Jeremiah 50:2-3 - Exposition

The prophet, with the eye of faith, sees his revelation accomplished. Babylon (like Moab) is taken; her idols are destroyed. In his exuberant joy, he calls on the bystanders to proclaim the good news to the sympathetic nations, and to set up (or rather, lift up ) a standard (as Jeremiah 4:6 ), to call the attention of those who might not be within hearing of the proclamation. The idols have been convicted of false pretensions; they are ashamed and dismayed (so we should render rather than confounded and broken in pieces ) at the terrible result to their worshippers. Bel and Merodach are not different deifies, but merely different names of one of the two principal gods of the later Babylonian empire. Bel, it is true, was originally distinct from Merodach, but ultimately identified with him. Merodach was the tutelary god of Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar seems to have been specially addicted to his worship, though, indeed, he mentions Nebo also with hardly less honour. This is the beginning of an inscription of this king's, preserved at the India House:—"Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, glorious prince, worshipper of Marduk, adorer of the lofty one, glorifier of Nabu, the exalted, the possessor of intelligence" (Mr. Rodwell's translation, 'Records of the Past,' 5:113). Elsewhere Nebuchadnezzar speaks of Marduk as "the god my maker," "the chief of the gods," and of himself as "his (Marduk's) eldest son, the chosen of his heart." Her images. It is a very peculiar word ( gillulim ) , specially frequent in Ezekiel, and also found in a chapter of Leviticus with which Ezekiel has affinities (Le 26:30). It evidently involves a sore disparagement of idol worship. The etymological meaning is "things rolled," which may be variously interpreted as "idol blocks" (Gesenius), or "doll images" (Ewald).