Jeremiah 50:16
Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest: for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land. Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest: for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land.
Cut off from Babylon are its sower and its reaper, driven away in defeat by the conquering sword, so that its foreign workers abandon the city in fear, every one turning to his own people and fleeing to his own land. With sower and reaper removed cultivation ceases, and the once fertile and heavily tilled country around Babylon becomes a barren waste, part of its utter desolation as a tenantless heap never again inhabited, shunned by travelers and given over to wild creatures and wilderness. The overthrow came by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus, when the city was taken by surprise while Belshazzar and his lords felt secure, and though that conquest did not finish it at once, the city was ultimately destroyed and left literally desolate. Its fall was warned judgment ripening from its own sowing, for Babylon refused mercy and Belshazzar reigned in riot, idolatry and blasphemy until God numbered and finished his kingdom and gave it to the Medes and Persians, proving no human might, scheme or wealth can save a power that sows error and death. What befell literal Babylon is a type and pattern of the fall of antitypical Babylon in the day of the Lord, when the great apostate system ruling the nations and all sinners with it shall be punished and finally destroyed.
Words and Ancient Fulfillment
Jeremiah 50:16 belongs to the prophecy of Babylon's judgment and destruction and describes its defeat by a conqueror. The sower and the handler of the sickle are cut off from Babylon or driven away, and for fear of the oppressing, conquering, invading sword everyone turns and flees. Its foreign workers abandon the city, each returning to his own people and to his own land. That cutting off of sower and reaper means cultivation would cease in the land. The fertile, heavily cultivated country around Babylon later became a barren waste with no sowers or reapers.
The verse belongs to a prophecy of utter desolation declaring that the city would become heaps and remain without inhabitants. It would stand a tenantless and desolate metropolis, never inhabited nor dwelt in from generation to generation, with its name and remnant cut off. The Arabian would not pitch tent there, kept away by dread of evil spirits, neither would shepherds make their folds there. Wild beasts of the desert would lie there with lions in the palace ruins, and houses full of doleful creatures, bats and owls, while other parts would become a possession for the bittern with pools of water and morasses, and heaps and a burnt mountain, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert, empty, wholly desolate and utterly destroyed, a dwelling-place for dragons, a land where no man dwelled at which every one that goes by is astonished.
The conquest was by the Medes and Persians under Cyrus. It was fulfilled suddenly while Belshazzar and his lords felt secure, when the city was taken by surprise on every quarter and Belshazzar was killed. As Cyrus advanced toward Babylon an initial rumor preceded a second rumor and the city's destruction about a year later. The Persian overthrow did not complete the destruction, but the city was ultimately destroyed and became desolate literally.
The prophecy gave warning of judgment with an offer of mercy that Babylon failed to heed, leaving it facing destruction. Its fall came as the fruitage of its own sowing while Belshazzar reigned in weakness, riot, idolatry and blasphemy and drank from the plundered temple vessels to gods of gold and wood and stone. God numbered his kingdom and finished it, weighed him in the balances and found him wanting, and divided his kingdom and gave it to the Medes and Persians that same night. No might or scheme or power or wealth of man can save a city or nation that sows within herself the seeds of error, confusion, destruction and death. The judgments concerning Israel and Judah in the prophecy were fulfilled in the return from Babylon, which was gradual and in which a remnant of every tribe returned, while those who remained in Babylon were absorbed into the local population.
Type of End-Time Babylon
The prophecy is double, foretelling the fall not of the city of Babylon alone but of the whole Babylonian empire, and also the fall of antitypical Babylon, the great apostate harlot system that rules over the nations of the earth. Unlike the prophecy of Revelation, which foretells the apostate Babylon alone, Jeremiah foretells both the ancient city and empire and the antitype. There will be no rebuilding of old Babylon on the Euphrates River followed by a sudden destruction.
What applied primarily and typically to literal Babylon applies emphatically to modern Babylon in the day of the Lord, when modern Babylon and all sinners shall be punished. The fall of Babylon in Jeremiah's day serves as a type of the fate of the great mystical Babylon described in Revelation. That ancient destruction is presented as a pattern of the destruction of modern Babylon — the confused religious world — when God brings earthly affairs to their close. The fall foretold here is typical of the final punishment of the ungodly and of formal professors.
Mystic Babylon embraces all corrupt Christianity with its daughters, since the daughters of Babylon form a part of Babylon itself. Jeremiah's testimony concerning Babylon concerns its persecution of God's people.
The prophecy of Babylon's final overthrow is applied to the final overthrow of the nations. It is counted among Scriptures suggesting that not all beasts and birds will be destroyed at Christ's second coming. They will live and multiply amid earth's ruins during the thousand years, and may provide food for the wicked raised afterward.