The Late Great City of Babylon (Isa. 13:2–22)
In 626 b.c. the Chaldaean Nabopolassar restored Babylonian glory
by making himself king in Babylon, beginning the Neo-Babylonian
dynasty, and participating (with Media) in the defeat of Assyria. His
son, Nebuchadnezzar II, was the king who conquered and exiled Judah.
How did the city of Babylon finally end? (See Daniel 5.)
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In 539 b.c., when Cyrus the Persian captured Babylon for the Medo-
Persian Empire (see Daniel 5), the city lost its independence forever.
In 482 b.c., Xerxes I brutally suppressed a revolt of Babylon against
Persian rule. He removed the statue of Marduk, the chief god, and
apparently damaged some fortifications and temples.
Alexander the Great took Babylon from the Persians in 331 b.c. without a fight. In spite of his short-lived dream to make Babylon his eastern capital, the city declined over several centuries. By a.d. 198 the Roman, Septimus Severus, found Babylon completely deserted. So, the great city came to an end through abandonment. Today some Iraqi villagers live on parts of the ancient site, but they have not rebuilt the city as such.
The doom of Babylon, described in Isaiah 13, liberates the descendants
of Jacob, who have been oppressed by Babylon (Isa. 14:1–3). The
event that accomplished this was the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in
539 b.c. Although he did not destroy the city, this was the beginning of
the end for Babylon, and it never threatened God’s people again.
Isaiah 13 dramatizes the fall of Babylon as a divine judgment. The
warriors who take the city are God’s agents (Isa. 13:2–5). The time
of judgment is called “the day of the Lord” (Isa. 13:6, 9), and God’s
anger is so powerful it affects the stars, sun, moon, heavens, and earth
(Isa. 13:10, 13).
Compare Judges 5, where the song of Deborah and Barak describes
the Lord as going forth with quaking of the earth and with rain from
the heavens (Judg. 5:4). Judges 5:20, 21 depicts the elements of nature,
including stars, as fighting against the foreign oppressor.
Imagine that someone living in Babylon at the height of its glory
might read these words of Isaiah 13, particularly Isaiah 13:19–
22. How foolish and impossible they would have seemed! What
other prophecies, yet unfulfilled, seem foolish and impossible to
us now? Why would we be foolish, however, to dismiss them as
impossible?
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