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Initial God threatens to destroy Judah using the Babylonian king if it persisted in its evil practices and worship of other gods.

Jeremiah 25:8 NIV

8 Therefore the Lord Almighty says this: “Because you have not listened to my words, 9 I will summon all the peoples of the north and my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,” declares the Lord, “and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy[a] them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting ruin.

But later God seems to punish Babylon for the very thing that he had ordained

Jeremiah 25:12 NIV

12 “But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians,[b] for their guilt,” declares the Lord, “and will make it desolate forever.

How does God punish Babylon?

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  • ... err - it was captured, its dynasty destroyed, the city looted and later destroyed! Babylon no longer exists and was lost even before the time of Christ.
    – Dottard
    Aug 6, 2020 at 11:33
  • I don't see a question here, myself. God used Babylon to punish idolatrous Judah. But Babylon was, itself, an ungodly nation. So God, later, destroyed Babylon and Persia overran it, as we see in Daniel. The history is quite clear from the books of Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah : and the subsequent return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
    – Nigel J
    Aug 6, 2020 at 12:20
  • You are assuming that the Lord is punishing Babylon for the captivity. This is an incorrect assumption. The punishment was for desecrating the temple. (Need more space to outline this fully.)
    – Dave
    Aug 6, 2020 at 18:40

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Jeremiah 25:12 NIV

12 “But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,” declares the Lord, “and will make it desolate forever.

There are two parts in this prophecy:

  1. the king of Babylon
  2. the land of the Babylonians.

2 Chronicles 36:22 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing

For the first part, Babylon was finished. Now it was Persia. The transition was described in Daniel 5. Literally, the writing was on the wall.

1 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

22“But you, Belshazzar, his son, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. 23Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. 24Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.

25“This is the inscription that was written:

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN

26“Here is what these words mean:

Mene : God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

27Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

28Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

29Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

30That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, 31and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

Daniel successful transited over to the next empire. The second part of Jeremiah's prophecy can be found in history book when the land of the Babylonians was conquered by Alexander the Great.

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