51:37 Babylon will become a heap of ruins.
Jackals will make their home there. 1
It will become an object of horror and of hissing scorn,
a place where no one lives. 2
51:43 The towns of Babylonia have become heaps of ruins.
She has become a dry and barren desert.
No one lives in those towns any more.
No one even passes through them. 3
1 tn Heb “a heap of ruins, a haunt for jackals.” Compare 9:11.
2 tn Heb “without an inhabitant.”
3 tn Heb “Its towns have become a desolation, [it has become] a dry land and a desert, a land which no man passes through them [referring to “her towns”] and no son of man [= human being] passes through them.” Here the present translation has followed the suggestion of BHS and a number of the modern commentaries in deleting the second occurrence of the word “land,” in which case the words that follow are not a relative clause but independent statements. A number of modern English versions appear to ignore the third feminine plural suffixes which refer back to the cities and refer the statements that follow to the land.