Jeremiah 51:42
40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats.
41 How Sheshach has been captured! The praise of all the earth has been seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!
The sea has come up over Babylon; she is covered in turbulent waves.
43 Her cities have become a desolation, a dry and arid land, a land where no one lives, where no son of man passes through.
44 I will punish Bel in Babylon. I will make him spew out what he swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him; even the wall of Babylon will fall.
This was said to Israel at a particular time, so it is wise to read it together with the surrounding text. Do read the surrounding verses too, because the context often says more than a single verse.
Compare
- BSB
- The sea has come up over Babylon; she is covered in turbulent waves.
- KJV
- The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.
- WEB
- The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves.
- ASV
- The sea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.
- DARBY
- The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves.
- BLB
- The sea has come up over Babylon; with the multitude of its waves she is covered.
- ÅB
- Havet er steget opp over Babel, det er skjult av dets brusende bølger.
- OTB
- «‘Sett dere i rekke mot Babylon på alle sider, Alle som bøyer buen, skyt mot henne; Spare ikke pilene deres! For hun har syndet mot Herren.
- B1930
- Havet er steget op over Babel, det er skjult av dets brusende bølger.
Study notes (Tyndale)
Original text and word study
Cross references
Isaiah 8:7–8
the Lord will surely bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the Euphrates — the king of Assyria and all his pomp. It will overflow its channels and overrun its banks.
Read in contextDaniel 9:26
Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing. Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed.
Read in contextPsalms 65:7
You stilled the roaring of the seas, the pounding of their waves, and the tumult of the nations.
Read in contextRevelation 17:15–16
Then the angel said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute was seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.
Read in contextEzekiel 27:26–34
Your oarsmen have brought you onto the high seas, but the east wind will shatter you in the heart of the sea.
Read in contextJeremiah 51:55
For the LORD will destroy Babylon; He will silence her mighty voice. The waves will roar like great waters; the tumult of their voices will resound.
Read in contextPsalms 18:16
He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters.
Read in contextLuke 21:25
There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among the nations, bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the surging of the waves.
Read in context