Who will roar together like lions and growl like cubs?  

The Lord now compares Babylon to lions who roar together and growl like cubs. It is an image of a pride of lions waiting for their next meal. They are inflamed with excitement and anticipation. The Lord lulls Babylon into a false sense of security as the nation becomes intoxicated with its own strength and dominance over other nations. But this only sets them up for defeat as they are taken completely by surprise when the invasion comes. They will sleep a perpetual sleep. Sleep is a universal metaphor for death. The Lord will bring Babylon down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and male goats. The word slaughter is the Hebrew word tabah and it refers to the ordinary butchering of animals for eating. It highlights the total lack of resistance from the animal.¹ The mighty hunter becomes the prey.

These words speak in a general sense of a nation that has become convinced of its own power and invincibility. But the prophecy is also graphically fulfilled in Daniel 5:1–31, which describes the king of Babylon hosting a banquet of feasting and drinking the night before the city falls to the Medes and Persians.²