3. Every step in the progress of the decline of Babylon was the accomplishment of a prophecy. Conquered, for the first time, by Cyrus, it was afterward reduced from an imperial to a tributary city. “Come down and sit in the dust, O daughter of Babylon: sit on the ground, there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans.” After the Babylonians rebelled against Darius, the walls were reduced in height, and all the gates destroyed. “The wall of Babylon shall fall, her walls are thrown down.”--Xerxes, after his ignominious retreat from Greece, rifled the temples of Babylon, the golden images alone of which were estimated at 20,000,000l, beside treasures of vast amount. “I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up; I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon.”--Alexander the Great attempted to restore it to its former glory, and designed to make it the metropolis of a universal empire. But while the building of the temple of Belus, and the reparation of the embankments of the Euphrates, were actually carrying on, the conqueror of the world died, at the commencement of this his last undertaking, in the height of his power, and in the flower of his age. “Take balm for her pain, if so be that she may be healed. We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed.” The building of the neighbouring city of Seleucia was the chief cause of the decline of Babylon, and drained it of a great part of its population. And at a later period, or about 130 years before the birth of Christ, Humerus, a Parthian governor, who was noted as excelling all tyrants in cruelty, exercised great severities on the Babylonians; and having burned the forum and some of the temples, and destroyed the fairest parts of the city, reduced many of the inhabitants to slavery on the slightest pretexts, and caused them, together with all their households, to be sent into Media. “They shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.” The “golden city” thus gradually verged, for centuries, toward poverty and desolation. Notwithstanding that Cyrus resided chiefly at Babylon, and sought to reform the government, and remodel the manners of the Babylonians, the succeeding kings of Persia preferred, as the seat of empire, Susa, Persepolis, or Ecbatana, situated in their own country: and in like manner the successors of Alexander did not attempt to complete his purpose of restoring Babylon to its preeminence and glory; but, after the subdivision of his mighty empire, the very kings of Assyria, during their temporary residence even in Chaldea, deserted Babylon, and dwelt in Seleucia. And thus the foreign inhabitants, first Persians and afterward Greeks, imitating their sovereigns by deserting Babylon, acted as if they verily had said, “Forsake her, and let us go every man unto his own country; for her judgment is reached unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.”
4. But kindred judgments, the issue of common crimes, rested on the land of Chaldea, as well as on its doomed metropolis. “They come from a far country, from the end of the earth, to destroy the whole land. Many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of thee also,” &c. The Persians, the Macedonians, the Parthians, the Romans, the Saracens, and the Turks, are the chief of the many nations who have unscrupulously and unsparingly “served themselves” of the land of the Chaldeans: and Cyrus and Darius, kings of Persia; Alexander the Great; and Seleucus, king of Assyria; Demetrius and Antiochus the Great; Tragan, Severus, Julian, and Heraclius, emperors of Rome; the victorious Omar, the successor of Mohammed; Holagou, and Tamerlane,--are “great kings” who successively subdued or desolated Chaldea, or exacted from it tribute to such an extent, as scarcely any other country ever paid to a single conqueror. And though the names of some of these nations were unknown to the Babylonians, and unheard of in the world at the time of the prophecy, most of these “many nations and great kings” need now but to be named, to show that, in local relation to Chaldea, “they came from the utmost border, from the coasts of the earth.”--“I will punish the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations; cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest. A drought is on her waters, and they shall be dried up. Behold the hinder-most of the nations, a dry land and a desert.” The land of the Chaldeans was indeed made--perpetual, or long continued, desolation. Ravaged and spoiled for ages, the Chaldees’ excellency finally disappeared, and the land became desolate, as still it remains. Rauwolff, who passed through it in 1574, describes the country as bare, and “so dry and barren that it cannot be tilled.” And the most recent travellers all concur in describing it in similar terms. On the one side, near to the site of Opis, “the country all around,” says Mr. Buckingham, “appears to be one wide desert, of sandy and barren soil, thinly scattered over with brushwood and tufts of reedy grass.” On the other, between Bussorah and Bagdad, “immediately on either bank of the Tigris,” observes Mignan, “is the untrodden desert. The absence of all cultivation, the sterile, arid, and wild character of the whole scene, formed a contrast to the rich and delightful accounts delineated in Scripture. The natives, in travelling over these pathless deserts, are compelled to explore their way by the stars.” “The whole country between Bagdad and Hillah is a perfectly flat and (with the exception of a few spots as you approach the latter place) uncultivated waste. That it was at some former period in a far different state, is evident from the number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected; and the quantity of heaps of earth covered with fragments of brick and broken tiles, which are seen in every direction, the indisputable traces of former population. At present the only inhabitants of the tract are the Sobeide Arabs. Around, as far as the eye can reach is a trackless desert.”--“Her cities are desolations.” The course of the Tigris through Babylonia, instead of being adorned with cities, is marked with the sites of “ancient ruins.” Sitace, Sabata, Narisa, Fuchera, Sendia, “no longer exist.” A succession of longitudinal mounds, crossed at right angles by others, mark the supposed site of Artemita, or Destagered. Its once luxuriant gardens are covered with grass; and a higher mound distinguishes “the royal residence” from the ancient streets. “Extensive ridges and mountains, (near to Houmania,) varying in height and extent, are seen branching in every direction.” A wall, with sixteen bastions, is the only memorial of Apollonia. The once magnificent Seleucia is now a scene of desolation. There is not a single entire edifice, but the country is strewed for miles with fragments of decayed buildings. “As far,” says Major Keppel, “as the eye could reach, the horizon presented a broken line of mounds; the whole of this place was a desert flat.” On the opposite bank of the Tigris, where Ctesiphon its rival stood, beside fragments of walls and broken masses of brick work, and remains of vast structures encumbered with heaps of earth, there is one magnificent monument of antiquity “in a remarkably perfect state of preservation,” “a large and noble pile of building, the front of which presents to view a wall three hundred feet in length, adorned with four rows of arched recesses, with a central arch, in span eighty-six feet, and above a hundred feet high, supported by walls sixteen feet thick, and leading to a hall which extends to the depth of a hundred and fifty-six feet,” the width of the building. A great part of the back wall, and of the roof, is broken down; but that which remains “still appears much larger than Westminster Abbey.” It is supposed to have been the lofty palace of Chosroes; but there desolation now reigns. “On the site of Ctesiphon,” says Mignan, “the smallest insect under heaven would not find a single blade of grass wherein to hide itself, nor one drop of water to allay its thirst.” In the rear of the palace, and attached to it, are mounds two miles in circumference, indicating the utter desolation of buildings, formed to minister to luxury.
5. But let us come to the fulfilment of these wonderful prophecies in the present condition of Babylon itself, as described by those who have most recently visited it.
“Babylon shall become heaps.” Babylon the glory of kingdoms is now the greatest of ruins. “Immense tumuli of temples, palaces, and habitations of every description,” are every where seen, and form “long and varied lines of ruins,” which, in some places, says Sir R. K. Porter, “rather resemble natural hills than mounds which cover the remains of great and splendid edifices.” These buildings, which were once the labour of slaves and the pride of kings, are now misshapen heaps of rubbish. “The whole face of the country,” observes Rich, “is covered with vestiges of building, in some places consisting of brick walls surprisingly fresh, in others, merely a vast succession of mounds of rubbish, of such indeterminate figures, variety, and extent, as to involve the person who should have formed any theory in inextricable confusion.”--“Let nothing of her be left.” “Vast heaps constitute all that now remains of ancient Babylon,” says Rich. All its grandeur is departed; all its treasures have been spoiled; all its excellence has utterly vanished; the very heaps are searched for bricks, when nothing else can be found; even these are not left, wherever they can be taken away; and Babylon has for ages been “a quarry above ground,” ready to the hand of every successive despoiler. Without the most remote allusion to this prophecy, Captain Mignan describes a mound attached to the palace, ninety yards in breadth by half that height, the whole of which is deeply furrowed, in the same manner as the generality of the mounds. “The ground is extremely soft, and tiresome to walk over, and appears completely exhausted of all its building materials; nothing now is left, save one towering hill, the earth of which is mixed with fragments of broken brick, red varnished pottery, tile, bitumen, mortar, glass, shells, and pieces of mother of pearl,”--worthless fragments, of no value to the poorest. “From thence shall she be taken, let nothing of her be left.” While the workmen “cast her up as heaps” while excavating for bricks, that they may “take” them “from thence,” and that “nothing may be left;” they labour more than trebly in the fulfilment of prophecy: for the numerous and deep excavations form pools of water, on the over-flowing of the Euphrates, and, annually filled, they are not dried up throughout the year. “Deep cavities are also formed by the Arabs, when digging for hidden treasure.” Thus “the ground,” says Buckingham, “is sometimes covered with pools of water in the hollows.”
“Sit in the dust, sit on the ground, O daughter of the Chaldeans.” The surface of the mounds which form all that remains of Babylon, consists of decomposed buildings, reduced to dust; and over all the ancient streets and habitations, there is literally nothing but the dust of the ground on which to sit.--“Thy nakedness shall be uncovered.” “Our path,” says Captain Mignan, “lay through the great mass of ruined heaps on the site of ‘shrunken Babylon;’ and I am perfectly incapable of conveying an adequate idea of the dreary, lonely nakedness that appeared before me.”--“Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness.” “There reigns throughout the ruins,” says Sir R. K. Porter, “a silence profound as the grave.” “Babylon is now a silent scene, a sublime solitude.”--“It shall never be inhabited, nor dwelt in from generation to generation.” From Rauwolff’s testimony it appears that, in the sixteenth century, “there was not a house to be seen.” And now “the eye wanders over a barren desert, in which the ruins are nearly the only indication that it had ever been inhabited.” “It is impossible,” adds Major Keppel, “to behold this scene and not to be reminded how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed to present, that ‘she should never be inhabited;’ that ‘the Arabian should not pitch his tent there;’ that she should ‘become heaps;’ that her cities should be ‘a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness.’” “Babylon is spurned alike by the heel of the Ottomans, the Israelites, and the sons of Ishmael.” It is “a tenantless and desolate metropolis,” remarks Mignan. “It shall not be inhabited, but be wholly desolate. Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there.” It was prophesied of Ammon that it should be a stable for camels and a couching place for flocks; and of Philistia, that it should be cottages for shepherds, and a pasture of flocks. But Babylon was to be visited with a far greater desolation, and to become unfit or unsuited even for such a purpose; and that neither a tent would be pitched there, even by an Arab, nor a fold made by a shepherd, implies the last degree of solitude and desolation. “It is common in these parts for shepherds to make use of ruined edifices to shelter their flocks in.” But Babylon is an exception. Instead of taking the bricks from thence, the shepherd might very readily erect a defence from wild beasts, and make a fold for his flock amidst the heaps of Babylon; and the Arab who fearlessly traverses it by day, might pitch his tent by night. But neither the one nor the other could now be persuaded to remain a single night among the ruins. The superstitious dread of evil spirits, far more than the natural terror of the wild beasts, effectually prevents them. Captain Mignan was accompanied by six Arabs, completely armed; but he “could not induce them to remain toward night, from the apprehension of evil spirits. It is impossible to eradicate this idea from the minds of this people, who are very deeply imbued with superstition.”
“Wild beasts of the deserts shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs (goats) shall dance there,” &c. “There are many dens of wild beasts in various parts. And while the lower excavations are often pools of water, in most of the cavities are numbers of bats and owls.” The king of the forest now ranges over the site of that Babylon which Nebuchadnezzar built for his own glory. And the temple of Belus, the greatest work of man, is now like unto a natural den of lions. Two or three majestic lions were seen upon its heights by Sir Robert Ker Porter, as he was approaching it; and “the broad prints of their feet were left plain in the clayey soil.” Major Keppel saw there a similar foot-print of a lion. It is also the unmolested retreat of jackalls, hyenas, and other noxious animals. Wild beasts are numerous at the Mujelibé, as well as on Birs Nimrood. “The mound,” says Kinneir, “was full of large holes: we entered some of them, and found them strewed with the carcasses and skeletons of animals recently killed. The ordure of wild beasts was so strong, that prudence got the better of curiosity; for we had no doubt as to the savage nature of the inhabitants. Our guides, indeed, told us, that all the ruins abounded in lions, and other wild beasts: so literally has the divine prediction been fulfilled, that wild beasts of the deserts should lie there, and their houses be full of doleful creatures; that the wild beasts of the islands should cry in their desolate houses.”
“The sea is come upon Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.” The traces of the western bank of the Euphrates are now no longer discernible. The river overflows unrestrained; and the very ruins, with “every appearance of the embankment,” have been swept away. “The ground there is low and marshy, and presents not the slightest vestige of former buildings, of any description whatever.” “Morasses and ponds,” says Porter, “tracked the ground in various parts. For a long time after the general subsiding of the Euphrates, great part of this plain is little better than a swamp,” &c. “The ruins of Babylon are then inundated, so as to render many parts of them inaccessible, by converting the valleys among them into morasses.” But while Babylon is thus “covered with the multitude of waves, and the waters come upon it;” yet, in striking contrast and seeming contradiction to such a feature of desolation, (like the formation of “pools of water,” from the “casting up of heaps,”) are the elevated sunburnt ruins, which the waters do not overflow, and the “dry waste” and “parched and burning plain,” on which the heaps of Babylon lie, equally prove that it is “a desert, a dry land, and a wilderness.” One part, even on the western side of the river, is “low and marshy, and another,” says Mignan, “an arid desert.”
Many other striking particulars might be collected; and we may conclude in the words of Mr. Keith, from whose work on the prophecies several of the above particulars have been extracted:--“Is it possible that there can be any attestation of the truth of prophecy, if it be not witnessed here? Is there any spot on earth which has undergone a more complete transformation? ‘The records of the human race,’ it has been said with truth, ‘do not present a contrast more striking than that between the primeval magnificence of Babylon and its long desolation.’ Its ruins have of late been carefully and scrupulously examined by different natives of Britain, of unimpeached veracity; and the result of every research is a more striking demonstration of the literal accomplishment of every prediction. How few spots are there on earth of which we have so clear and faithful a picture as prophecy gave to fallen Babylon at a time when no spot on earth resembled it less than its present desolate solitary site! or could any prophecies respecting any single place have been more precise, or wonderful, or numerous, or true, or more gradually accomplished throughout many generations? And when they look at what Babylon was, and what it is, and perceive the minute realization of them all, may not nations learn wisdom, may not tyrants tremble, and may not skeptics think?”
The reasons why prophecies so numerous and particular were recorded concerning Babylon, appear to have been, 1. That Babylon was the great oppressor of the Jews. 2. That it was the type of all the powerful persecuting enemies of the church of God, especially of Rome; and in its fate they may read their own. 3. That the accomplishment of prophecy in the destruction of so eminent an empire might give a solemn testimony to the truth of the Scriptures to the whole earth, and to all ages.
BACKSLIDING, a falling off, or defection in matters of religion; an apostasy, Acts xxi, 21; 2 Thess. ii, 3; 1 Tim. iv, 1. This may be either partial or complete: partial, when it is in the heart, as Prov. xiv, 14; complete, as that described in Heb. vi, 4, &c; x, 6, &c. On the latter passage Chrysostom observes, “When a house has a strong foundation, suppose an arch fall, some of the beams break, or a wall decline, while the foundation is good, these breaches may be repaired; so in religion, whilst a person maintains the true doctrines, and remains on the firm rock, though he fall, true repentance may restore him to the favour and image of God: but as in a house, when the foundation is bad, nothing can save the building from ruin; so when heretical doctrines are admitted for a foundation, nothing can save the professor from destruction.” It is important in interpreting these passages to keep it steadfastly in mind, that the apostasy they speak of is not only moral but doctrinal.