Jeremiah 51:12

51:12 Give the signal to attack Babylon’s wall!¹

Bring more guards!²

Post them all around the city!³

Put men in ambush!⁴

For the Lord will do what he has planned.

He will do what he said he would do to the people of Babylon.⁵

Jeremiah 51:29

51:29 The earth will tremble and writhe in agony.⁶

For the Lord will carry out his plan.

He plans to make the land of Babylonia⁷

a wasteland where no one lives.⁸

¹tn Heb “Raise a banner against the walls of Babylon.”

²tn Heb “Strengthen the watch.”

³tn Heb “Station the guards.”

⁴tn Heb “Prepare ambushes.”

⁵tn Heb “For the Lord has both planned and done what he said concerning the people living in Babylon,” i.e., “he has carried out what he planned.” Here is an obvious case where the perfects are to be interpreted as prophetic; the commands imply that the attack is still future.

⁶sn The figure here is common in the poetic tradition of the Lord going forth to do battle against his foes and the earth’s reaction to it is compared to a person trembling with fear and writhing in agony, agony like that of a woman in labor (cf. Judg 5:4; Nah 1:2-5; Hab 3:1-15 [especially v. 6]).

⁷tn Heb “For the plans of the Lord have been carried out to make the land of Babylon…” The passive has been turned into an active and the sentence broken up to better conform with contemporary English style. For the meaning of the verb קוּם (qum) in the sense used here see BDB 878 s.v. קוּם 7.g and compare the usage in Prov 19:21 and Isa 46:10.

⁸tn The verbs in this verse and v. 30 are all in the past tense in Hebrew, in the tense that views the action as already as good as done (the Hebrew prophetic perfect). The verb in v. 31a, however, is imperfect, viewing the action as future; the perfects that follow are all dependent on that future. Verse 33 looks forward to a time when Babylon will be harvested and trampled like grain on the threshing floor and the imperatives imply a time in the future. Hence the present translation has rendered all the verbs in vv. 29-30 as future.