Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 51:25

"Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith Jehovah, which destroyest all the earth; and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain." — Jeremiah 51:25 (ASV)

O destroying mountain. —Interestingly enough, the phrase is the same as that applied in 2 Kings 23:13 to the Mount of Olives, and is there rendered by the Authorised Version as “the Mount of Corruption.” It adds to the interest that this name, thus given, appears in the reign of Josiah, and must therefore have been familiar to Jeremiah.

There it is applied to the Mount of Olives as having been the centre of the worship of Ashtoreth and Chemosh and Milcom, destroying the faith and life of Israel. Here, not without the thought that the false worship of Babylon was the root of all its evils, the prophet applies it to that city. The use of the term “mountain,” literally quite inapplicable, was symbolical of its sovereignty. The latter clause of the verse suggests the idea that the prophet had before him the picture of a volcano.

And will make thee a burnt mountain. —Literally, a mountain of burning — either actively, as rolling down its lava and stones to the destruction of all below, or passively, as spent and burnt out. As the sentence describes the doom of Babylon, the latter meaning seems preferable. It is interesting to note that there is an extinct volcano known as Koukal (= fire), which rises to a height of 300 feet above the river Khabour, in Western Assyria (the Chebar of Ezekiel 1:3), consisting of loose lava, scoriae, and ashes (Rawlinson’s Ancient Monarchies, i. 189). Possibly the prophet, who had journeyed to the Euphrates, had seen in this the symbol of the “destroying mountain” that destroyed itself. Babylon was for him an extinct volcano.