*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
THE Prophet here employs a comparison, in order more fully to confirm his prophecy respecting the destruction of Babylon; for, as it was incredible that it could be subdued by the power or forces of men, he compares the calamity by which God would overwhelm it to a deluge. He then says that the army of the Persians and of the Medes would be like the sea, for it would irresistibly overflow; as when a storm rises, the sea swells, so he says the Medes and the Persians would come with such force, that Babylon would be overwhelmed with a deluge rather than with the forces of men. We now then understand the Prophet's meaning, when he says that Babylon would be covered with waves when the Medes and the Persians came It then follows, --
By a grand metaphor the invading army is compared to the sea.
The sea is come up - A multitude of foes have inundated the city.
The (z) sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves.
(z) The great army of the Medes and Persians.
The sea is come up upon Babylon,.... A vast army, comparable to the great sea for the multitude thereof, even the army of the Medes and Persians under Cyrus; so the Targum,
"a king with his armies, which are numerous like the waters of the sea, is come up against Babylon:''
she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof; being surrounded, besieged, surprised, and seized upon by the multitude of soldiers in that army, which poured in upon it unawares. Some think here is a beautiful antithesis, between the inundation of Cyrus's army and the draining of the river Euphrates, by which means he poured in his forces into Babylon.
The sea--the host of Median invaders. The image (compare Jeremiah 47:2; Isaiah 8:7-8) is appropriately taken from the Euphrates, which, overflowing in spring, is like a "sea" near Babylon (Jeremiah 51:13, Jeremiah 51:32, Jeremiah 51:36).
Description of the fall. The sea that has come over Babylon and covered it with its waves, was taken figuratively, even by the Chaldee paraphrasts, and understood as meaning the hostile army that overwhelms the land with its hosts. Only J. D. Michaelis was inclined to take the words in their proper meaning, and understood them as referring to the inundation of Babylon by the Euphrates in August and in winter. But however true it may be, that, in consequence of the destruction or decay of the great river-walls built by Nebuchadnezzar, the Euphrates may inundate the city of Babylon when it wells into a flood, yet the literal acceptation of the words is unwarranted, for the simple reason that they do not speak of any momentary or temporary inundation, and that, because Babylon is to be covered with water, the cities of Babylonia are to become an arid steppe. The sea is therefore the sea of nations, cf. Jeremiah 46:7; the description reminds us of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. On Jeremiah 51:43, cf. Jeremiah 48:9; Jeremiah 49:18, Jeremiah 49:33., Jeremiah 50:12. The suffix in בּהן refers to "her cities;" but the repetition of ארץ is not for that reason wrong, as Graf thinks, but is to be explained on the ground that the cities of Babylonia are compared to a barren land; and the idea is properly this: The cities become an arid country of steppes, a land in whose cities nobody can dwell.
The sea - A multitude of enemies.
*More commentary available at chapter level.