And Babylon shall become heaps,.... The houses should be demolished, and the stones lie in heaps one upon another, and become mere rubbish:a dwelling place for dragons; and other wild and savage creatures.
Dragons, as Aelianus observes, love to live in desert places, and such now Babylon is; it lies in ruins; and even its palace is so full of scorpions and serpents, as Benjamin of Tudela says it was in his time, that men durst not enter into it; see Jer 50:39;an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant; an astonishment to neighbouring nations, and to all that pass by; who shall hiss at the destruction of it, and rejoice, there being not so much as a single inhabitant in it; which is its case to this day; see Jer 50:13.
De Animal. l. 6. c. 63. Itinerarium, p.