Bible Strands
Jeremiah 51:34
“Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies and vomited me out.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The speaker, identified as Zion or Jerusalem, addresses the violence inflicted upon Israel by foreign empires during the period of Babylonian dominance.
The words — אֲכָלַ֣/נִי (a.kha.la./ni) = he devoured/me and רִ֔יק (Rik) = emptiness, describing a people reduced to a discarded container after being consumed.
The thread — The devouring motif continues in Jeremiah 50:17, which traces Israel’s oppression from Assyria to Babylon, while the vomiting image parallels the retributive judgment described in Job 20:15.
Why it lands — It demands recognition that historical violence is recorded and will be met with divine accounting, framing national suffering as a precursor to retributive justice rather than a sign of divine abandonment.
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
Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 50:17 Israel is a scattered flock, chased away by lions. The first to devour him was the king of Assyria; the last to crush his bones was Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.”
- Jeremiah 51:44 I will punish Bel in Babylon. I will make him spew out what he swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him; even the wall of Babylon will fall.
- Job 20:15 He swallows wealth but vomits it out; God will force it from his stomach.
- Isaiah 24:1 Behold, the LORD lays waste the earth and leaves it in ruins. He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants—
- Matthew 23:13 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.
- Lamentations 1:1 How lonely lies the city, once so full of people! She who was great among the nations has become a widow. The princess of the provinces has become a slave.
- Lamentations 2:16 All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!”
- Ezekiel 36:3 therefore prophesy and declare that this is what the Lord GOD says: Because they have made you desolate and have trampled you on every side, so that you became a possession of the rest of the nations and were taken up in slander by the lips of their talkers,
- Amos 8:4 Hear this, you who trample the needy, who do away with the poor of the land,
- Nahum 2:2 For the LORD will restore the splendor of Jacob like the splendor of Israel, though destroyers have laid them waste and ruined the branches of their vine.