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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Jeremiah 51:58 - 51:58
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broad walls - eighty-seven feet broad [Rosenmuller]; fifty cubits [Grotius]. A chariot of four horses abreast could meet another on it without collision. The walls were two hundred cubits high, and four hundred and eighty-five stadia, or sixty miles in extent.
gates - one hundred in number, of brass; twenty-five on each of the four sides, the city being square; between the gates were two hundred and fifty towers. Berosus says triple walls encompassed the outer, and the same number the inner city. Cyrus caused the outer walls to be demolished. Taking the extent of the walls to be three hundred and sixty-five stadia, as Diodorus states, it is said two hundred thousand men completed a stadium each day, so that the whole was completed in one year.
labour ... in the fire - The event will show that the builders of the walls have “labored” only for the “fire” in which they shall be consumed, “In the fire” answers to the parallel, “burned with fire.” Translate, “shall have labored in vain,” etc. Compare Job 3:14, “built desolate places for themselves,” that is, grand places, soon about to be desolate ruins. Jeremiah has in view here Hab 2:13.