Day 111: Isaiah 13-14 - Babyon is fallen, is fallen

Babylon is fallen (Isaiah 13)

The prophecy of Isaiah 13 is fearsome. It predicts the fall of Babylon, notably the city and also the Babylonian kingdom. 

It would later fall to the Persians who, under Darius, used the Medes to forge the Medo-Persian empire.

That empire rose as the second world empire of Daniel's great image. 

The head of gold was Babylon: an empire centered in the city of Babylon on the Euphrates river of modern day Iraq.

The prophesy of Isaiah shows the sky darkening and the people being thrust through with the sword. It is a terrible vision. However, it had a threefold fulfillment.

Firstly it fell to the might of Assyria in 689BC, in Isaiah’s lifetime. The Assyrians were truly barbaric and so the vision was accurate. The city was destroyed by Sennacherib.

However, contrary to what Isaiah said, the Medes were not involved. Yet Isaiah predicted that God would stir up the Medes against Babylon (vs 17-20). So was Isaiah wrong?

Babylon rose again. Esarhaddon rebuilt the city and then asserted it against Assyria, and prevailed in 626BC. The city rose to prominence and became a separate kingdom during the rise of the Medes.

In 605BC Nebuchadnezzar, the benign host of the Jewish exiles, became king. He gilded his throne and expanded the kingdom into the leading empire of the age.

As Isaiah prophesied, Assyria was too cruel and so overreached. Then God used the neo-Babylonian empire to crush them and eventually become the Persian empire.

At the time of Nebuchadnezzar's death, in 562BC, Babylon had become one of the greatest cities of the world and its gardens were later hallowed as one of the world’s seven wonders. 

However, the Medes grew until the great King Darius overthrew his grandfather and claimed the throne of the Medes.

The rise of Darius was necessary to liberate the exilic Jews and restore them to Judea. He surrounded the great city of Babylon during the feast where Babylon saw the writing on the wall. 

By using a moat to drain the river, they were able to walk into the city and take it peaceably.

Yet Isaiah 13 remained unfulfilled. Only after the Jews had returned in 539BC, did Babylon reached her end. A rebellion set Xerxes against the city. He crushed the walls, plundered the city, took away their God Marduk and impaled the leaders on the city walls.

Then the Medo-Persian empire rose to greatness. As Isaiah prophesied, Babylon was later abandoned to fulfill verses 19 to 22. It was never inhabited again.

The exiled Jews were saved (Chapter 14)

God preserved his own, allowing them to be led away by Nebuchadnezzar, a relatively benign ruler compared with Assyria. He later spared them to end their exile through Darius, about 10 years before Babylon was crushed.

The news later reached Judea, as prophesied by Isaiah. They stood aghast at the news that the great city that had once hosted them had fallen.

Their cry will resound again at the end of the this age, “How has the oppressor ceased, how has the golden city fallen”. In Revelation, the spirit of Babylon is used to describe the end-time, last world empire and the swansong of the golden image, with the words, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen”.

The prophesy against Babylon has a dark side. The king of Babylon for all his power was evidently lifted up and felt invincible. Don’t they all.

He is then called, in some interpretations, “Lucifer”. It should read “Day-Star” or “Morning Star”. Venus, the bright star of morning, was originally called Lucifer or angel of light by the Catholic church and that is how the name got to be used in Isaiah 14:12.

Pharaoh once also called himself "the morning and evening star". It was an accolade assumed by supreme rulers and it effectively led to the fall of Babylon.

We will see later, that for a while God favored Babylon and even restored Nebuchadnezzar, but the king then assumed a God-like status and that did not go well with him.

The presumption of divine rights by kings continued right up to the fall of Charles I. The age of the God-Kings had started and it would continue into the Medo-Persian kingdom, to be arrested in its time by Alexander the Great.

The prophesy has long since been an overlay, a picture into the rebellion before God’s throne and the events that led to a third of the angels turning away from Zion to foment the sin and corruption that poured from Satan’s dark heart.

It uses powerful language in verses 9-11, to show how hell opened up to receive the fallen of Babylon: as a metaphor for the banishment of Satan. That is repeated in verse 15, “thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit”.

The intervening verses tell us why. He lifted himself against the throne of God. He sought to be as God. It is rightful that Babylon was the location, for the tower of Babel once built had similar aspirations and reveals the mystery of ages that sought and still seeks, to usurp the throne of God.

The fall is described in terrible detail, hauntingly reducing Satan to one of us, in verse 10. The last estate of Satan on this earth will see him driven out of the heavens and forced to occupy a human frame by possession of Antichrist: so that he may ultimately bear the judgment of all men.

The ultimate blasphemy is thus foreseen in Satan assuming the throne of the last God-king, then falling in the debris of the last great empire, as Jesus the true Bright and Morning Star rises against him (2 Peter 1:19 and Revelation 2:28). This is a truly messianic prophecy. 

That fall is graphically portrayed in verses 19-32. Verses 24, 26, 27 confirm that it is an irrevocable decree of God. It will surely happen and the greater Babylon, the dark mystery of the ages, will climax and then fall in the ultimate standoff of the ages.

Verse 31 concludes, echoing the Psalmist. God has the nations in derision. Isaiah shouted, “Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina”.

But the contrast to all that is in verse 32: a promise held out for his people: “What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation? That the LORD hath founded Zion”. Glory to God. 

(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com