John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 50:11-12

"Because ye are glad, because ye rejoice, O ye that plunder my heritage, because ye are wanton as a heifer that treadeth out [the grain], and neigh as strong horses; your mother shall be utterly put to shame; she that bare you shall be confounded: behold, she shall be the hindermost of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert." — Jeremiah 50:11-12 (ASV)

God shows here that though the Chaldeans insolently exulted for a time, yet their joy would not continue. At the same time, He points out the cause of their ruin: because they dealt so arrogantly with the people of God.

He then says in the former clause, You exulted and rejoiced in plundering my heritage. Then He adds, You became fat (for "to be multiplied" here means to become fat) as a heifer, well fed, or of the grass. Some think that the word is used for דשאה, deshae; but some render it “herbified,” or fed on grass; while others derive the word from דוש, dush, to thresh or tread out grain.

It is then added, You neighed like strong horses, or you bellowed like bulls, as some render the words. For אבירים, abirim, sometimes means bulls and sometimes strong horses. The verb צהל, tzal, means to cry aloud but is sometimes taken in the sense of neighing, as we have seen in Jeremiah 5: Every one neighs on his neighbor’s wife. The Prophet said so in condemning the people for their lusts. Those who apply this passage to bulls are obliged to change the meaning of the verb—for bellowing, and not neighing, is what belongs to bulls.

Now it was necessary, for two reasons, for the Prophet to speak this way. First, it was hardly credible that the Chaldeans, after so many and so remarkable victories, could be broken down and laid prostrate by new enemies. For they had been terrible to the whole world; they had subdued all their neighbors and extended their borders on all sides. It was then as though they had set their nest in the clouds.

Then the Prophet says here that though they exulted and gave free rein to their joy, yet this state of things would not be perpetual, because they would at length be brought to shame. This is one thing. The second reason why the Prophet spoke this way was because God intended that it should be testified to His own people that though He permitted so much liberty to the Chaldeans, He had not yet forgotten His covenant. For this reason he mentioned the word heritage.

Though the calamity of His people was then apparently a sort of repudiation, as though God designed to have nothing more to do with them, yet He says that they were His own heritage. Thus he shows that God would give a token of His favor towards the Jews by so severely chastising the Chaldeans. This then is the reason why He says, You have rejoiced in plundering my heritage, but your mother is ashamed. He expresses here more than if he had said, “You shall at length lie down confounded with shame”; but he names their mother, that he might intimate the destruction of the whole of that monarchy, which had been so terrible to all the neighboring nations.

Grant, Almighty God, that though we do not cease daily to provoke Your wrath by our many sins, we may yet, with confidence, flee to Your mercy, and that though You seem for a time to cast us away, we may not yet cast away hope, founded on Your eternal word, but that, relying on that Mediator in whom we always find the price of expiation, we may not hesitate to call on You as our Father; and may we, in the meantime, find You by experience to be such towards us, so that we may cheerfully look forward to that celestial inheritance, which has been obtained for us by the blood of Your only-begotten Son. Amen.

[Exposition continues from previous day's lecture]

We explained yesterday why the Prophet denounced shame and reproach on the Babylonians: because they had arrogantly exulted over the children of God. And he says that Babylon would be the extremity of the Nations.

The Chaldeans had flourished in power and wealth, and possessed the empire of the East. It was then an extraordinary revolution to be reduced to the lowest condition, to be, as it were, the dregs of all the nations. And to the same purpose he adds, a barren land, a desert, and a solitude.