The Book Of Isaiah. Day 53, A Prophecy Against Babylon, Part Two

When Isaiah makes his prophecy against the kingdom of Babylon, that kingdom is not yet a powerful enough player on the world screen to subdue other great nations, such as Assyria and Judah. But in time the Lord will use Babylon to chastise the nation of Judah for its people's idolatry and wickedness. The Lord will also, in time, subdue Babylon with the Medo-Persian Empire. These events are still far in the future in the day Isaiah predicts them but when these things have come to pass the people will remember what Isaiah said. They will know that his words must have been the words of the Lord Himself, for the words have come true exactly as predicted.

This prophecy is twofold. It predicts judgment against the literal kingdom of Babylon and it predicts judgment against figurative Babylon: a corrupt world system. In the Bible, after the rise and fall of Babylon, we will sometimes find the word "Babylon" used to symbolize man's organized rebellion against God. It was in the region of Babylon that the first organized rebellion against God took place at the tower of Babel. The political and spiritual condition of the world in the end times will be referred to as Babylon in the book of Revelation because in the book of Revelation we find man's final organized rebellion against God taking place. 

In our text today we see references to "the day of the Lord". That expression is generally used in the Scriptures to indicate the final judgment at the end of days and this appears to be the way the expression is being used here in Chapter 13.

"Wait, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. Because of this, all hands will go limp, every heart will melt with fear. Terror will seize them, pain and anguish will grip them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame." (Isaiah 13:6-8) I am sure the reactions described above were actually experienced by the Babylonians when the Babylonian Empire fell to the enemy the Lord raised up against them. They shook with fear and their faces were red with shame (the Lord phrases it as "their faces aflame") because they had not believed their nation could be conquered. When we arrive at the book of Daniel we will learn that the king of Babylon and his entire court and many guests were holding a drunken feast of debauchery while their city's very walls were being broken into by the enemy. They trusted in their gods to protect them from the Medo-Persian Empire and, to their shame, their gods did not come through for them. They couldn't come through for them because they were nonexistent gods.

The reactions described above will occur in the end times as well. We will be looking at some further prophecies from other books of the Bible regarding that time as we continue on through our study of Chapter 13. The Lord Jesus Himself quoted from Chapter 13 when describing the terrible times at the end of days. But something we have to keep in mind is that the time of judgment is for the wicked, not for the children of God. We do not have to shake with fear. A very different future is in store for those of us who have placed our trust in the Lord.

In our next study session we will take a look at how Jesus used text from Isaiah 13 to warn the wicked about what is in store for them in the judgment.