal "desolation" (Jeremiah 51:29) and ruin awaiting all that apostatize from God, and who abuse the talents given them by God, to selfish aggrandizement, worldliness, and pride. God is against them, who or what, then, can be for them? Every purpose of Yahweh against them shall be performed, however unlikely it may seem to carnal man. As in the midst of Belshazzar's unhallowed revelry, the startling tidings fell like a thunderbolt among the feasters, that "the city was taken at one end" (Jeremiah 51:31), so shall sudden destruction at the unexpected coming of the Son of man "surprise" (Jeremiah 51:41) the apostate and unbelieving world, while it is wholly given to eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and being given in marriage. "For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the earth" Luke 21:34; Luke 17:24).
(6) It is the sighing of Zion under the oppressive violence of Babylon (Jeremiah 51:34-24) that brings upon the latter the retributive vengeance of God. When His people groan, in the sad consciousness of their own inability to redress their wrongs, the Lord espouses their cause, and pleads effectually against the haughty aggressor (Jeremiah 51:36). "Shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? I tell you," saith the Son of God, "He will avenge them speedily" (Luke 18:7). It is the consolation of believers to know the assaults of Satan and the God-opposed world are but for a time. "The Lord God of recompences shall surely requite" (Jeremiah 51:56). In the heat of their carnal potations, Yahweh shall give the drunkards as their due a very different cup to drink, even the winecup of His stupefying anger (Jeremiah 51:39), so that they shall "sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake" until they lift up their eyes in torment.
(7) The Jews are charged to "remember the Lord" in their dispersion "afar off, and to let Jerusalem come into their mind" (Jeremiah 51:50). So let us, however far we be removed from outward ordinances of worship, remember our Prayer-hearing God. However "confounded" in mind by trials, reproach, temptation and sham e, so far from being thereby estranged from God, we have the more reason to draw nigh to God, committing our cause to His hands, and waiting for him time of deliverance (Jeremiah 51:51).
(8) God throws the persecutors of Israel and His Church "as a stone into the mighty waters." Those who, like Babylon, oppose the Lord and His people, shall sink under the weight of God's curse upon their sin, and shall not rise again forever (Jeremiah 51:63-24). The threats of God's judgments to come are as necessary parts of Scripture as the promises. Let us learn from both to serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear; so shall our eyes see, without our sharing in, the reward of the wicked (Psalms 91:8).