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Daily Devotions

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 
Day 
Day 537

"How Babylon has become a desolation"

Text: Jeremiah 50:23

THE LAND OF MERATHAIM

The Bible is full of rich imagery. Lands are given special symbolic names. Often in these names were hidden meanings.

“‘Go up against the land of Merathaim, against it,
And against the inhabitants of Pekod.
Waste and utterly destroy them,’ says the LORD,
‘And do according to all that I have commanded you.
A sound of battle is in the land,
And of great destruction.
How the hammer of the whole earth has been cut apart and broken!
How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!'”
Jeremiah 50:21-23

1. “‘Go up against the land of Merathaim, against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod.
Waste and utterly destroy them,’ says the LORD,
‘and do according to all that I have commanded you'”

a) These words were spoken by the LORD to the people destined
to overthrow Babylon.

b) The symbolic name: Merathaim

i) This word means “double rebellion.”

ii) Babylon was described as doubly rebellious.

c) Pekod

i) The name means “noble.”

ii) This city of Babylon may once have been a noble one.

iii) But became a very rebellious city like the capital Babylon.

d) The whole Babylonian empire had become arrogant and rebellious.

God’s word to the Medo-Persians was clear.

i) They were to do what God had commanded them.

ii) They were to rise up and lay waste to Babylon.

iii) The Babylonians were to be destroyed as an empire.

2. How the hammer of the whole earth has been cut apart and broken!
How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations!

a) Babylon was feared as “the hammer of the whole earth.”

b) It would be cut apart and broken.

c) Babylon would become a desolation among the nations.