The Unmaking of a World Text: Jeremiah 50:35-38
Introduction: Every System Has a God
We live in an age that believes it can be godless and orderly at the same time. Our secular elites imagine they can build their great towers, their modern Babylons, on the foundations of human reason, technological prowess, and bureaucratic expertise, and that these structures will stand forever. They believe in their systems, their experts, their military might, and their treasuries. They are, in a word, proud. And they are fools.
Every system has a god. The god of a system is the thing that you cannot appeal beyond. It is the final authority, the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, the source of meaning and value. For the Christian, that God is Yahweh, the Triune God of the Scriptures. But for the world, the god is always a creature. It might be the State, or Mammon, or military supremacy, or academic prestige. But whatever it is, it is an idol. And the one thing we know about idols is that God always, always, throws them down.
The prophet Jeremiah is tasked with delivering the word of the Lord against the great world power of his day, Babylon. Babylon was not just a city; it was an idea. It was the epitome of man's defiant self-reliance. It was the great, glittering prostitute of the ancient world, seducing the nations with her wealth, her power, and her sophisticated idolatries. She was proud, arrogant, and secure in her own strength. She was, in short, the archetypal City of Man, standing in defiant opposition to the City of God.
But God, through His prophet, declares that a sword is coming. Notice the repetition. This is not a suggestion. It is a covenant lawsuit, a sentence being handed down from the heavenly court. This is God dismantling a civilization, piece by piece. He is not just going to bomb the city; He is going to take apart the very idea of the city. He is going to show that every pillar of their society, every object of their trust, is nothing but dust before the wrath of the living God. This is not just history; it is a permanent theological lesson. What God did to ancient Babylon, He will do to every Babylon, in every age. And we had best pay attention, because our own civilization is shot through with the spirit of Babylon.
The Text
"A sword against the Chaldeans,” declares Yahweh, “And against the inhabitants of Babylon And against her officials and her wise men! A sword against the oracle priests, and they will become fools! A sword against her mighty men, and they will be shattered! A sword against their horses and against their chariots And against all the foreigners who are in the midst of her, And they will become women! A sword against her treasures, and they will be plundered! A drought on her waters, and they will be dried up! For it is a land of graven images, And they are mad over terrifying idols."
(Jeremiah 50:35-38 LSB)
A Sword Against the Whole Edifice (v. 35)
The indictment begins with a sweeping declaration of war against the entire Babylonian project.
"A sword against the Chaldeans,” declares Yahweh, “And against the inhabitants of Babylon And against her officials and her wise men!" (Jeremiah 50:35)
The sword of God's judgment is comprehensive. It is "against the Chaldeans," the ruling ethnic class, and against all the "inhabitants of Babylon." No one is exempt. Judgment is not just for the leadership; it falls upon the people who consented to the leadership and participated in the national sin. This is the principle of corporate solidarity. Nations sin as nations, and they are judged as nations.
But then God gets specific. The sword is against her "officials and her wise men." Every civilization runs on two things: power and wisdom. The officials represent the bureaucracy, the administrative state, the levers of political power. The wise men represent the intelligentsia, the university, the think tanks, the experts who provide the philosophical justification for the regime. Babylon was renowned for its wisdom, its astronomy, its learning. But their wisdom was earthbound. It was man-centered. It did not begin with the fear of the Lord, and therefore, it was, by definition, folly.
God declares war on the credentialed class. He brings a sword against the PhDs, the talking heads, the policy wonks, the whole class of people who believe they can manage reality without reference to the Creator of reality. When God judges a nation, one of the first things to go is the competence and coherence of its ruling class. He gives them over to their own foolishness, and the whole structure begins to rot from the head down.
A Sword Against False Religion and False Strength (v. 36)
Next, God takes aim at Babylon's spiritual and military confidence.
"A sword against the oracle priests, and they will become fools! A sword against her mighty men, and they will be shattered!" (Jeremiah 50:36 LSB)
The "oracle priests" are the professional liars, the purveyors of false prophecy. The Hebrew word refers to boastful babblers. These were the religious leaders who told the king and the people what they wanted to hear. They divined the future, read the omens, and assured everyone that Babylon was invincible. They were the state-sanctioned spiritual authorities.
And God's judgment on them is poetic and precise: "they will become fools." The all-knowing experts will be revealed as clueless. Their predictions will fail. Their counsel will lead to ruin. God will make a public spectacle of their vaunted wisdom. This is what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians: God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. The cross is the ultimate foolishness to the world, and it is the instrument by which God exposes the bankruptcy of all human systems of salvation and knowledge.
Then comes the sword against the "mighty men." These are the warriors, the special forces, the pride of the Babylonian military. They are the instrument of the state's power. And God says they will be "shattered." The word means to be broken, to be terrified. The courage of the most elite soldiers will fail them. Their strength will turn to water. Why? Because true strength does not reside in tactical gear or superior firepower. It resides in the blessing of God. And when God withdraws His restraining grace and brings His active judgment, the mightiest armies become as brittle as glass.
A Sword Against the Instruments of Pride (v. 37)
The judgment continues, striking at the symbols and substance of Babylon's worldly power.
"A sword against their horses and against their chariots And against all the foreigners who are in the midst of her, And they will become women! A sword against her treasures, and they will be plundered!" (Jeremiah 50:37 LSB)
Horses and chariots were the ancient equivalent of tanks and fighter jets. They were the pinnacle of military technology, the symbol of imperial might. The psalmist says, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God" (Psalm 20:7). Babylon trusted in chariots. And God says, "a sword against them." All your advanced weaponry will be useless when the creator of the iron in your swords turns against you.
The sword also comes against "all the foreigners," the mixed multitude of mercenaries and allies who had thrown their lot in with Babylon for profit and security. When the empire is strong, everyone wants to be its friend. But when the judgment comes, these fair-weather friends will be the first to break. Their courage will fail, and "they will become women." This is not a slight against women; it is ancient language for a complete loss of martial valor. The hired guns will lose their nerve and be routed. Their loyalty was to the paycheck, not the principle, and such loyalty never holds in the day of trouble.
Finally, a sword against her "treasures." All the accumulated wealth, the gold, the plunder from a hundred conquests, will be taken. Economic collapse follows military and moral collapse. The god of Mammon is a fickle deity. The wealth that was a source of pride becomes a source of plunder for the enemy. God will bankrupt the nation that has abandoned Him.
The Root of the Rot (v. 38)
In the final verse, God lays bare the ultimate reason for this comprehensive judgment. It is not fundamentally about politics or economics. It is about worship.
"A drought on her waters, and they will be dried up! For it is a land of graven images, And they are mad over terrifying idols." (Jeremiah 50:38 LSB)
The judgment here is a "drought on her waters." This is likely a reference to the great Euphrates river and the intricate canal system that was the lifeblood of Babylon's agriculture and defense. God will simply turn off the tap. The source of their life and prosperity will vanish. This is a covenant curse. God promised His people that if they obeyed, He would send rain in its season. If they disobeyed, the heavens would become like bronze (Deut. 28). God is applying the same principle to the pagan nations. He is the Lord of the harvest, the giver of rain, and He can withhold it at will.
And here is the reason for it all. Why this relentless, top-to-bottom deconstruction of a world power? "For it is a land of graven images, and they are mad over terrifying idols." This is the diagnosis. The political corruption, the military arrogance, the intellectual folly, the economic greed, all of it flows from one poisoned spring: idolatry. They had exchanged the worship of the Creator for the worship of the creature.
The word "mad" here is key. It means to be driven insane, to be in a state of frantic, foolish delusion. Idolatry is not a quaint, primitive mistake. It is a form of insanity. It is to look at a block of wood that you carved yourself and call it your maker. It is to look at the State and call it your savior. It is to look at your bank account and call it your security. It is to look at your own intellect and call it the ultimate reality. This is madness. And because they are mad for their idols, God gives them over to the madness of destruction.
Conclusion: Come Out of Her, My People
This is a terrifying passage. It is the announcement of the complete unmaking of a world. But it is not just about a Mesopotamian empire that fell two and a half millennia ago. Babylon is a recurring character in the biblical drama. She appears again in the book of Revelation as "Mystery Babylon," the great prostitute who rides the beast and is drunk with the blood of the saints (Rev. 17).
Babylon is the spirit of this age. It is the spirit of proud, secular humanism that builds its towers in defiance of God. It trusts in its wise men at the university, its officials in the capital, its mighty men in the pentagon, and its treasures on Wall Street. It is a land of graven images, mad over the terrifying idols of sexual autonomy, political power, and technological salvation.
And the word of the Lord to us is the same as it is in Revelation: "Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues" (Rev. 18:4). We are called to be a colony of heaven in the midst of a doomed empire. We must not trust in her chariots. We must not be seduced by her treasures. We must not listen to her oracle priests on the cable news. We must not adopt her insane definitions of reality.
The sword of God's judgment is coming for our Babylon, just as it came for Jeremiah's. But there is a refuge. The sword of God's wrath has already fallen upon another. On the cross, Jesus Christ absorbed the full force of the sword that we deserved. He was shattered for our transgressions. He was made a fool in the eyes of the world so that we might receive the wisdom of God. He was plundered and stripped bare so that we might inherit the treasures of heaven.
Therefore, the call is to repent of our Babylonian compromises and to flee to Christ. He is the only king whose kingdom will not be shattered. He is the only wise man whose counsel is not folly. He is the only treasure that cannot be plundered. All other ground is sinking sand. All other empires are destined for the dustbin of history. But the one who trusts in the Lord will never be put to shame.