Jeremiah (1-31) 30:4 Commentary and Bible Study

You are going into captivity for seventy years but there is a time coming when there will be a climax of fear. The fear will turn out to be due to Cyrus the Mede and his troubling of the Babylonian Empire and his conquests and his progress. And now the mighty Babylon is trembling, and because of that the captives, the Jews, are trembling. Their peace depends upon the peace of Babylon. They are captives, but in as much as Babylon is orderly and peaceful and good to them, they can live lives of peace, albeit in a foreign land, albeit away from home. They will know peace and not death and trouble and squalor. But now trouble. If there is going to be turmoil, and the region is going to be ransacked, and there is going to be bloodshed, conquest, and a new order, what will become of us? So Jews, as well as their captors, tremble, and that is all in these verses. Verse 6 is very graphic: ‘Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child?’ The men are behaving like women in labour, in pain. This is a way of describing their anxiety. ‘Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins?’ All is lost. Terrible calamity is coming. All faces are pale.’