Jeremiah 50:21

"Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod: slay and utterly destroy after them, saith Jehovah, and do according to all that I have commanded thee. A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction. How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! How is Babylon become a desolation among the nations! I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against Jehovah. Jehovah hath opened his armory, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation; for the Lord, Jehovah of Hosts, hath a work to do in the land of the Chaldeans. Come against her from the utmost border; open her store-houses; cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly; let nothing of her be left. Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them, for their day is come, the time of their visitation. The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of Jehovah our God, the vengeance of his temple."

"The land of Merathaim... land of Pekod ..." (Jeremiah 50:21). Some scholars try to locate these places as provinces of Babylonia, but Keil suggested that the words were invented by Jeremiah,[17] and Graybill gave their meaning as "double bitterness" for Merathaim, and "punishment" for Pekod.[18] The names therefore are symbols of the punishment coming upon them.

"The hammer of the whole earth ..." (Jeremiah 50:23). Babylon is here called the "hammer of the whole earth," and that is a name which historically has been used of "(1) Judas Maccabaeus for his victory over Syria, (2) of Charles Martel, which means `Charles the Hammer,' the victor in the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D., and (3) of Edward I of England, upon whose tomb in Westminster Abbey are the words (in Latin) `Hammer of the Scots.'"[19]

"I have laid a snare for thee ..." (Jeremiah 50:24). "Babylon imagined herself impregnable; but, according to Herodotus, Cyrus took the city by stratagem, diverting the Euphrates out of its channel, and entering the city beneath the gates over the river."[20]

"Bullocks ..." (Jeremiah 50:27). This word is used figuratively "for warriors."[21]