Verse 11. - I will punish the world for their evil. Here the prophecy certainly goes beyond the destruction of Babylon, and becomes a general warning to the wicked of all court-tries. Each country is to feel that its turn will come. Punishment will fall especially on the unjust, the proud, and the haughty (comp. Isaiah 1:28; Isaiah 2:11-17, etc.).

13:6-18 We have here the terrible desolation of Babylon by the Medes and Persians. Those who in the day of their peace were proud, and haughty, and terrible, are quite dispirited when trouble comes. Their faces shall be scorched with the flame. All comfort and hope shall fail. The stars of heaven shall not give their light, the sun shall be darkened. Such expressions are often employed by the prophets, to describe the convulsions of governments. God will visit them for their iniquity, particularly the sin of pride, which brings men low. There shall be a general scene of horror. Those who join themselves to Babylon, must expect to share her plagues, Re 18:4. All that men have, they would give for their lives, but no man's riches shall be the ransom of his life. Pause here and wonder that men should be thus cruel and inhuman, and see how corrupt the nature of man is become. And that little infants thus suffer, which shows that there is an original guilt, by which life is forfeited as soon as it is begun. The day of the Lord will, indeed, be terrible with wrath and fierce anger, far beyond all here stated. Nor will there be any place for the sinner to flee to, or attempt an escape. But few act as though they believed these things.And I will punish the world for their evil,.... Not the whole world, but the kingdom of Babylon, so called because of its large extent, and the number of its inhabitants, just as the Roman empire is called the whole world, Luke 2:1 "evil" may be meant, either of the evil of sin, which was the cause of punishment, or else of the evil of punishment itself; and the sense be this, I will visit, or, in a way of visitation, I will bring evil, or evils, upon the world; so the Targum,

and the wicked for their iniquity, or "on the wicked their iniquity"; that is, I will visit on them, or inflict upon them, the punishment of their iniquity; meaning the notorious and abandoned sinners among them, see Isaiah 13:9,

and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and I will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible: such as Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, famous for their pride, arrogance, and haughtiness, tyranny and oppression, whereby they became terrible to others.