Babylon

First, a happy Independence Day to everyone. We can never forget the sacrifices that our forefathers underwent to create this nation, the envy of every other country in the world, scorned out of jealousy and spite over what America has represented over the past 200+ years--freedom from tyranny. I'm no fan of illegal immigration, but people don't risk all to enter a country they despise. With God's help, may she ever stand.

Isaiah 13 (and yesterday's reading) introduced us to Babylon. At this point in Isaiah's prophecy, the Babylon he's referencing is the primary city of Assyria (refer to the map in my July 1st post). Babylon as a nation won't happen until the future, indeed until after Assyria falls and disappears from history. So, when Isaiah is prophesying about the events that will befall Babylon, he's not describing what will happen after the second exile in 586 BC, but events that will occur much sooner.

There's a pretty clear and constant theme, which is that God will use earthly kingdoms to punish the people of Israel when they fall by the wayside, but once God is finished with those nations, they're going to have problems of their own. Isaiah 13:19 says that Babylon will be overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah, and verse 20 goes on to detail just how devastating the destruction will be. Having never been anywhere close to there, all I can say is that prior to oil discovery in the 1940s, Babylon (present-day Iraq) was pretty much forsaken and uninhabited desert.

The NIV Study Bible suggests that Babel, known for its famous tower of Genesis 11, evolved into Babylon, and we won't be rid of it until December 30th, when an angel will shout in Revelation 18:2:

“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
   She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil spirit,
   a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird."

We'll spend much more time on Babylon as we enter that part of Judah's history, but I wanted to set the table, since it's a never-ending story of the Bible. I think I've commented on it before, but consider the great powers of the world that we've run across so far this year:

    Egyptians

    Philistines

    Egyptians (again)

    Assyrians

    Babylonians

    Persians (that's coming in Ezra)

    Greeks (unmentioned in the Bible as a world power)

    Romans (for close to 1,000 years)

What has become of all of these world powers? They all still exist in one form or another, but their role in making and shaping global history is OVER. God always wins, and in today's reading, he's making that explicitly clear to Babylon and Moab and comforting Israel at the same time. It's still that way today--God's will WILL BE DONE.
Scott