Jeremiah 50:1

This is a title verse for the oracle against Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans. In Scripture, "Babylon" often refers to the nation rather than the city, as this verse makes clear. Some expositors have applied almost all the prophecies to the city rather than to the whole nation. Probably both entities are in view, the city sometimes and the country sometimes.

The Chaldeans were the descendants of a semi-nomadic tribe that had settled south of Ur in Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C. Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626-539 B.C.), was a native Chaldean. Nebuchadnezzar was the most illustrious and longest reigning of these Chaldean kings.