13. Not be inhabited. Whereas 12 seems to apply to the country as a whole, this verse apparently refers specifically to the city. Babylon was not destroyed by Cyrus, and its decline came by slow stages (see on Isa. 13:19). For many centuries the most imposing of the remains of ancient Babylon, the great mound that contains the ruins of the royal palace-fortress and the adjacent Gate of Ishtar, have been a mass of crumbling brick. No one can look upon this scene of broken walls and general desolation without realizing how completely Jeremiah’s predictions have been fulfilled.