Bible Strands
Jeremiah 51:33
For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “The Daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled. In just a little while her harvest time will come.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, declares judgment against Babylon immediately after detailing the collapse of its military defenses and before Judah’s oracle of restored justice.
The words — The text opens with כִּי (ki) = for and כֹּה (khoh) = thus, introducing the divine declaration, before naming בַּת־ (bat-) = [the] daughter of Babylon as the subject of the impending judgment.
The thread — The harvest imagery connects to Joel 3:13's command to swing the sickle for a ripe harvest, Hosea 6:11's appointment of a harvest for Judah, and Isaiah 21:10's reference to the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel.
Why it lands — The text states that Babylon's destruction is imminent, comparing the city to a threshing floor awaiting trampling. It demands recognition that divine judgment operates on a fixed timeline, turning imperial violence into measured retribution.
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
For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; The daughter of Babylon is like a threshingfloor, it is time to thresh her: yet a little while, and the time of her harvest shall come.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 21:10 O my people, crushed on the threshing floor, I tell you what I have heard from the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel.
- Hosea 6:11 Also for you, O Judah, a harvest is appointed, when I restore My people from captivity.
- Joel 3:13 Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full; the wine vats overflow because their wickedness is great.
- Isaiah 41:15 Behold, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.
- Micah 4:13 Rise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion, for I will give you horns of iron and hooves of bronze to break to pieces many peoples. Then you will devote their gain to the LORD, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.
- Revelation 14:15 Then another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the One seated on the cloud, “Swing Your sickle and reap, because the time has come to harvest, for the crop of the earth is ripe.”
- Isaiah 17:5 as the reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the ears with his arm, as one gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.
- Isaiah 18:5 For before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife and remove and discard the branches.
- Amos 1:3 This is what the LORD says: “For three transgressions of Damascus, even four, I will not revoke My judgment, because they threshed Gilead with sledges of iron.
- Habakkuk 3:12 You marched across the earth with fury; You threshed the nations in wrath.