Misinterpretations often treat the simile 'they became as women' as a timeless sexist slur implying women's inherent weakness or inferiority, detached from its ancient Near Eastern context of hyperbolic prophecy where it denoted loss of manly warrior valor amid defeat; others misuse it to justify gender discrimination or apply it literally to modern scenarios, ignoring the verse's poetic emphasis on Babylon's divinely ordained downfall rather than prescriptive gender norms.
Jeremiah 51:30
King James Version (1769)
30 The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as women: they have burned her dwellingplaces; her bars are broken.
This verse in Jeremiah's oracle against Babylon prophesies the sudden collapse of its invincible military under divine judgment, where its mighty warriors abandon the fight, cower in strongholds, and lose all strength, depicted hyperbolically as becoming like women—a cultural idiom for battlefield cowardice in the ancient world—leading to overwhelming destruction and illustrating God's power to humble the proudest empires.