Jeremiah 52:9, commentary and pictures

After Jerusalem fell, Zedekiah fled the city, was overtaken and captured near Jericho, and was carried up by the Chaldeans to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where Nebuchadnezzar gave judgment upon him. The judgment pronounced at Riblah was the sentence carried out as identified in the following verse. That taking and judging of the captured king marked the removal of Israel's king and the loss of the kingdom's throne. It belonged to Judah's completed captivity, in which Jerusalem was destroyed and Zedekiah was blinded and imprisoned in Babylon until his death.

The fall shows God's destruction of Jerusalem because Israel would not keep the Sabbath holy, for He had promised through Jeremiah that if the people bore no burdens on the Sabbath day Jerusalem would stand forever, but if they would not listen He would destroy it, and within a few years He did so. Riblah lay outside Babylon, so Zedekiah saw the Babylonian king there face to face before his eyes were put out, and he was afterward taken to Babylon where he died without seeing the city. In this were fulfilled both prophecies together, that he would see the king of Babylon and be taken to Babylon, yet would not see Babylon.

Jeremiah 50-52 shows that the daughters of Babylon are part of Babylon itself, just as the daughters of Jerusalem are part of Jerusalem and the daughters of Rabbah are part of Rabbah. Therefore the great mystic Babylon to be thrown down like a millstone cast into the sea embraces all corrupt Christianity, mother and daughters together. That mystic Babylon rejected the announcement that the hour of his judgment is come and was left by his Spirit, and God's people are called to come out of her before her destruction immediately follows.

The chapter stands as a lesson for cities that forget and defy God, showing that warnings can go unheeded until judgment falls and that such cities face warning and judgment. The verse belongs to the account of Babylon's judgment and serves as part of the warning that Babylon ignored until its doom came, teaching that cities and people who forget and defy God must heed warnings and repent. Alongside the prophecies about Babylon and Tyre, Jeremiah 52 teaches that cities and nations may face judgment after flaunting wickedness and defying God.