Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says Yahweh.
Parallel Translations
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Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says Yahweh.
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Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for Babylon: for the spoilers shall come unto her from the north, saith the LORD.
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Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for joy over Babylon; for the spoilers shall come unto her from the north, saith the LORD.
Cross-references (13)
Passages linked to Jeremiah 51:48 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Isaiah 44:23 Sing, you heavens, for Yahweh has done it! Shout, you lower parts of the earth! Break out into singing, you mountains, O forest, all of your trees, for Yahweh has redeemed Jacob, and will glorify himself in Israel.
- Revelation 18:20 “Rejoice over her, O heaven, you saints, apostles, and prophets; for God has judged your judgment on her.”
- Jeremiah 50:3 For a nation comes up out of the north against her, which will make her land desolate, and no one will dwell in it. They have fled. They are gone, both man and animal.
- Isaiah 48:20 Leave Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! With a voice of singing announce this, tell it even to the end of the earth: say, “Yahweh has redeemed his servant Jacob!”
- Isaiah 49:13 Sing, heavens, and be joyful, earth! Break out into singing, mountains, for Yahweh has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted.
- Psalms 58:10-11 The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, so that men shall say, “Most certainly there is a reward for the righteous. Most certainly there is a God who judges the earth.”
- Proverbs 11:10 When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices. When the wicked perish, there is shouting.
- Jeremiah 50:9 For, behold, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country; and they will set themselves in array against her. She will be taken from there. Their arrows will be as of an expert mighty man. None of them will return in vain.
- Jeremiah 50:41 “Behold, a people comes from the north; and a great nation and many kings will be stirred up from the uttermost parts of the earth.
- Jeremiah 51:10-11 ‘Yahweh has produced our righteousness: come, and let’s declare in Zion the work of Yahweh our God.’ “Make the arrows sharp! Hold the shields firmly! Yahweh has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it; for it is the vengeance of Yahweh, the vengeance of his temple.
- Revelation 15:1-4 I saw another great and marvelous sign in the sky: seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them God’s wrath is finished. I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who overcame the beast, his image, and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God. They sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God, the Almighty! Righteous and true are your ways, you King of the nations. Who wouldn’t fear you, Lord, and glorify your name? For you only are holy. For all the nations will come and worship before you. For your righteous acts have been revealed.”
- Revelation 16:4-7 The third poured out his bowl into the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. I heard the angel of the waters saying, “You are righteous, who are and who were, O Holy One, because you have judged these things. For they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. They deserve this.” I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.”
- Revelation 19:1-7 After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation, power, and glory belong to our God; for his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great prostitute, who corrupted the earth with her sexual immorality, and he has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.” A second said, “Hallelujah! Her smoke goes up forever and ever.” The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne, saying, “Amen! Hallelujah!” A voice came from the throne, saying, “Give praise to our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, the small and the great!” I heard something like the voice of a great multitude, and like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of mighty thunders, saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns! Let’s rejoice and be exceedingly glad, and let’s give the glory to him. For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (12 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain That, he might more fully convince the Jews of…
That, he might more fully convince the Jews of the truth of all that he has hitherto said of the destruction of Babylon, he declares that God would effect it, and that it would be applauded by all the elements. Shout, he says, shall heaven and earth; which is a kind of personification — for he ascribes knowledge to heaven and earth. It might, indeed, be more refinedly explained, that angels and men would shout for joy, but it would be a frigid explanation; and the Prophet removes every ambiguity, by adding, and all that is in them: he includes, no doubt, the stars, men, trees, fishes, birds, fields, stones, and rivers. And the expression is very emphatical when he says, that all created things, though without reason and understanding, would yet be full of joy, so that they would, in a manner, rejoice and sing praise. If such would be the feeling in dead creatures, when God put forth his hand against Babylon, would it be possible for that city to remain safe, which was so hated by heaven and earth, and which was accursed by birds and wild beasts, by trees, and everything void of understanding!
We hence see that the Prophet heaps together all kinds of figures and modes of speaking, in order to confirm weak minds, so that they might confidently look forward to the destruction of Babylon. He at the same time intimates that Babylon was hated by all creatures, because it had reached to the highest pitch of wickedness. He then shows the cause by the effect, as though he had said that Babylon was hated by heaven and earth, so that heaven and earth seemed as though they deemed themselves in a manner polluted by the sight of that city. As long, then, as Babylon stood, heaven and earth sighed: but, on the contrary, when God appeared as an avenger, then heaven and earth, and all things in them, would shout with joy. Could it then be that God, the judge of the world, would always connive at its sins? If heaven and earth could not endure it, and Babylon was so loathsome to all, and joy would arise from its destruction, could God possibly allow that city, filled with so many sins, and detested by heaven and earth, to escape with impunity his judgment?
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We now, then, more fully understand why the Prophet says that triumph and joy would be in heaven and earth, and among all created things.
He says, because; but the particle כי, ki, may be taken for an adverb of time: then he says, when from the north shall come wasters He alludes to the Medes, for the Persians were eastward. But as the Medes were nigher, and also their monarch hr wealthier, the Prophet refers especially to the Medes when he says that evil would come from the north. For the Medes were north of Chaldea, as the Persians were eastward.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain All creatures in heaven and earth shall rejoice, and…
All creatures in heaven and earth shall rejoice, and praise God for the destruction of Babylon the great enemy of his Church.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jer 51:48 Then the heaven and the earth, and…
Jer 51:48 Then the heaven and the earth, and all that [is] therein, shall sing for Babylon: for the spoilers shall come unto her from the north, saith the LORD.
Ver. 48. Then the heaven and the earth, &c., shall sing.] Est hyperbolica prosopopoeia. This is an exagerated personification. There shall be, as it were, a new face set upon the world, and all the creatures shall appear to be well paid at the downfall of Babylon, under the oppressions whereof they even groaned and laboured. See what a similar general joy there will be at the ruin of Rome! {Rev 18:20}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain All the creatures in heaven and earth. shall rejoice…
All the creatures in heaven and earth. shall rejoice at the vengeance which God shall take upon Babylon, which had been the destroyer of so many of their people. The Median soldiers are those here called spoilers from the north.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand…
Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still,.... The Jews, who had escaped the sword of the Chaldeans when Jerusalem was taken, and were carried captive into Babylon, where they had remained to this time; and had also escaped the sword of the Medes and Persians, when Babylon was taken; these are bid to go away from Babylon, and go into their land, and not stay in Babylon, or linger there, as Lot in Sodom; or stop on the road, but make the best of their way to the land of Judea:
remember the Lord afar off; the worship of the Lord, as the Targum interprets it; the worship of the Lord in the sanctuary at Jerusalem, from which they were afar off at Babylon; and had been a long time, even seventy years, deprived of it, as Kimchi explains it:
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and let Jerusalem come into your mind; that once famous city, the metropolis of the nation, that now lay in ruins; the temple that once stood in it, and the service of God there; that upon the remembrance of, and calling these to mind, they might be quickened and stirred up to hasten thither, and rebuild the city and temple, and restore the worship of God. It is not easy to say whose words these are, whether the words of the prophet, or of the Lord by him; or of the inhabitants of the heavens and earth, whose song may be here continued, and in it thus address the Jews.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Then - All the creatures in heaven and earth…
Then - All the creatures in heaven and earth shall rejoice at the vengeance which God shall take upon Babylon.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 48. The heaven and the earth - shall…
Verse 48. The heaven and the earth - shall sing for Babylon] Its fall shall be a subject of universal rejoicing.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Praise, for the just punishment. (Haydock) --- The crimes…
Praise, for the just punishment. (Haydock) --- The crimes were public. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain heaven . . . earth . . . sing…
heaven . . . earth . . . sing for Babylon-- (Isa 14:7-13; Isa 44:23; Rev 18:20).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 48. shall sing for joy over Babylon] shall rejoice…
48. shall sing for joy over Babylon] shall rejoice over her fall.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (48) Then the heaven and the earth . .…
(48) Then the heaven and the earth . . .—The prophet, following in the track of Isaiah (Isa_44:23), thinks of the whole creation as rejoicing in the righteous judgment of Jehovah on the guilty city, and in the liberation of His people. They sing, as it were, their Te Deum over the fall of Babylon under the attack of the Medo-Persian armies “from the North.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain From the north. The same statement as in Jer_50:3,…
From the north. The same statement as in Jer_50:3, Jer_50:9, Jer_50:41.
Joy over judgment.
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I THE SINNER WILL WEEP AND WAIL. This is the constant declaration of the Word of God. "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Would that the sinner would look steadily on to the end, and so consider his ways!
II HUMAN NATURE, IN SYMPATHY WITH THE SINNER"S WOES, WILL SORROW. (Cf. Isa_21:10) We have need to be on our guard against this. In the present day our sympathy with the suffering leads us to forget the causes and the blessed results that come from the judgment of God. No criminal is ever condemned to die but at once there are those who strive to get his punishment remitted. It is a false sympathy and needs to be resisted.
III BUT HEAVEN AND EARTH REJOICE. Cf. the many psalms in which we are called on to rejoice because the Lord "cometh to judge the earth." The grounds of this joy are:
1. Righteousness is vindicated.
2. The oppressed are delivered.
3. Men will learn righteousness.
4. They that are judged will be brought to a better mind.
5. The kingdom of God will more speedily come. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.