Jeremiah 51:39, commentary and pictures

It foretells the overthrow of Babylon coming in the heat of feasting, drunkenness and rejoicing, when God turns their revelry into sudden destruction and a deathlike sleep from which they do not wake. It was fulfilled literally on the night Belshazzar and his princes and courtiers gave themselves to drunken feasting and idol worship and neglected defense, when the Medes and Persians entered through gates left open and slew the king in the midst of his festival. Its perpetual sleep without waking means death, even eternal death for the finally impenitent, describing the dead as asleep and absent from the living. Beyond ancient Babylon it portrays the irreversible fall of mystical Babylon the great and the final punishment of the wicked in everlasting destruction or the second death, from which there is no resurrection. Where its words sound as if the wicked dead will never rise, they are to be taken in a figurative sense in harmony with the fixed teaching that the wicked dead will be raised and then punished.

Babylon's Judgment in Context

Jeremiah 51:39 belongs to the prophecy of Babylon's judgment, which declares that Babylon as an object of God's disfavor will be punished and become desolate. That judgment portrays God's defense of His people while bringing the proud city's religious and political power to an end in destruction. It was the divine message sent through Jeremiah to ancient Babylon when it had filled the cup of its iniquity, a message of impending judgment carrying gracious warning and proffered mercy. That message was slighted and went unheeded, Babylon seeing no reason to tremble, leaving the record that Babylon would have been healed but is not healed.

The prophecy does not mean Babylon would be utterly destroyed when the Persians overthrew it. It points to the city's eventual destruction. After Alexander died there, Babylon gradually fell into decay and became desolate, fulfilling the prophecy literally.

The verse is a prediction uttered many years before the fall, part of the great burden of prophecy against Babylon. It concerns the king of Babylon and foretells his overthrow. That overthrow comes in the heat of feasting, drunkenness and rejoicing, when God makes them drunken to rejoice and then to sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, that is death in the fall of Babylon.

Feast Night and Fall

The verse describes the fall of Babylon coming while its people are feasting, drinking and feeling secure. In their heat God makes their feasts for them, and in their rejoicing He makes them drunken. Their revelry then ends in sudden destruction, as helpless drunkenness passes into a death from which they do not wake.

This was fulfilled literally on the night Babylon fell, when Belshazzar with his princes, wives and concubines, nobles and courtiers gave themselves to feasting, dancing, drunken riot and religious frenzy to their idol gods. Intoxicated with wine in the very hour the city fell, they forgot the siege and neglected ordinary precautions, so the city was taken without fighting and Belshazzar was slain. That feast was the regular lascivious celebration on the fourteenth of Tammuz for the union of Tammuz and Ishtar, which explains why the women feasted with the men that night.

Cyrus leading the Medes and Persians dried up the river Euphrates, entered through two gates left open, and surprised the drunken revelers. When a noise was heard outside the palace, the palace gates were thrown open to find its cause, and the troops rushed in. Belshazzar and his princes were killed in the middle of their festival, with the king and his family slain.

In their heat and drunken rejoicing, weak and dissolute and riotous and idolatrous Belshazzar held high festivals and drank the costliest wine in the rarest chalices, even in the plundered gold and silver vessels of the temple at Jerusalem, to gods of gold and wood and stone. In that same hour fingers of a man's hand wrote on the palace wall, the kingdom was weighed in the balances and found wanting and divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Before the king rose from the banquet Babylon was taken on every quarter, and in that night Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans was slain and Darius the Median took the kingdom, while its mighty men forbore to fight and remained in their strongholds.

Perpetual Sleep Means Death

The dead are asleep, absent from the living in a perpetual sleep from which they do not wake. The phrase about sleeping perpetually without waking means eternal death. It describes the finally impenitent falling into an everlasting sleep, a dead sleep from which there is no awakening. That sleep is the condition of death itself.

For one finally found a sinner, the end is permanent death with no awakening. Righteousness is life, keeping man in continual unbroken connection with the great Source of life. Therefore saints who die live in God, and their rest in the grave is only a night of unconscious sleep from which they wake in the morning in His likeness. Sin breaks the connection with the Source of life, and when full grown it brings forth death, leaving the sinner in death forever.

The words for an eternal sleep describe what Adam's death would have been without provision for recovery. That recovery is from the land of the enemy through the promised seed of the woman. The Bible never uses those terms for the penalty pronounced on Adam.

Prophecy Proved and Extended

Jeremiah 51 foretells Babylon's doom in detail, and the ruins by the Euphrates stand as witness that the prophecy of utter overthrow was fulfilled in the destruction and desolation of Chaldean Babylon. The verse belongs to that prophecy, showing Babylon's enemies feasting and becoming drunken before they fall into a perpetual sleep from which they will not wake, which is their destruction.

It is a prediction uttered many years before the fall, part of the great burden of prophecy against Babylon concerning the fall of the head of gold before the silver empire of Persia takes its place in succession. Its fulfillment is proved by the dispassionate testimony of heathen historians who did not know the prophecy and had no design to show its fulfillment. The prediction that Babylon's rulers would be drunken at the time of the city's fall was literally fulfilled when Cyrus leading the Medes and Persians dried up the river Euphrates, entered through two gates left open, and surprised the drunken revelers, with the king and his family slain. The exact fulfillment of this circumstantial detail proves miraculous foresight by divine inspiration and cannot be mere hap-hazard coincidence.

The prophecy makes a sudden transition from type to antitype and has a double fulfillment. It applied primarily and typically to proud ancient Babylon humbled by the Medes and Persians, and applies emphatically to modern Babylon and all sinners punished in the day of the Lord. The judgment on literal Babylon in Jeremiah's day types the fate of Babylon the great, the great mystical Babylon of the last days prophesied in Revelation. The prophecy of sudden fall amid Belshazzar and his lords' sense of security also applies to antitypical Babylon, the apostate system that rules the nations.

It portrays God's judgment ending Babylon's revelry and bringing it to an irreversible fall, for during their feasting He makes the Babylonians drunk and rejoicing, then they fall into a perpetual sleep and do not wake, meaning death. That destruction of ancient Babylon also serves as a picture of the final judgment on modern spiritual Babylon and the whole earth at the end of the world. Babylon also represents the failed rival kingdom of Satan, whose final destruction the prophecy points toward.

Resurrection Sheol and Second Death

The verse looks beyond Babylon's temporary destruction to the wicked's final punishment of everlasting destruction, or the second death, from which there is no resurrection. After their mortal life is restored and they are punished for their sins, they die a second time and have no way to be rescued. Babylon as a city, system, or political organization is destroyed before the thousand years end, but wicked people receive their full reward after the second resurrection.

The verse bears on the raising of the wicked dead through the word perpetual. If perpetual signifies absolutely unlimited duration the objection drawn from the verse against that resurrection is weighty, but if the term may be limited and have only a temporal application the objection becomes comparatively insignificant. The words about sleeping a perpetual sleep and not waking sound as if the wicked dead will never rise, and so appear to deny that they will be raised. Where a literal reading conflicts with the fixed teaching that the wicked dead will be raised, it is to be taken in a figurative sense, and so harmonized with that teaching.

The judgment language about Babylon's feast and drunkenness ending in death is to be read with the drunken feast and death of Babylon's king in Daniel 5 and the figurative taunt over the fallen king of Babylon in sheol in Isaiah 14. It foretells the overthrow of the king of Babylon coming in the heat of feasting, drunkenness and rejoicing, when his people are made drunken to rejoice and then to sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, that is death in the fall of Babylon and death in sheol. It is literal prophecy of Babylon's destruction fulfilled in its final feast-night, grouped with Jeremiah 51:57, Daniel 5:1-4, 30 and Isaiah 14:4-30 in connection with the overthrow of Babylon and the king of Babylon's downfall. Those scenes portray the dead as speaking but are not literal descriptions of conscious life in sheol, and do not describe the dead literally feasting or acting there. The taunt of dead kings rising from thrones in sheol is figurative speech, not proof that the dead in sheol converse, sit on thrones, or remain conscious.

Warning and Present Application

Jeremiah 51:39 belongs to the warning of Babylon's doom that came only after warnings were ignored, and its lesson is for cities and people that forget and defy God, including New York and Chicago. The unheeded warnings ended in judgment, and that fate stands as instruction to all who forget and defy God. Babylon and Tyre are examples of proud, wicked places whose fate followed defiance of God, and San Francisco is compared to those cities as a warning that judgment may come upon places that openly reject God.

The finished, numbered judgment proves that no might or scheme or power or wealth can save a city or nation that sows within herself the seeds of error and confusion and destruction and death. It was finished while weak and dissolute and riotous and idolatrous Belshazzar held high festivals over her greatness and drank the costliest wine in the rarest chalices and in the plundered gold and silver vessels of the temple at Jerusalem to gods of gold and wood and stone. In their heat and drunken rejoicing the kingdom was weighed in the balances and found wanting and divided and given to the Medes and Persians, and before the king rose from the banquet Babylon was taken on every quarter to sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake.

After its feasting Babylon becomes drunken and falls into a sleep from which it will not wake, and that loss of spiritual life describes churches that rejected the Advent message and were left spiritually fallen. After the warning work ended, attempts to revive them through human effort were followed by loss of faith and worldly living and unpreparedness for Christ's coming. Sleeping forever without waking is what will happen to the remnant if they keep slumbering while the mighty men of the earth wake and get ready for war and the gathering storm grows louder, and falling into that sleep means failing to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord.