Jeremiah 50:40
“As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and its neighbor cities,” says Yahweh, “so no man will dwell there, neither will any son of man live therein.”
What does Jeremiah 50:40 mean?
Jeremiah speaks here about Babylon's coming destruction, comparing it to the total devastation God brought on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis. When those ancient cities were destroyed, they became completely uninhabitable, erased from normal life. He's saying Babylon will face something equally complete and final, a destruction so thorough that people will abandon it entirely and refuse to rebuild there. This is part of Jeremiah's message to the exiled Judeans in Babylon, telling them that even though their powerful captors seemed unshakeable, God hadn't forgotten them. The comparison carries weight because Sodom and Gomorrah represented utter judgment in the Hebrew imagination, the ultimate example of a place God had abandoned. For people suffering under Babylonian rule, hearing that their oppressor would face a comparable fate offered a hard kind of hope.