(57) I will make drunk her princes.--The imagery is repeated from Jeremiah 51:39, and carries out the thought of Jeremiah 25:15-16; Jeremiah 25:27. On the list of officers see Note on Jeremiah 51:23.

Verse 57. - Her captains, and her rulers (see on ver. 23).

51:1-58 The particulars of this prophecy are dispersed and interwoven, and the same things left and returned to again. Babylon is abundant in treasures, yet neither her waters nor her wealth shall secure her. Destruction comes when they did not think of it. Wherever we are, in the greatest depths, at the greatest distances, we are to remember the Lord our God; and in the times of the greatest fears and hopes, it is most needful to remember the Lord. The feeling excited by Babylon's fall is the same with the New Testament Babylon, Re 18:9,19. The ruin of all who support idolatry, infidelity, and superstition, is needful for the revival of true godliness; and the threatening prophecies of Scripture yield comfort in this view. The great seat of antichristian tyranny, idolatry, and superstition, the persecutor of true Christians, is as certainly doomed to destruction as ancient Babylon. Then will vast multitudes mourn for sin, and seek the Lord. Then will the lost sheep of the house of Israel be brought back to the fold of the good Shepherd, and stray no more. And the exact fulfilment of these ancient prophecies encourages us to faith in all the promises and prophecies of the sacred Scriptures.And I will make drunk her princes,.... With the wine of divine wrath; that is, slay them; though there may be an allusion to their being drunk with wine at the feast Belshazzar made for his thousand lords; who are the princes here intended, together with the king and his royal family, Daniel 5:1;

and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: the counsellors of state, priests, magicians, and astrologers; officers in the army, superior and inferior ones; and the soldiers and warriors, whom Cyrus and his men slew; when they entered the city; compare with this Revelation 19:18;

and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awake; be all asleep in their drunken fits, and be slain therein; and so never wake, or live more. The Targum is,

"and they shall die the second death, and not come into the world to come;''

See Gill on Jeremiah 51:39;

saith the king, whose name is the Lord of hosts; the King of kings and Lord of lords; the Lord of armies in heaven and earth; and can do, and does, what he pleases in both worlds.