The End of the World: Babylon’s Past and Future Destruction

First, throughout Isaiah 13, God’s activity as the secret initiator of history is emphasized. God tells what he is doing, how he is acting, who he is raising up to do what, etc. Verse 3 is plain: “I have commanded my consecrated ones; yes, I have called my warriors, who celebrate my triumph, to execute my wrath” (emphasis added). So also verses 11-13 (emphasis added):

I will punish the world for its evil. . . . I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant and humiliate the insolence of tyrants. I will make a human more scarce than fine gold. . . . I will make the heavens tremble.

This is God’s sovereign activity throughout this chapter. In verses 2-4 God is summoning an army from the nations to overthrow another Gentile nation, Babylon, the land of aristocratic “nobles” (v. 2). The invasion and conquest is the “day of the Lord,” a cause for abject terror (vv. 6-9). But then Isaiah’s language reaches up to the heavens saying the sun, the moon, and the stars will all be darkened. Jesus used this same language to speak of the celestial portents that will immediately precede his second coming (Matt 24:29-30). Thus the first fall of Babylon is a mere dress rehearsal for the final one (Rev 18–19).

It’s astonishing to marvel at Isaiah’s far-reaching prophetic vision. At the time when this oracle against Babylon was written (ca. 725 BC), Babylon was just a city chafing under the yoke of the mighty Assyrian Empire. The Medes were allies with Babylon in finding opportunities to resist the Assyrians. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah looks down the corridors of time and predicts the fall of Babylon at the hands of the Medes (v. 17) almost two centuries later (539 BC). The Medes grew and developed their culture in what is now central Iran, east of Mesopotamia in the Zagros Mountains and the high plateaus east of that mountain range. As early as 836 BC, the Assyrians referred to them as enemies. In 612 BC the Medes joined the Babylonians to crush the last vestiges of the Assyrian Empire. Here in Isaiah 13:17, the Lord decrees that he is going to “stir up” the Medes against Babylon, and they will not be bought off with silver or gold. So God is looking beyond the first empire (the Assyrians) and the second (the Babylonians) to the third empire, the Medes and Persians. God is eternal, standing over the entire stretch of time and able to declare the end from the beginning.

God goes beyond merely identifying the invader who will defeat Babylon. He predicts the level of devastation that will befall Babylon in her ultimate doom. Babylon, the jewel of the kingdoms, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 19). There will be few survivors; the refugees will flee, only to be found and stabbed by a sword (vv. 14-15). The cold-hearted Medes will even slaughter their children before their very eyes (vv. 16,18). Babylon will be left a howling wilderness, never to be inhabited again. Not even nomadic Arabs will pitch their tents there (v. 20). Instead, it will be a haunt for owls, ostriches, and wild goats (v. 21). This desolation is a clear picture of how empty all the enemies of God will be when his judgment has run its course.

Interestingly, in God’s wisdom, the fulfillment of this decree of desolation came in stages, not all at once. Darius the Mede conquered Babylon in 539 BC, as recorded in Daniel 5, but essentially left it intact. By the time of Alexander the Great, Babylon was still opulent enough for him to desire to make it the capital of his empire. In 323 BC, after his conquests in India, he returned to Babylon, despite the warnings of his soothsayers that Babylon was a cursed city that he should avoid (Cantor, Alexander the Great, 142). Alexander decided to enter the city and to go ahead with his grandiose plans for rebuilding Babylon. But suddenly, God’s sovereign will intervened; Alexander died in Babylon, tradition tells us from a fever brought on by a drunken binge. After Alexander, Babylon quickly hurtled toward God’s decreed desolation through the various Greek kings that ruled the region. By the time the Roman emperor Trajan went to visit the infamous Babylon in AD 116, he was disappointed when he arrived at the site; it was only a wasted pile of rubble. The ruins of ancient Babylon were not discovered until relatively modern times—that’s how totally desolate the place had become. God’s decree had been fulfilled. Babylon still has not been rebuilt.

The lessons from the “Oracles of the Nations” will be emphasized in the upcoming chapters of this commentary, but they are always worth meditating on. Overall, we must embrace and celebrate the absolute sovereignty of God over the flow of human history. We must see how God used these mighty Gentile empires to chastise his people for their sins but how he also judged each of them for their own wickedness. We must learn not to despair when the temporary ascendency of the mighty enemies of God bewilders us and tempts us to wonder what God is doing. We should stand in awe of God’s extraordinary ability to decree the distant future and make everything occur exactly as planned. We should study the theme of “Babylon” in the Bible and realize that it represents the God-hating world system, organized militarily and/or economically for vast power; and we should “come out of her, so that [we] will not share in her sins or receive any of her plagues” (Rev 18:4). We should realize that Jesus Christ fights against the spirit of “Babylon” in every generation by his Word and his Spirit, and that he will overthrow the final form of Babylon with the sword coming from his mouth at his second coming (Rev 19:15). So, we should guard our hearts from the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions” (1 John 2:16), for because of these things the wrath of God is coming on this world. Christ alone can rescue his people from being destroyed with Babylon.