This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Babylon’s thick walls will be leveled, and her high gates consumed by fire. So the labor of the people will be for nothing; the nations will exhaust themselves to fuel the flames.”
The Prophet again introduces God as the speaker, that what he said might obtain more attention from the Jews; and for this reason he subjoined a eulogy to the last verse, and said that the king spoke, whose name is Jehovah of hosts We have stated elsewhere what is the design of such expressions, even that men may rise above everything seen in the world...
The particulars of this copious prophecy are dispersed and interwoven, and the same things left and returned to so often that it could not well be divided into parts, but we must endeavor to collect them under their proper heads. Let us then observe here, I.
Commenting on Jeremiah 51:1-58
So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon Babylon,.... The evil of punishment predicted and threatened: this he delivered, not by word of mouth to Seraiah to relate when he came to Babylon; but he wrote it in a book for him reread; and he wrote it himself; Baruch, his amanuensis, not being now with him: even all these words...