Bible Strands
Jeremiah 51:31
One courier races to meet another, and messenger follows messenger, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured from end to end.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet Jeremiah pronounces this oracle against Babylon to the exiled community, capturing the precise moment the city's defenses collapse and its king learns of total capture.
The words — The text highlights רָץ (ratz), literally "runner," and יָר֔וּץ (ya.Rutz), literally "he will run," to frame the frantic relay of couriers racing to deliver the news.
The thread — This motif of urgent runners appears in 2 Samuel 18:19 when Ahimaaz offers to run to David, in 2 Chronicles 30:6 as couriers carry the king’s letters throughout Israel and Judah, and in 1 Samuel 4:12 when a fleeing soldier runs to Shiloh with battle news.
Why it lands — The passage demands recognition that human military power is fleeting and that divine judgment arrives with unavoidable speed.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end,
Cross-references
- 2 Samuel 18:19 Then Ahimaaz son of Zadok said, “Please let me run and tell the king the good news that the LORD has avenged him of his enemies.”
- 2 Chronicles 30:6 At the command of the king, the couriers went throughout Israel and Judah with letters from the king and his officials, which read: “Children of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so that He may return to those of you who remain, who have escaped the grasp of the kings of Assyria.
- 1 Samuel 4:12 That same day a Benjamite ran from the battle line all the way to Shiloh, with his clothes torn and dirt on his head.
- Esther 3:13 And the letters were sent by couriers to each of the royal provinces with the order to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—and to plunder their possessions on a single day, the thirteenth day of Adar, the twelfth month.
- Esther 8:10 Mordecai wrote in the name of King Xerxes and sealed it with the royal signet ring. He sent the documents by mounted couriers riding on swift horses bred from the royal mares.
- Esther 8:14 The couriers rode out in haste on their royal horses, pressed on by the command of the king. And the edict was also issued in the citadel of Susa.
- Job 9:25 My days are swifter than a runner; they flee without seeing good.
- Isaiah 21:3 Therefore my body is filled with anguish. Pain grips me, like the pains of a woman in labor. I am bewildered to hear, I am dismayed to see.
- Isaiah 47:11 But disaster will come upon you; you will not know how to charm it away. A calamity will befall you that you will be unable to ward off. Devastation will happen to you suddenly and unexpectedly.
- Jeremiah 4:20 Disaster after disaster is proclaimed, for the whole land is laid waste. My tents are destroyed in an instant, my curtains in a moment.