Babylon in Isaiah 47

Isaiah 47

Is. 47:1 “Go down, sit in the dust, Virgin

Daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a

throne, Daughter of the Babylonians. [Or

Chaldeans; also in verse 5] No more will you be

called tender or delicate.

Is. 47:2 Take millstones and grind flour; take

off your veil. Lift up your skirts, bare your

legs, and wade through the streams.

Is. 47:3 Your nakedness will be exposed and your

shame uncovered. I will take vengeance; I will

spare no-one.”

Is. 47:4 Our Redeemer — the LORD Almighty is his

name — is the Holy One of Israel.

Is. 47:5 “Sit in silence, go into darkness,

Daughter of the Babylonians; no more will you be

called queen of kingdoms.

Is. 47:6 I was angry with my people and

desecrated my inheritance; I gave them into your

hand, and you showed them no mercy. Even on the

aged you laid a very heavy yoke.

Is. 47:7 You said, `I will continue for ever —

the eternal queen!’ But you did not consider

these things or reflect on what might happen.

Is. 47:8 “Now then, listen, you wanton creature,

lounging in your security and saying to yourself,

`I am, and there is none besides me. I will never

be a widow or suffer the loss of children.’

Is. 47:9 Both of these will overtake you in a

moment, on a single day: loss of children and

widowhood. They will come upon you in full

measure, in spite of your many sorceries and all

your potent spells.

Is. 47:10 You have trusted in your wickedness and

have said, `No-one sees me.’ Your wisdom and

knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself,

`I am, and there is none besides me.’

Is. 47:11 Disaster will come upon you, and you

will not know how to conjure it away. A calamity

will fall upon you that you cannot ward off with

a ransom; a catastrophe you cannot foresee will

suddenly come upon you.

Is. 47:12 “Keep on, then, with your magic spells

and with your many sorceries, which you have

laboured at since childhood. Perhaps you will

succeed, perhaps you will cause terror.

Is. 47:13 All the counsel you have received has

only worn you out! Let your astrologers come

forward, those stargazers who make predictions

month by month, let them save you from what is

coming upon you.

Is. 47:14 Surely they are like stubble; the fire

will burn them up. They cannot even save

themselves from the power of the flame. Here are

no coals to warm anyone; here is no fire to sit

by.

Is. 47:15 That is all they can do for you — these

you have laboured with and trafficked with since

childhood. Each of them goes on in his error;

there is not one that can save you.


Yet another vivid prophectic description of the

destiny of the kingdom of man, out of the book of

Isaiah. In the literal sense, this passage saw

its fulfillment in the defeat of the ancient

kingdom of Babylon, but in the symbolic sense the

fufillment is yet to come as it is described in

the apocalyptic sense in the Revelation. There

is more in store for the kingdom of man --

'...there is not one that can save you.'


Daniel 5

Da. 5:1 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for

a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with

them.

Da. 5:2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine,

he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver

goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father [Or

ancestor; or predecessor; had taken from the

temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his

nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink

from them.

Da. 5:3 So they brought in the gold goblets that

had been taken from the temple of God in

Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives

and his concubines drank from them.

Da. 5:4 As they drank the wine, they praised the

gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood

and stone.

Da. 5:5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand

appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall,

near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king

watched the hand as it wrote.

Da. 5:6 His face turned pale and he was so

frightened that his knees knocked together and

his legs gave way.

Da. 5:7 The king called out for the enchanters,

astrologers [Or Chaldeans; also in verse 11] and

diviners to be brought and said to these wise men

of Babylon, “Whoever reads this writing and tells

me what it means will be clothed in purple and

have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he

will be made the third highest ruler in the

kingdom.”

Da. 5:8 Then all the king’s wise men came in, but

they could not read the writing or tell the king

what it meant.

Da. 5:9 So King Belshazzar became even more

terrified and his face grew more pale. His nobles

were baffled.


It's this passage from the book of Daniel that

describes the scene in the palace of Belshazzar

that was the scene of the literal fufillment of

the Isaiah prophecy. Isaiah began to write in

about 740 B.C., in the days of Uzziah, as it says

in the first verse of the book of Isaiah. There

was an interval of some 200 years. It's believed

that the Persians took Babylon from Belshazzar in

539 B.C. And it is recorded that it happened

just as it says in verse 9 from the passage in

Isaiah 47, in a single day. Technically, this

passage from Daniel records the final scene in

the history of the Babylonian Empire. But

symbolically, the kingdom of man just changed

hands from Babylon to Medo-Persia. There are

other aspects of this passage from Isaiah, but

the accuracy of the prediction of Babylon's

defeat is unique.


It's not the unexpected events are uncommon over

the course of history, it's that they are

unpredictable. Yet, Isaiah was able to see

events coming, but not able to give an exact

date. It's not much different in modern times.

Scripture reminds us of the destiny of the

kingdom of man, but doesn't provide an exact

date. There is only the mention of end times.

We have past events to demonstrate the accuracy

of scriptural prophecy, so that we can be certain

about what lies in store for the future. We just

don't know when it will happen.