The Sovereign Summons
Introduction: The Grammar of Geopolitics
We live in an age of frantic experts. We have political analysts, military strategists, and economic forecasters, all of them poring over charts and data, trying to predict the next shift in the global balance of power. They speak of emerging markets, geopolitical interests, and spheres of influence. They talk as though history were a great, complicated machine, and if they could just find the right levers to pull, they could steer it in the direction they want. They believe, fundamentally, in the autonomy of man. Nations rise and fall, they think, because of superior strategy, economic advantage, or sheer dumb luck.
But the prophet Jeremiah would look at our cable news panels and our think tanks and he would laugh. He would tell us that we have missed the main character in the story. We have forgotten the protagonist. The Bible teaches a completely different grammar of geopolitics. The fundamental truth is this: God is the Lord of history. He is not a spectator; He is the sovereign who sits enthroned above the circle of the earth. He raises up kings and He deposes them. He summons nations from the ends of the earth as easily as a man might whistle for his dog. He does not react to history; He writes it.
This is a truth that modern Christians have become embarrassed by. We want a God who is nice, a God who sticks to the spiritual realm of our hearts and minds, a God who doesn't meddle in the messy business of armies and empires. But that is not the God of the Bible. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Lord of hosts, the commander of armies, both seen and unseen. And in this passage, He turns His attention to the great superpower of the day, the empire that had served as His instrument of judgment against Judah: Babylon the great, the hammer of the whole earth.
What we are about to read is a divine court summons. Babylon, having fulfilled its purpose as God's rod of chastisement against His own people, now finds that the rod itself is to be broken. God is not a respecter of persons, and He is certainly not a respecter of empires. He uses whom He will, and when He is done, He judges them for the very sins they committed while being used by Him. This is a hard truth, but it is a glorious one. It means that no earthly power is ultimate. No tyranny is permanent. God is on His throne, and He will judge the nations in righteousness.
The Text
Behold, a people is coming from the north, And a great nation and many kings Will be aroused from the remote parts of the earth. They seize their bow and javelin; They are cruel and have no compassion. Their voice roars like the sea; And they ride on horses, Arranged like a man for the battle Against you, O daughter of Babylon. The king of Babylon has heard the report about them, And his hands hang limp; Distress has taken hold of him, Agony like a woman in childbirth.
(Jeremiah 50:41-43 LSB)
God's Appointed Instrument (v. 41)
We begin with the divine announcement of the coming judgment.
"Behold, a people is coming from the north, And a great nation and many kings Will be aroused from the remote parts of the earth." (Jeremiah 50:41)
Notice the first word: "Behold." This is a call to pay attention. God is pulling back the curtain of history to show us what is really going on behind the scenes. This isn't just a weather report about a storm gathering on the horizon. This is a declaration of divine intent.
And where does this threat come from? "The north." For Israel, the north was the classic corridor of invasion. Assyria came from the north. Babylon itself came from the north to judge Jerusalem. Now, in an act of perfect, symmetrical justice, God summons an enemy from the north to judge Babylon. The justice of God is not haphazard; it is poetic. He often makes the punishment fit the crime in ways that are breathtakingly precise. Babylon was the northern menace to Judah; now a northern menace is coming for Babylon.
But who is the real actor here? It is not the "great nation" or the "many kings." The key verb is "will be aroused." This is a divine passive. Who is doing the arousing? God is. These kings and their armies think they are marching for their own reasons, for plunder, for glory, for strategic advantage. But in reality, they are puppets on a string. God is stirring them up from the "remote parts of the earth." This demonstrates the vast scope of His sovereignty. He is not a local deity. His writ runs to the farthest corners of the globe. He can reach into the most obscure, remote region and summon a great nation to perform His will. This is a direct assault on the pride of Babylon, which saw itself as the center of the world. God says, "I can call up an army you've never even heard of to bring you to ruin."
The Character of the Cudgel (v. 42)
Next, Jeremiah describes the nature of this invading force. It is not pleasant.
"They seize their bow and javelin; They are cruel and have no compassion. Their voice roars like the sea; And they ride on horses, Arranged like a man for the battle Against you, O daughter of Babylon." (Jeremiah 50:42)
God is not squeamish. When He decides to judge a nation, He does not send a polite letter requesting their surrender. He sends an instrument perfectly suited to the task. This army, the Medes and Persians, is described with four terrifying characteristics.
First, they are well-armed: "They seize their bow and javelin." They are prepared for war. Second, they are morally brutal: "They are cruel and have no compassion." This is a point that troubles our sentimental age. How can a good God use a cruel and merciless army? But this is to misunderstand the nature of divine judgment. God is not sullied by the instruments He uses, any more than a surgeon is sullied by the scalpel he uses to cut out a cancer. Babylon had been cruel. They had shown no compassion to Jerusalem. Now they will reap what they have sown. God is giving them a taste of their own medicine, served up by a people even more ruthless than they were.
Third, they are overwhelmingly powerful: "Their voice roars like the sea." This is not the sound of a small raiding party. This is the sound of an unstoppable tsunami of men and horses, a deafening roar that paralyzes its victims with fear. Fourth, they are perfectly disciplined: "Arranged like a man for the battle." This vast horde moves with the unity and precision of a single warrior. There is no chaos, no disarray. They are a perfectly functioning machine of destruction, aimed squarely at the "daughter of Babylon." That phrase personifies the city, making the coming assault feel like a deeply personal violation, which is exactly what Babylon had inflicted on others.
The Collapse of the Crown (v. 43)
Finally, the prophecy shifts from the invaders to the invaded, from the instrument of wrath to its target.
"The king of Babylon has heard the report about them, And his hands hang limp; Distress has taken hold of him, Agony like a woman in childbirth." (Jeremiah 50:43)
Here we see the effect of God's judgment upon the proud. The king of Babylon, the man who sat at the apex of human power, the one whose word was law, hears nothing more than a "report," and he completely unravels. All his arrogance, all his military might, all his supposed divinity, evaporates in an instant.
His response is described in three ways. First, he is paralyzed with helplessness: "his hands hang limp." The hands that once held a scepter, that commanded armies, that signed decrees of life and death, are now useless. He is utterly incapacitated by fear. This is what God's judgment does to human strength. It exposes it as the flimsy, pathetic thing it truly is.
Second, he is seized by anguish: "Distress has taken hold of him." The man who thought he was in control finds that he has been seized by a power far greater than himself. He is no longer the subject of his own story, but the object of God's.
Third, and most devastatingly, he is overcome with "Agony like a woman in childbirth." In the ancient world, this was the ultimate image of pain, helplessness, and a complete loss of control. It is also a profound humiliation. The great warrior-king, the symbol of masculine power and dominance, is reduced to the state of a travailing woman. His strength is gone, his dignity is stripped away, and all that is left is agonizing, involuntary pain. This is the end of all human pride when it stands before the judgment of a holy God. The towers of Babel that men build will always come crashing down in agony and shame.
The End of All Babylons
It is a great temptation to read a passage like this and keep it safely in the ancient world. This is a story about Babylon, we say, and it was fulfilled by the Medes and Persians. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. Babylon is more than just an ancient city on the Euphrates. In the Scriptures, Babylon becomes a symbol, a byword for the proud, idolatrous, man-centered world system that sets itself up in opposition to God.
The spirit of Babylon is the spirit of Babel, which declared, "let us make a name for ourselves" (Genesis 11:4). It is the spirit of Pharaoh, who asked, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey His voice?" (Exodus 5:2). It is the spirit of Rome in the book of Revelation, drunk with the blood of the saints. And it is the spirit of our own secular, godless age, which seeks to build its own towers of progress and autonomy, shaking its fist at the heavens.
Every generation has its Babylon, its concentration of worldly power that seems invincible. And to every Babylon, God sends a prophet like Jeremiah with the same message: Judgment is coming. God is sovereign over your politics, your military, and your economy. He can and will arouse a nation from the remote parts of the earth to bring you down.
When your hands hang limp, when your leaders are seized with the agony of childbirth, it will not be because of a failure of policy. It will be the righteous judgment of God. This is not a cause for despair for the people of God. It is a cause for sober-minded confidence. Our King is on the throne. He is even now putting all His enemies under His feet, just as He promised. The nations are raging, but He who sits in the heavens laughs. Our task is not to fear the roaring of the sea, but to trust in the one who commands the waves. For every Babylon will fall, but the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will endure forever.