In their heat ... - While, like so many young lions, they are in the full glow of excitement over their prey, God prepares for them a drinking-bout to end in the sleep of death. Compare Daniel 5:1.

In their heat I will make their feasts - It was on the night of a feast day, while their hearts were heated with wine and revelry, that Babylon was taken; see Daniel 5:1-3. This feast was held in honor of the goddess Sheshach, (or perhaps of Bel), who is mentioned, Jeremiah 51:41, as being taken with her worshippers. As it was in the night the city was taken, many had retired to rest, and never awoke; slain in their beds, they slept a perpetual sleep.

In their heat I will make their feasts,.... I will order it that their feasts shall be id the time of heat, that so they may be made drunk; so Jarchi: or when they are hot with feasting, I will disturb their feast by a handwriting on the wall; so Kimchi; see Daniel 5:1; to which he directs: or when they are inflamed with wine, I will put something into their banquets, into their cups; I will mingle their potions with the wine of my wrath; and, while they are feasting, ruin shall come upon them; and so it was, according to Herodotus and Xenophon, that the city of Babylon was taken, while the inhabitants were feasting; and this account agrees with Daniel 5:1. This text is quoted in the Talmud (c), where the gloss on it says,

"this is said concerning Belshazzar and his company, when they returned from a battle with Darius and Cyrus, who besieged Babylon, and Belshazzar overcame that day; and they were weary and hot, and sat down to drink, and were drunken, and on that day he was slain;''

and the Targum is,

"I will bring tribulation upon them:''

and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice; in a riotous and revelling way; or that they may be mad and tremble, as R. Jonah, from the use of the word (d) in the Arabic language, interprets it; so drunken men are oftentimes like mad men, deprived of their senses, and their limbs tremble through the strength of liquor; and here it signifies, that the Chaldeans should be so intoxicated with the cup of divine wrath and vengeance, that they should be at their wits' end; in the utmost horror and trembling; not able to stand, or defend themselves; and so the Targum,

"they shall be like drunken men, that they may not be strong;''

but as weak as they:

and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord; not only fall asleep as drunken men do, and awake again; but sleep, and never awake more; or die, and not live again, until the resurrection morn; no doubt many of the Chaldeans, being in a literal sense drunk and asleep when the city was taken, were slain in their sleep, and never waked again. The Targum is,

"and die the second death, and not live in the world to come;''

see Revelation 21:8.

(c) T. Bab. Megilia, fol. 15. 2.((d) "furor ac repentina mors", Camus apud Golium, col. 1634. "tremor, timor mortis aegroto contingens", Giggeius apud Castel. col. 2772. So R. Sol. Urbiu. Ohel Moed, fol. 32. 1. interprets the words of trembling.

In their {x} heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.

(x) When they are inflamed with surfeiting and drinking, I will feast with them, alluding to Belshazzar's banquet, Da 5:2.

51:39 Heat - When they shall grow hot with wine, I will make them a feast of another nature. Interpreters judge that Belshazzar, Dan 5:1, made a feast to a thousand of his Lords, when he and his wives, and concubines, drank wine in the vessels belonging to the temple, during which feast the city was taken. And not awake - While they were merry with their wine, they fell into a sleep which they never awoke out of.

39. In their heat I will make their feasts-In the midst of their being heated with wine, I will give them "their" potions,-a very different cup to drink, but one which is their due, the wine cup of My stupefying wrath (Jer 25:15; 49:12; Isa 51:17; La 4:21).

rejoice, and sleep . perpetual, &c.-that they may exult, and in the midst of their jubilant exultation sleep the sleep of death (Jer 51:57; Isa 21:4, 5).

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.