Isaiah's Prophecy of the Fall of Babylon

Isaiah 13, recorded in the Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 23, is a prophecy about the destruction of Babylon.  Isaiah was prophesying between about 700-740 BC, and the destruction spoken of in this chapter, according to scholars, took place in 539 BC, nearly two centuries later.  This was when the Persians diverted the Euphrates River and came in under the walls into the city to capture it.  Significantly, Isaiah prophesied in verse 17 that it would be the Medes, who were part of the Persian empire, who would destroy Babylon: “Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them.”  Also in Isaiah’s prophecy was this significant statement: “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.  It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there” (v19-20).  In other words, the land where Babylon was would eventually be left desolate and uninhabited.  Though various groups after the Persians lived in the city, it was after the fall insignificant on the world stage and eventually was desolate.  This picture shows just the ruins that remain today.

               Part of my struggle with this chapter is the graphic description of Babylon’s fall to the Persians.  In particular, verses 16 and 18 speak of the brutal murder of children and violence against women and are the kind of scriptural verses you wince when you read and you skip over with your own children.  I think that this verse from Mormon maybe helps to put the verses in context: “But, behold, the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men unto bloodshed” (Mormon 4:5).  Babylon was wicked and so were the Persians; and Isaiah was simply telling them what the wicked Persians were going to do to the Babylonians because they had failed to repent.  Mormon of course knew something about wickedness and violence and bloodshed because that was going on all around him and saw similar things.  His teaching tells us that when the Lord allows a wicked group to be destroyed, He sometimes does it by simply letting another wicked group use their agency against them.  This of course does not exonerate that attacking group; for example, the Assyrians were such a group who destroyed the wicked northern kingdom but then were subsequently rebuked by the Lord and destroyed by “the angel of the Lord” as I mentioned yesterday.  Why the Lord allows the kind of brutality to take place as is described in Isaiah 13 is something that I don’t know that we can fully understand, but we can know that He weeps over the wickedness and cruelty of men.  He said to Enoch, “And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood….  The whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?” (Moses 7:33, 37)  Perhaps the most important message of Isaiah 13 is that we need to be his “sanctified ones” who “rejoice in [His] highness” so that we can have the promise of His protection against the wickedness in our own day.