The God Who Pays in Full Text: Jeremiah 51:54-58
Introduction: The Noise of a Dying Empire
Every godless empire has a soundtrack. It is the sound of boasting, the sound of threats, the sound of self-congratulation, and the sound of blasphemy. It is a loud, chaotic noise, designed to intimidate the righteous and to convince itself of its own permanence. Babylon was the Las Vegas of the ancient world, a city of immense pride, staggering wealth, and industrial-grade idolatry. Her noise was the sound of a civilization drunk on its own power, a great and clamorous roar that seemed to shake the heavens.
But God is not impressed by noise. He is not intimidated by high walls or high gates. He is not troubled by the rumblings of human pride. Our passage today is the tail end of a long, detailed prophecy against Babylon, and it describes the final moments of that empire's soundtrack. The loud roar of Chaldean arrogance is about to be replaced by a different sound, the sound of an outcry, of great destruction. God is about to turn the volume down on Babylon, permanently.
We live in our own Babylon. Our culture makes a great deal of noise. It is the incessant chatter of cable news, the proud declarations of our secular elites, the endless promotion of sexual rebellion, and the confident assertions that man is the measure of all things. This noise is intended to create an atmosphere of inevitability, to make Christians feel like a beleaguered and defeated minority. But the Word of God cuts through that noise with sovereign authority. This passage is a potent reminder that God judges proud nations. He dismantles arrogant empires. He is a God of recompense, and He always, always pays His bills in full.
The fall of the historical Babylon is a preview, a scale model, of the fall of the great spiritual Babylon described in the book of Revelation. So when we study this, we are not just studying ancient history. We are studying the fixed principles by which God governs His world. We are looking at the end of our own godless age from the vantage point of eternity. And we are being reminded that the clamor of man is temporary, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.
The Text
The sound of an outcry from Babylon, And of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans!
For Yahweh is going to destroy Babylon, And He will make her loud noise vanish from her. And their waves will roar like many waters; The rumbling of their voices sounds forth.
For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon, And her mighty men will be captured; Their bows are shattered; For Yahweh is a God of recompense, He will fully repay.
“I will make her princes and her wise men drunk, Her governors, her prefects, and her mighty men, That they may sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake up,” Declares the King, whose name is Yahweh of hosts.
Thus says Yahweh of hosts, “The broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed, And her high gates will be set on fire; So the peoples will toil for nothing, And the nations become weary only for fire.”
(Jeremiah 51:54-58 LSB)
The Sound of Judgment (v. 54-55)
We begin with the auditory shift, the change in the soundtrack of history.
"The sound of an outcry from Babylon, And of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans! For Yahweh is going to destroy Babylon, And He will make her loud noise vanish from her. And their waves will roar like many waters; The rumbling of their voices sounds forth." (Jeremiah 51:54-55)
The prophecy begins with what the ear will hear. The "loud noise" of Babylon's pride, commerce, and military might is being replaced by the "outcry" of her death throes. The party is over. The screaming has begun. This is the inevitable result when a creature puffs himself up against the Creator. God is sovereign over the acoustics of the universe. He determines what sounds will fill the air. He is silencing the arrogant boasts and replacing them with the sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Notice who is doing this. "For Yahweh is going to destroy Babylon." The Medes and the Persians were the historical instrument, but they were merely the axe in the Lord's hand. God is not a passive observer of history; He is the primary actor. He is the one who brings nations to ruin. This is a direct affront to our modern sensibilities, which want to relegate God to the realm of private piety. But the God of the Bible is the Lord of history, the one who raises up empires and casts them down.
The second part of verse 55 describes the sound of the invading army. "Their waves will roar like many waters." The destroyer is coming, and he sounds like a tsunami. The chaotic, roaring deep that God domesticated in Genesis 1 is now being unleashed as an agent of His judgment. The very thing Babylon thought it had conquered, chaos, is now being sent against it by the God of order. This is a profound irony. When men reject the God of order, He hands them over to the very chaos they thought they could manage on their own terms.
The God of Recompense (v. 56)
Verse 56 gives us the central reason for this destruction. It reveals the character of the God who is acting.
"For the destroyer is coming against her, against Babylon, And her mighty men will be captured; Their bows are shattered; For Yahweh is a God of recompense, He will fully repay." (Jeremiah 51:56 LSB)
Babylon's military machine, the source of her pride and security, is rendered completely impotent. The "mighty men," the special forces of their day, are captured. Their advanced weaponry, their "bows," are shattered. All the things they trusted in are broken. This is what God does. He exposes the foolishness of trusting in the arm of the flesh. Our modern idols are not bows and arrows, but they are just as fragile. We trust in our technology, our economy, our military, our Supreme Court. God can shatter them all in an afternoon.
And here is the foundational reason: "For Yahweh is a God of recompense, He will fully repay." The Hebrew is El Gemuwal, the God of Repayments. This is not petty vengeance. This is covenantal justice. God keeps meticulous books. Every act of oppression against His people, every blasphemous word, every proud thought is recorded. And in His perfect time, He settles the account. The word "fully" is crucial. God does not grade on a curve. He does not partially repay. He pays in full. This should be a terror to the enemies of God and a profound comfort to His people. Justice will be done. Not a single sin will go unpunished. It will either be punished in Christ on the cross, or it will be punished in the sinner in Hell. God's books will be balanced.
The Intoxication of Judgment (v. 57)
In this verse, God describes the mechanism by which He will neutralize Babylon's leadership. It is a divine and deadly cocktail.
"I will make her princes and her wise men drunk, Her governors, her prefects, and her mighty men, That they may sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake up,” Declares the King, whose name is Yahweh of hosts." (Jeremiah 51:57 LSB)
This was fulfilled with an almost comical literalness. The night Babylon fell, Belshazzar and a thousand of his lords were having a drunken feast, desecrating the vessels from the temple in Jerusalem (Daniel 5). They were literally drunk. But the spiritual principle is deeper. Pride is a form of intoxication. It clouds judgment. It makes men feel invincible. It blinds them to the writing on the wall. God's judgment often takes the form of giving men over to the stupor of their own arrogance. He lets them drink themselves into a state of spiritual oblivion right before He strikes.
Look at the list: princes, wise men, governors, prefects, mighty men. The entire leadership structure, from the political elite to the intellectual class to the military brass, is targeted. God dismantles a society from the head down. When the leadership is drunk on pride, the whole nation staggers into the ditch.
And the result of this intoxication is not a hangover; it is a "perpetual sleep." This is a euphemism for death, but it's a terrifying one. It is a sleep from which they will not wake up to earthly power ever again. The party is over, and the eternal judgment begins. And lest we miss the authority behind this decree, He signs His name: "Declares the King, whose name is Yahweh of hosts." This is the commander of the angelic armies, the true King of the universe, signing the death warrant of a tinpot dictator.
The Futility of Godless Labor (v. 58)
The final verse summarizes the net result of all Babylon's centuries of striving. It all amounts to a cosmic zero.
"Thus says Yahweh of hosts, 'The broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed, And her high gates will be set on fire; So the peoples will toil for nothing, And the nations become weary only for fire.'" (Jeremiah 51:58 LSB)
The walls of Babylon were one of the wonders of the ancient world, wide enough, it was said, for two chariots to race abreast. They were the ultimate symbol of her security and permanence. And God says they will be "completely razed." Her "high gates," symbols of her grandeur, will be burned. All the monuments of human pride, all the things that end up on postcards and in history books, are tinder in the eyes of God.
And this brings us to the devastating conclusion: "So the peoples will toil for nothing, And the nations become weary only for fire." Think of the sheer man-hours, the sweat, the toil, the blood, the genius that went into building Babylon. Generations of men labored to build this great city, this monument to their own glory. And God says it was all for nothing. It was all just kindling for the bonfire of His judgment. All labor that is not done in and for the Lord Jesus Christ is ultimately futile. It is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It is building with wood, hay, and stubble, destined for the fire (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). This is the curse of godless humanism. It pours all its energy into projects that are doomed from the start, because they are built on the foundation of human autonomy rather than submission to God.
Conclusion: Fleeing Babylon
This is a terrifying passage for those who have made their home in Babylon. But for the people of God, it is a word of profound comfort and a call to action. Jeremiah had already given the command earlier in this same chapter: "Flee from the midst of Babylon, And each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, For this is Yahweh’s time of vengeance; He is going to render recompense to her" (Jeremiah 51:6).
The application for us is exactly the same. The Apostle John, seeing the vision of the final fall of the great whore, Babylon, hears a voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues" (Revelation 18:4). We are called to be in the world, but not of it. We are called to be exiles, pilgrims who have set their hearts on a different city, one whose builder and maker is God.
This means we must refuse to be intoxicated by the pride of our age. We must not trust in its high walls of technology or its broad gates of economic prosperity. We must not be impressed by its loud noise. We must see it for what it is: a city under sentence of death.
And we must remember that the God of recompense has already executed the ultimate judgment at the cross. There, all the fury of God against sin was poured out on His Son. Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath so that we wouldn't have to. He slept the sleep of death so that we could be awakened to eternal life. Because of the cross, the God of recompense is now the God of grace for all who believe.
Therefore, our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). When we build our families, our churches, and our communities on the foundation of Christ, we are not toiling for the fire. We are building for eternity. The noise of Babylon will fade. Her walls will fall. Her wisdom will be exposed as foolishness. But the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will endure forever. Let us therefore live as citizens of that kingdom, with our ears tuned not to the dying roar of Babylon, but to the voice of our King.