“566. DETAILS FROM JEREMIAH—ISAIAH 45; ISAIAH 46; JEREMIAH 50; JEREMIAH 51”

Details from Jeremiah—Isaiah 45; Isaiah 46; Jeremiah 50; Jeremiah 51

The prophecies concerning Babylon in Isaiah 45, 46, treat generally of the destruction awaiting that city; and Cyrus is distinctly named as the Lord’s instrument for the subversion of the Babylonian empire.

The greater portion of these prophecies have been before referred to in illustration of matters which have already engaged our attention, according to the order which we have formed for the more connected consideration of the whole subject, such as the character and religion of Cyrus and the confederacy of Croesus. They contain little that bears upon the military operations against Babylon. There are, however, one or two passages which demand our special attention before we proceed to the parallel prophecy of Jeremiah, which it seems desirable to consider here in order to complete the subject. There is first this remarkable passage in Isa_44:27 :

“Who saith to the deep, ‘Be dry;’

And, ‘I will dry up My rivers.’”

There is no mistaking the application of this to Babylon; and in Jer_51:36, we have the parallel passage applied by name to that city: “I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry.” Taking this in connection with the other prophecies which have engaged our attention, it is impossible to doubt that this is a prediction of the means by which Cyrus was to gain access to the city; namely, by the bold and extraordinary operation of exhausting the bed of the river, in the way which has already been described; forming, therefore, one of these wonderful points in the prophecy, which being utterly beyond all the possibilities of human calculation, prove it to be indeed the word of God.

Of the same nature is the other passage which we quote from Isa_45:1-2, where the Lord, speaking of Cyrus, declares it to be his intention:

“To open before him the two-leaved gates;

And the gates shall not be shut.

I will break in pieces the gates of brass,

And cut in sunder the bars of iron.”

Now although this may have, and probably has, a general reference to the facility with which strong towns should be acquired by him, it is impossible to doubt that it has special reference to the singular and most providential circumstance, that the river-gates of Babylon were left open on the night of the festival, Indeed, the words—“The gates shall not be shut,” seem to express the matter as plainly as words can do; and they imply a peculiarity strictly applicable to the case; for it is usual to say that the gates of a besieged town were opened, or were beaten down; but that they were “not shut” at a time when it was customary to shat them, is a very different and much rarer matter. Let it be noted also that the gates were of “brass;” and that Babylon was famous for its brazen gates. They were one hundred in number, twenty-five on each side of the city; and the valves, as well as the posts and pivots, were of massive brass. The whole matter was so extraordinary, so much beyond the range of human speculation, that when Cyrus was made acquainted with this prophecy, he must have felt that the circumstance had been ordered by a special providence, to which he owed not only his victory but his safety. It is admitted by Herodotus that if the Babylonians had possessed but the slightest intimation or forethought of the plan of Cyrus, and had only kept shut the inner gates leading to the river, the Persian host might have been caught in the bed of the stream as in a net, and destroyed at leisure.

The chapters of Jeremiah 50, 51 are occupied with a prophecy, parallel to those of Isaiah, of the capture of Babylon by the Persians, and of the desolation which should eventually fall upon that great city. As nearly the same facts are stated in both prophecies, and often in nearly the same form of words, we shall not quote Jeremiah’s prophecy at length, but shall rather select those points, involving facts which have not already come under our notice, and such details as are more distinctly produced in this than in any other prophecy.

“Put yourselves in array against Babylon round about:

All ye that bend the bow, shoot at her, spare not the arrows;

For she hath sinned against the Lord.”—Jer_50:14.

There the weapon for which the Persians were famous is prominently produced, as the chief arm to be employed against Babylon. Again in Jer_50:29—

“Call together the archers against Babylon;

All ye that bend the bow, camp against it round about.”

Which last line is very distinct, as showing not only that the arrow was to be the chief weapon of the besiegers, but that they were to encamp around the city, as they did for two years. We have all heard that the three things principally taught to the youth of ancient Persia were to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth. In fact, when Cyrus first obtained command of an army, he found that the arms in which the Persians were most expert were the bow and the javelin, and that they had no weapons suited to close action. Those he strove to introduce, and did so to a considerable extent; but the bow still remained the chief and favorite weapon of the nation; and it continued to be such till the introduction of the gun, which was, however, slow in superseding the arrow, and has not completely done so even to our own day.

Persian Soldiers

Another passage gives a vivid picture of the character of the host (composed as it was of auxiliaries from various nations, many of them distant) which came against Babylon. The particulars have been already illustrated; but the passage may be here produced, as every phrase in it is an historical fact—

“Behold a nation shall come from the north, and a great nation,

And many kings shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth.

They shall hold the bow and the lance

They are cruel, and will not show mercy:

Their voice shall roar like the sea,

And they shall ride upon horses,

Every one put in array, like a man for the battle,

Against thee, O daughter of Babylon.”—Jer_50:41-42.

The verse we next quote, being Jer_51:12, gives the same particulars as have been considered in connection with Isaiah; but there is one important addition in the reference to “the ambushes,” or, as in the margin of our Bibles, “the liers in wait,” which is a manifest allusion to the men who were stationed at the extremities of the city, to march in by the bed of the river as soon as its stream should be drained.

“Set up the standard upon the walls of Babylon,

Make the watch strong, set up the watchmen,

Prepare the ambushes;

For the Lord hath both devised and done,

That which he spake against the inhabitants of Babylon.”

There is here a clear indication of the use of standards among the Persians. We do not find any illustration of this fact among the sculptures. According to the native authorities, the standard of Persia from before the time of Cyrus to the Moslem conquest, was—a blacksmith’s apron! It was the apron of a blacksmith named Kawah, who relieved the country from the oppressions of the tyrant Zohak, and placed the rightful heir (Feridun) on the throne of his fathers. The blacksmith had used his apron as a standard; and it was adopted as the national banner by the grateful Feridun. As such, it was richly ornamented with jewels, to which every king from Feridun to the last of the Pehlivi monarchs added. If this legend be true, and there seems no reason against it, this blacksmith’s apron may have been the standard set upon the walls of Babylon.

There is a passage further on which we must quote, on account of the strong and emphatic manner in which it describes the instrumentality of Cyrus and his army. It is true that Cyrus is not named by Jeremiah, as by Isaiah, but we are throughout enabled to recognize him by the correspondence of the prophecies, and by the fact that they must be applicable to the conqueror of Babylon; and that was Cyrus—

“Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war:

For with thee will I break in pieces the nations;

And with thee will I destroy kingdoms;

And with thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider;

And with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and his rider;

With thee also will I break in pieces man and woman;

And with thee will I break in pieces old and young;

And with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid;

I will also break in pieces with thee the shepherd and his flock;

And with thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen;

And with thee will I break in pieces captains and rulers;

And I will render unto Babylon,

And to all the inhabitants of Chaldea,

All their evil that they have done in Zion,

In your sight, saith the Lord.”—Jer_51:20-24.

The verses we are about to cite are those which contain the most considerable of the new points concerning the siege which Jeremiah offers; and which, for the sake of the connection we produce here, though generally averse to travel beyond the book on which we are formally engaged:

27. “Set ye up a standard in the land,

Blow the trumpet among the nations;

Prepare the nations against her,

Call together against her

The kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz;

Appoint a captain against her;

Cause the horses to come up as the rough caterpillars [locusts.]

28. Prepare against her the nations,

With the kings of the Medes,

The captains thereof with all the rulers thereof,

And all the land of his dominion. Note: This verse reads better in Blayney’s translation—

“Enlist nations against her,

The king of Media, the captains thereof,

And all the rulers thereof,

And all the land under his dominion.”

29. And the land shall tremble and sorrow:

For every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon,

To make the land of Babylon a desolation,

Without an inhabitant.

30. The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight,

They have remained in their holds: their might bath failed;

They became as women:

They have burned their dwelling-places:

Her bars are broken.

31. One post shall run to meet another,

And one messenger to meet another,

To show the king of Babylon

That his city is taken at one end, Note: Better, “From end to end.”—Blayney.

32. And that the passages are stopped,

And the reeds Note: Right literally: but probably, in fact, “Stockades,” as Henderson. Blayney’s “torches” is objectionable, as requiring a new rendering of the Hebrew text. Note:

The verse of Jer_51:27 is very interesting, from its particular mention of the northern auxiliaries which were engaged in the siege. It is agreed that Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz, represent provinces in and near Armenia, and to the north of Media—and, of course, still more to the north, as Media itself was, of Babylon. Now it is by no means explicitly stated in history that troops of these nations were present at the siege. But we felt anxious to ascertain the actual presence of forces so conspicuously mentioned by the inspired prophet, and have the satisfaction of believing that we have succeeded. Looking back, then, to an earlier period in the history of these important events, we find that before Cyrus set forth upon the great war which has been described in a preceding Reading, and of which the siege of Babylon was the illustrious consummation, he was joined by Tigranes, son of the Armenian king, with a force consisting of four thousand horse, ten thousand archers, and ten thousand armed with shield and spear. We hear little of the subsequent exploits of this force separately considered. But its presence through all the war is manifested by that of its commander, who stood high in the favor of Cyrus, and who was among the allies dismissed with distinction and much spoil to his own home, after the affairs of the East had been settled by the conquest of Babylon. This we collect from Xenophon: and the Armenian historians, in entire conformity with these intimations, state more explicitly that Tigranes, at the head of the Armenian army, acted with Cyrus in the war which gave him possession of the Lydian empire, and afterwards proceeded with him to the siege of Babylon, in which service the Armenian forces took a distinguished part. Note: See Avdall’s History of Armenia, Calcutta, 1827.

The verse of Jer_51:30, in which the Babylonians are described as abiding within their holds and forbearing to fight, is in circumstantial agreement with the history, by which we learn, as in the sketch we have given of the operations, that the Babylonians having been defeated and driven back by Cyrus when they went forth to oppose him on his first approach, never afterwards stirred beyond the walls.

The statement in the same verse that the dwelling places should be burned, does not at the first view appear to be corroborated by the history. But on closer inspection we find that this measure was present to the minds of the Persians before they entered the city, and was without doubt to some extent executed. In the short speech which Cyrus is reported to have made to the soldiers before they entered the bed of the Euphrates, he alludes to their principal danger, which appears to have been regarded with apprehension—that of being assaulted with missiles from the house-tops as they passed through the streets. He told them that if the inhabitants retreated to the house-tops, the best course would be to assail their doors by setting them on fire. He observed that the porches were very combustible, being made of palm-wood and coated with bitumen; and as the army was supplied with torches and tow in abundance, it would be very easy to set the houses in flames, when the inhabitants must either come out of their dwellings or be consumed in them.

More remarkable still, is the intimation in the next verse [Jer_51:31] that messengers from the opposite sides of the city would meet at the royal palace in the center to apprize the king that the city was taken from end to end. That this actually took place we know as two detachments entered by the bed of the river, at the opposite ends of the city, and agreed to meet in the center at the royal palace. So singular a circumstance could not beforehand have appeared probable to any human imagination, and the mention of it would alone suffice to impress the heartfelt conviction that the prophet spoke under the direction and control of Him “who declares the end from the beginning;” and to whose eternal mind all the future of all the ages to come is as present as all that has been done in all the ages past.

Autor: JOHN KITTO