And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every purpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant.

And the land trembleth and is in pain; for the purposes of Jehovah against Babylon do stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.

And the land shall be in a commotion, and shall be troubled: for the design of the Lord against Babylon shall awake, to make the land of Babylon desert and uninhabitable.

And shake doth the land, and it is pained, For stood against Babylon have the purposes of Jehovah, To make the land of Babylon a desolation without inhabitant.

And the land is shaking and in pain: for the purposes of the Lord are fixed, to make the land of Babylon an unpeopled waste.

And the land quaketh and is in pain; For the purposes of the LORD are performed against Babylon, To make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.

And the earth will be shaken and will be disturbed. For the plan of the Lord against Babylon will awaken, so that he may make the land of Babylon desolate and uninhabitable.

Et contremuit terra, et doluit (similitudo sumpta est a parturientibus,) quia stabilita fuit super Babylon cogitationes (in plurali numero ponit cum tamen verbum sit singulare, hoc est, stabilitae sunt cogitationes) Jehovae ad ponendum terram Babylonis in solitudinem, ita ut non sit habitator (vel, qui illic habitet.)

The Prophet no doubt endeavored to remove all doubts from the minds of the godly, which would have otherwise weakened confidence in his doctrine. It might have occurred to the minds of all, that the whole world would sooner come to nothing than that Babylon should fall. Though it were so, says the Prophet, that the whole earth trembled, yet Babylon will be destroyed. Hence, he says, Tremble shall the land and be in pain, even because confirmed, etc. There is here a striking contrast between the moving of the earth and the stability of God's purpose. The verb means properly to rise, but it is taken in many places in the sense of confirming or establishing, and necessarily so in this passage. he then says, Tremble shall the land, [1] even because confirmed shall be the thoughts of God respecting Babylon But he mentions thoughts in the plural number, as though he had said, that whatever God had appointed and decreed would be unchangeable, and that the whole earth would sooner be shaken than that the truth of God should lose its effect. Then this verse contains nothing else but a confirmation of the whole prophecy. But the Prophet shows, that if even all the hindrances of the world were in favor of the perpetuity of Babylon, yet what God had decreed respecting its destruction, would be fixed and unchangeable. It afterwards follows, --

Footnotes

1 - The "earth" here is evidently the land of Chaldea or Babylon, -- And tremble shall the land and be in pain; For confirmed respecting Babylon shall be the purposes of Jehovah, To set the land of Babylon a waste, Without an inhabitant. -- Ed

The literal translation is:
Then the earth quaked and writhed;
For the thoughts of Yahweh against
Babel have stood fast;
To make Babel a waste without inhabitant.

And the land shall tremble - It is represented here as trembling under the numerous armies that are passing over it, and the prancing of their horses.

And the land shall tremble and sorrow,.... The land of Chaldea, the inhabitants of it, should tremble, when they heard of this powerful army invading their land, and besieging their metropolis; and should sorrow, and be in pain as a woman in travail, as the word (f) signifies:
for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon; or, "shall stand" (g); be certainly fulfilled; for his purposes are firm and not frustratable:
to make the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant; this the Lord purposed, and threatened to do; see Jeremiah 50:39.
(f) "et parturiet", Schmidt. So Ben Melech. (g) "stabit, vel stant", Schmidt.

On the advance of this mighty host against Babylon, to execute the judgment determined by the Lord, the earth quakes. The mighty men of Babylon cease to offer resistance, and withdraw dispirited, like women, into inaccessible places, while the enemy sets fire to the houses, breaks the bars, and captures the city. The prophet views all this in spirit as already present, and depicts in lively colours the attack on the city and its capture. Hence the historic tenses, ותּרעשׁ, ותּחל, חדלוּ, etc. קמה is used of the permanence, i.e., of the realization of the divine counsels, as in Jeremiah 44:23. On the singular, see Ewald, 317, a. "To make the land," etc., as in Jeremiah 4:7; Jeremiah 18:16, etc. "They sit (have taken up their position) in the strongholds" (Mountain fastnesses), i.e., in inaccessible places; cf. 1-Samuel 13:16; 2-Samuel 23:14. נשׁתה is but to be regarded as a Kal form from נשׁת; on its derivation from שׁתת, see on Isaiah 41:17. "They have become women;" cf. Jeremiah 50:37. The subject of the verb הצּיעתוּ is the enemy, who set fire to the dwellings in Babylon. "Runner runs against runner," i.e., from opposite sides of the city there come messengers, who meet each other running to tell the king in his castle that the city is taken. The king is therefore (as Graf correctly remarks against Hitzig) not to be thought of as living outside of the city, for "in this case לקראת would have no meaning," but as living in the royal castle, which was situated in the middle of the city, on the Euphrates. Inasmuch as the city is taken "from the end" (מקּצה), i.e., on all sides, the messengers who bring the news to the king's fortress must meet each other.

The land - Babylon, or the land of Chaldea.