CHAPTERS 50 and 51 pronounce judgment upon the Gentile empire which God had permitted to rise to pre-emince when the house of Israel had sinned so deeply, and without repentance, that He could not continue to own them as His people. Chapter 25:12-14, in the call for subjection to Nebuchadnezzar’s rule, had briefly promised the fall of his empire when seventy years should have passed over the captive Jews in Babylon, and the last two verses of Daniel 5 tell of the slaughter of Belshazzar, the young Babylonian ruler, with the government passing to Darius the Mede, who served under Cyrus, the conquering Persian, with the title of king of Babylon. (See 2 Chronicles 36:22, 23; Ezra 1; Isaiah 44: 28, 45:1-4, Daniel 9:1, 2).
Babylonia as a kingdom, and presently under Nebuchadnezzar as an empire, was a revival of the very ancient Chaldean monarchy which had been destroyed by the Assyrians when they rose to power. When Assyria fell, the Chaldeans or Babylonians (the same people) took a large part of her territory; thus the names of “Chaldea” and “the Chaldeans” are found frequently in the references to the Babylonish empire or kingdom and people, in the books of Jeremiah and Daniel.
When Babylon fell, the Babylonian religion passed into eclipse, for the conquering Persians and Medes despised the idols of Babylon, among the chief of which were Bel and Merodach (verse 2 in our chapter).
Verse 3: The nation to rise out of the north was Media, northern neighbor of Babylonia proper (the ancient Chaldea). Media and Persia had practically the same language and the same religion; and Persia, formerly subject to Media, had, under Cyrus, acquired supremacy over Media and other lands a few years before the Babylonian empire came to an end.
Babylon’s site is now, as verses, 3, 13 and 39 and other passages (Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 25) foretold, a waste, uninhabited and uninhabitable marshy land. The judgment of God was, however, concerned not alone with the putting down of Babylon, but also with the return to Canaan of His erring and now, to some extent at least, repentant people (verses 4-8, 17, 19, 20, 33, 34). Some of the children of Israel—part of “the lost ten tribes” as they are called—returned with the children of Judah when Cyrus opened the way for the Jews to go back to Jerusalem. Thus we find a member of the tribe of Asher in Jerusalem when the infant Jesus was brought there according to the custom of the Jewish law (Luke 2:36).
God had committed power to Nebuchadnezzar (chapter 27:5, 6) but that power had been misused; the Babylonians had treated the Jews cruelly (see verse 17) and defended their severity on the ground that the captives had sinned against Jehovah (verse 7). They did not know that God was taking notice of every act of cruelty done to His people, and would visit the Gentile empire for it.
Nor was this the only cause for the destruction of Babylon: the captors of the Jews delighted in the ruin of God’s heritage (verse 11); they had rebelled against Him (verse 21, for “Merathaim” read “the land of double rebellion” or “of apostasy”) as verse 24 also shows, and verse 29 which speaks of their acting proudly against Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel.
In verses 31 and 32 Babylon is called “pride”, as the marginal note indicates; verse 33 acids to the charges against the Gentile power, that they refused to let the children of Israel and of Judah go, and verse 38 that they were “mad after frightful idols” (N. Tr.). We may also turn to Isaiah 47:6-10 for other grounds for the cutting off, after so brief a history, of the Babylonian empire.
Verse 12: “Your mother” is evidently a reference to ancient Chaldea (see Isaiah 17:1, 6), in a figurative sense put to shame by the excesses of Babylon. The true sense of the latter part of the verse is “she is become hindmost (or the last) of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert.”
In verse 17 Israel is a hunted sheep, and in the end of verse 20 pardon is for those whom God will “leave remaining”—a remnant of the nation. “Pekod” in verse 21, is not the name of a town or district, but the Hebrew word for “visitation”, referring to the judgment of Babylon.
ML-05/19/1935