p. 585“Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle; your carriages were heavy laden; they are a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together, they could not deliver the burden; but themselves are gone into captivity” (Is. xlvi. 1-2).
Thus the contrast is drawn between Yahweh, in whom “all the seed of Israel shall be justified and shall glory” (xlvi. 25), and the idols of Babylon. Bel is equal to Baal, and signifies Lord, Master, Possessor, as against the claim of Yahweh (recognised by Abraham—Gen xiv. 19), that He is “the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth.” This Babylonian God was the chief male deity of their pantheon, and his name and worship are the subjects of frequent allusions and illustrations on the monuments. They are found in the inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, and of Cyrus, with whom Isaiah’s prophecy has here to deal. On the broken cylinder of Cyrus from Babylon we read of his re-establishment of the Babylonian gods:—
“The gods of the land of Shinar and Accad. . . . in their own shrines I made inhabit (again), a dwelling of heart’s delight. May all the gods whom I brought (again) into their own cities, daily before Bel and Nebo, speak of length of days for me! May they utter words in my favour, and to Merodach, my Lord, let them say, Cyrus the king that feareth thee and Cambyses his son . . . . . made them dwell in a quiet habitation.”—(Light from the East, p. 225).
“Nebo or Nabû, i.e., the Prophet, was the Babylonian god of learning and the special patron of the scribes. His great sanctuary was the temple called E-Zidda, at Borsippa, the principal seat of p. 586 learning in Babylonia. In Isa. xlvi. 1, Nebo represents the scribe and priest caste, as Bel represents the civil power.”
The god Nebo gives the name to Nebuchadnezzar, which to a Babylonian meant, “Nebo is the protector against misfortune.” He is called “the far hearing,” “he who possesses intelligence,” “he who teaches, or instructs.” The wedge or arrowhead—the essential element of cuneiform writing—appears to have been his emblem; and hence he bore the name of Tir, which signifies a shaft or arrow.
An inscribed statue of Nebo has been discovered, and it (or a copy) is now in the British Museum. The attributes above named are taken from the inscription. The figure is bolt upright, straight as an arrow, with clasped hands, and is not lacking a certain type of rude dignity. The “boweth down” and “stoopeth” of the prophecy is no doubt in pointed allusion to this. And with the arrow of Nebo contrast Yahweh’s “polished shaft,” hidden in his quiver, and who is to liberate Jacob and have dominion over Babylon and all the earth (Isa. xlix. 2).
The monuments illustrated by Layard and others show us the gods carried in procession by warriors; also gods carried captive by soldiers, after the example of the Danite raid on Micah’s establishment in Mount Ephraim (Judges xviii.). The allusion of the prophet is to the latter kind of experience. Bel and Nebo were to “go into captivity.”
There is a powerful argument in what follows this denunciation of judgment. The Babylonians had to carry their gods (when their enemies did not carry them captives), but Yahweh really and truly carried “the house of Jacob” from the very beginning. “Hearken to me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, which are borne by me from the belly, which are carried from the womb. And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you; I have made and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you.”
The appeal is here to the national history, and is frequently found in the prophets. Where did Abraham come from? And how? And for what purpose? Bel and Nebo were not in this.
p. 587 It was a purpose higher than them, and in antagonism to them. Babylon thought to endure for ever, a mere monument of the magnificence of the flesh—of human pride and prowess. Yahweh willed otherwise; therefore the confusion of tongues, therefore the call of Abraham, that all families of the earth might ultimately be blessed “in him” and “in his seed,” the Christ. And Isaac, Abraham’s son, was a child of promise. “I have made,” is illustrated in his birth, which was out of the ordinary course of nature. So all the national history, to a reasonable mind, would bring home the force of the divine appeal, and the surety of the divine promise: “I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.”
“They bear him,” though he cannot move nor answer, is a fine piece of irony on the gods of Babylon; and the folly of making graven images. “To whom will ye liken me and make me equal,” is a question that needs forcing upon mankind at all times. Paul, at Athens, put it beautifully to that generation, with a quotation from certain of their own poets. And even where there are no actual images of Bel, Nebo, Minerva, or others, it is still the fashion to liken God to man. “Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself,” is the saying of God to the wicked. The true knowledge of God is only to be found in His revelation in Israel; all else, whether ancient or modern, is as vain as the Babylonian idolatry here rebuked. And of that idolatry it is to be remarked, that it was itself a corruption of “God’s way,” just as was that which was destroyed by Noah’s flood. An ignoring of this fact has induced an immensity of false philosophy on the subject.
The exhortation to apostate Israel to “remember this” and show themselves men, is coupled with a declaration aimed at Nebo, the imaginary “prophet.” God says He “declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” What Israelite could ignore the force of this appeal? Nearly fifteen hundred years of fulfilled prophecy was before them, and was enough to give assurance of the fall of Babylon now foretold. What wonder that the p. 588 Spirit of God should exhort them, saying: “In understanding be men.”
The counsel of God upon Babylon is further illustrated by the following:—“Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country.” Here Cyrus is the “ravenous bird” and “the man” in question. Throughout the scriptures the eagle is the symbol of conquerors in their flesh-devouring operations. Ezekiel’s parable of two eagles and a vine (ch. xvii.) introduces the Kings of Babylon and of Egypt as the eagles and Judah as the vine. Moses, in Deuteronomy, had spoken of a nation coming against Israel “swift as the eagle flieth,” and “thy carcase,” said he, “shall be meat unto all the fowls of the air” (xxviii. 26, 49). Jesus, when the time came for the fulfilment of Moses’ prophecy, said of the Roman eagles, “Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together” (Matt. xxiv. 28). And he connected this with the unseen though real “coming of the Son of Man” to judgment on the nation at the end of that age. The Romans were “the king’s armies to destroy those murderers and burn up their city” (Matt. xxii. 7).
But this was in the future when Isaiah spoke of the “ravenous bird” to come upon Babylon. Cyrus, like the Romans afterwards, and other powers at present, is said (by Xenophon) to have adopted the eagle as his symbol on his standards. In his coming upon Babylon as the eagle upon the carcase, he is again “like the Heir.” Even at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus this finds some illustration; but it must hereafter be for Jerusalem and against Babylon to conform to the type. And it will be so. Jesus is now, according to his own parabolic teaching, God’s nobleman in “a far country,” whence he is to return to execute Yahweh’s counsel—against Babylon and for Israel. He is to rebuke the stouthearted, to bring God’s righteousness near, and to place salvation in Zion for Israel, God’s glory (Isa. xlvi. 12-13).
At his coming the remnant of the nation of Israel is in great affliction in modern Babylon, and especially on the mountains of Israel, then invaded by the hosts of Gog (Ezek. p. 589 xxxviii.). He comes upon these as “a ravenous bird from the east.” His kings and princes are called “the kings of the east,” and the Son of Man assembles every feathered fowl to his great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel (Ezek. xxxix. 17). “The face of an eagle” in the symbolic cherubim is another intimation of this purpose upon Babylon (Ezek. i. 10; Rev. iv. 7). The nation of Israel under his almighty rule and that of the saints, are at last no longer the “carcase” devoured by the Gentile “eagles,” whether of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, or Europe; but themselves become “a ravenous bird” and “fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines towards the west, and spoil them of the east together” (Isa. xi. 14). There is no place in current theological conceptions of Christ and God’s purpose for any such developments as these; but they are written in the prophets, and will come to pass just as surely as Cyrus came upon Bel and Nebo in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ.
Turning then from Zion to Babylon, the rival Queen, the word of God says: “Come down!” (xlvii. 1). “Come down, and sit in dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground, there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans, for thou shalt be no more called tender and delicate.”
The Lady or Mistress of Kingdoms was to be put to shame and servitude. “Thy nakedness shall be uncovered—yea, thy shame shall be seen; I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man (or, I meet not a man). Our Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel” (ver. 3-4). Contrasting Zion with Babylon in view of this, we read that she is to be comforted, and the Redeemer is to come to her and end her widowhood, “For thy Maker is thy husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called” (Isa. liv. 5). Again, “Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways” (Isa. lxiv. 5); that is, in the day of recompense. The meaning of this threat, then, as applied to Babylon, appears to be that God would not accept her as He would Zion, whom she despised and afflicted. This is what is affirmed of the Apocalyptic Babylon in contrast with the Heavenly p. 590 Jerusalem—“the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife.” Roman Babylon, like her prototype, has been a Mistress of Kingdoms, and is still a Mistress of Churches (“Mother Church”); or, in the language of the Apocalypse, “the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.” When the Redeemer returns, she is judged and destroyed; though she considers herself “the irreproachable Spouse of Jesus Christ,” and her high priest His Vicar upon earth. But Zion he meets with “everlasting kindness.” He comes for the salvation of those that “rejoice and work righteousness, and remember him in his ways.” And with these he will save the nation and Land of Israel and the Holy City. This is what runs through these prophecies of Isaiah concerning Babylon and Jerusalem, and “the remnant” who shall belong to Christ in the day of his coming.
The ground of Yahweh’s displeasure against Babylon, as here stated, is that whereas He used the Babylonian power as the instrument of His chastisement upon Israel; Babylon herself “meant not so,” but showed them no mercy, afflicting them with spiteful mind. And not only so. Her pride and forgetfulness were also an offence to God. “Thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever; so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it.” Therefore, it is said, loss of children and widowhood should overtake her in a moment, for the multitude of her sorceries and the great abundance of her enchantments.
Was it so, then, that Babylon was expected to “lay it to heart,” and to “remember the latter end”? Certainly. It was afterwards most explicitly argued out by Daniel before Belshazzar, that after all God had revealed by him in Babylon, and after all that Nebuchadnezzar, the servant of Nebo, had suffered, and after all that he had put on record, he (Belshazzar) was inexcusable—was, in fact, “weighed in the balances and found wanting,” and nothing remained but that he should be slain, and his kingdom given to the Medes and Persians.
Apply this sentiment to modern Babylon with all these records in every man’s hands. Is it so that God does not expect men to “lay these things to heart,” nor to “remember the latter end”?
p. 591 Far otherwise. It would be a grave omission on the part of Zion’s latter-day watchmen if they were to foster any such idea among those of “the great city.” It is true that “man that understandeth not is like the beasts that perish.” But there is such a thing as culpable ignorance and obstinacy, as well as lack of understanding due to never having heard the word of God. If God had never spoken to Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar would not have been so culpable. And if Christ had never revealed his mind concerning “Babylon the Great” in the Apocalypse, those who first departed from the truth would not have been so culpable. True, there is nothing now akin to the miracles of Daniel’s time, or of the apostolic age; and, therefore, so much not being given so much is not required. But the Word is with us, and where it is “known” and its bearing apprehended, as when Belshazzar knew the history of his ancestors, a proportionate responsibility ensues. Of the measure of this God, in Christ, is judge. It belongs only to Daniel’s brethren of the latter days to interpret the handwriting on the wall, and proclaim the truth in all its bearings without fear or favour.
It was said that Babylon should not know whence arose the evil that should come so suddenly upon her (v. 11). Belshazzar’s feast and the night of pleasure that ended in such swift disaster is the historical counterpart to this. Cyrus was in the city “as a thief” before the Babylonians were aware of it. The dried-up river bed gave the troops access, and the brazen gates were opened before them. In all this, as those who know the scriptures and the history of the past are well aware, there was a most dramatic allegory of the fall of the Apocalyptic Babylon. “Thou shalt not know” is still the order. Nothing is further from the minds of Popes, Cardinals, Priests, Kings, and Emperors than the idea that Christ is behind the Eastern Question, and that he will come upon the scene “as a thief in the night,” and destroy the powers that are contending over his Land and Nation, and re-establish the kingdom of God in Israel on a new and immortal basis for a thousand years.
The “sorceries” (Rev. xviii. 23) of modern Babylon deal not with such things, but with “immortal souls,” heaven, hell, p. 592 purgatory, “doctrines of demons,” &c., &c., in which the “astrologers” “weary themselves” as of old, being supported in their profitless enterprises by the “people,” who “love to have it so.” How truly the doctrines and practices of the churches and chapels are answerable to the old Babylonian system, they know well who know the truth by comparison with these ancient fables. But the people who do not concern themselves with these things, nor “lay them to heart,” but are content to pay others to do their religionisings for them, have no conception of the true state of affairs. Nothing but the return of Christ will rouse them up, and when that happens there will be panic, as there was in Babylon in the night when Cyrus entered, and Belshazzar was slain.