Babylon and Its Allies Are No Refuge for God’s People

This feast occurred during the siege of Babylon by the Medes and Elamites, which makes it all the more amazing. During a siege, the people usually do absolutely everything necessary to conserve food and water. But the arrogant Babylonians, who had stockpiled huge quantities of food to withstand a siege for years and whose water needs were supplied indefinitely by the ever-flowing Euphrates River (Herodotus, Histories 1.190, 102), could stand on walls 76 feet thick and 304 feet high (Histories 1.178, 97) above their besieging enemy and mock them, then retire to the banqueting halls and drink themselves into drunken oblivion, confident of their security.

The idolatrous feast is recorded for us as history in Daniel 5, where Belshazzar, the final king of the Babylonian Empire, held a feast with his nobles and princes and drank toasts to the gods of wood and stone, using vessels stolen from the temple of God in Jerusalem. Suddenly, the fingers of a hand appeared and wrote the epitaph of Belshazzar’s reign: Mene, mene, tekel, and parsin—God has numbered your days and brought them to an end; God has weighed you on the scales and found you wanting; God is going to give your kingdom to the Medes and Persians.

What happened next was foretold clearly by Jeremiah the prophet decades beforehand:

While they are flushed with heat, I will serve them a feast, and I will make them drunk so that they celebrate. Then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up. This is the Lord’s declaration. . . . I will make her princes and sages drunk, along with her governors, officials, and warriors. Then they will fall asleep forever and never wake up. This is the King’s declaration; the Lord of Armies is his name. (Jer 51:39,57)

The drunken feast was essential to Babylon’s fall, for her walls were only vulnerable where the Euphrates River went under them. Alert soldiers could easily guard that weak spot, but God made them all drunk, first with arrogance then with wine. They staggered drunk to their beds and collapsed there. Meanwhile, according to Herodotus, the Medes diverted the Euphrates until the water was only thigh deep, and they came in under the walls (Herodotus, Histories 1.190–91, 102–3). Then they swooped into the houses of the warriors and princes and slaughtered them while they lay drunk in their beds. Isaiah and Jeremiah saw it all by prophetic eye long before it occurred.

Isaiah 21:6-10

In verses 6-10 the scene shifts from the place of the arrogant feast to a watchman waiting on the walls of (perhaps) Jerusalem to receive the news. The watchman waits and receives the dramatic news of the fall of Babylon (v. 9), the news that Isaiah’s downtrodden people have been longing to hear (v. 10). But the key for them is to avoid falling with Babylon. As God has made plain, Babylon is falling because of her wicked idolatries. So the timeless warning to the people of God concerning Babylon is given again: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins or receive any of her plagues” (Rev 18:4).

Isaiah 21:11-17

The chapter ends with two brief oracles against other Gentile nations: Edom (“Dumah”) and Arabia. Allies of Babylon, ready to welcome refugees fleeing the falling city with food and water (v. 14), they wait breathlessly through the night for the terror to end; but one terror follows another. In short, there is no refuge on earth from God’s judgments; find refuge in God alone.

We should all stand amazed at the astonishing detail of Isaiah’s prophecy. His prophetic eye sees beyond the immediate threat of Assyria, and even beyond the rise of the Babylonian Empire, to the fall of the Babylonians at the hands of the Medes and Elamites. God alone knows the future, and he has revealed enough of the future to us in the pages of Scripture that we will be wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 3:15). There is no refuge from the wrath and judgments of God on earth—nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The only refuge is faith in Jesus Christ. Until the end of the world, the people of God will often feel like flotsam and jetsam on the waves of history. One mighty nation will rise to conquer the previous one, and God’s people are usually merely along for the ride. But the elect from every nation are the centerpiece of God’s purpose for history, not merely debris on the waves. God’s people will often be crushed on the threshing floor of God’s judgments, with cause to grieve over our sins. We are warned in this chapter not to trust in Babylon or to share in Babylon’s demise. Our citizenship is not earthly but heavenly. So, while we wisely should pray for and seek the welfare of our earthly nation (Jer 29:7), we should also know by prophecy that it will someday be destroyed. Christ alone is our final refuge. So let us live in purity, free from the idols that will bring about the “fall of Babylon.” Let us spread the gospel of Christ in light of that coming judgment.