Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 114th episode. In this episode I want to study Isaiah chapter 47. This chapter foretells the fall of Babylon. We get a sense that Babylon didn’t have to fall for Israel to be released. If the Babylonian’s hadn’t hardened their hearts, then the omniscient wisdom of God could have ordered the events such that Israel walked free and Babylon remained intact. So this chapter shows us that Babylon was not simply collateral damage in the liberation of Israel. God judged Babylon for Babylon’s own sins. Isaiah’s prediction of Babylon’s collapse was given to Israel to be encouragement. Israel had been badly used and abused at the hands of Babylon – so this prophecy brought them some much needed hope. This chapter also looks ahead to the collapse of the great enemy in Revelation which is symbolically named Babylon. The message in this chapter is useful for us today because it marks out some characteristics of a declining civilization.
The collapse of Babylon was quite severe because they went from the height of prosperity to the depths of adversity. Once a powerful and advanced nation, Babylon was brought down into the dust and made utterly miserable. Their worldly security fueled their arrogance which brought about their cruel treatment of Israel. Since they were so confident in themselves they began to think God wasn’t there at all. Even when things started going south for them they chose to depend on their own sorcery, magic arts, and enchantments rather than looking to God. Their obstinate pride and refusal to repent simply hastened their own destruction. Let’s open up with verses 1-6:
Isa 47:1 Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate.
Isa 47:2 Take the millstones and grind flour, put off your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers.
Isa 47:3 Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your disgrace shall be seen. I will take vengeance, and I will spare no one.
Isa 47:4 Our Redeemer—the LORD of hosts is his name— is the Holy One of Israel.
Isa 47:5 Sit in silence, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans; for you shall no more be called the mistress of kingdoms.
Isa 47:6 I was angry with my people; I profaned my heritage; I gave them into your hand; you showed them no mercy; on the aged you made your yoke exceedingly heavy.
This passage shows us that God, by the prophet Isaiah, sent a fair warning to Babylon. God always sends a warning of incoming judgment even to the most wicked of nations. He even sent Jonah to Nineveh and Nineveh (being the capital of Assyria) was historically infamous for its cruelty. So Babylon was given a chance to repent and forego God’s judgment. Of course, this repentance would require them to humble themselves and relinquish their status as gods-of-self. Rather than choosing humble repentance Babylon chose enmity with God. Their sins had provoked God as the righteous Judge and now His vengeance upon them was simply waiting for the measure of their iniquities to be full.
It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of God’s wrath. This fear of God should be something like reverence for Him. You don’t have to fear God in the same way you fear evil things, rather your reverence for Him is simply an indication that you are aware of His infinite power. If a human says he or she is going to take revenge on you, at least you have the chance of outmatching them or escaping them. Not so with God. When God comes to judge the wicked He doesn’t come as a human – He comes rather more like a lion. Listen to what He says about His judgment in Hosea 5:14-15:
Hos 5:14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
Hos 5:15 I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.
God’s judgment is nothing like the strength of humanity which can be resisted. His judgment carries the power of God which cannot be resisted. God’s justice is not like human justice. Human justice can be bribed, biased, or subject to manipulation by pity. God’s justice is strict, severe, and inescapable. That’s the bad news. The good news is that He remains God on the positive side of the spectrum as well. God’s pardoning of sin is equally as certain and permanent as His justice. Because of His love for us, He came to us in the form of Christ and stood in the gap so we would never have to face divine justice. Listen to what God says about His mercy in the very same book of Hosea:
Hos 11:8 How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
Hos 11:9 I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
What exactly did Babylon do to provoke God’s wrath? God’s vengeance came to them because they destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. They spilled the blood of Israel and were very violent towards them. Once Israel was in captivity, the Babylonians were merciless in their treatment of them. Rather than having compassion toward the elderly and the infirm, the Babylonians increased their burden for the sake of added suffering. Babylon knew that Israel had a reputation for wisdom, holiness, and honor – so they took exceptional joy in trampling the Jews into the dust.
The people who previously held some status in Israel were treated very harshly. Former judges, magistrates, and elders in office were made to do the most difficult and labor-intensive slavery. This cruelty toward the people of Israel is where Babylon really sealed their fate. A good definition for evil is a person who inflicts suffering for suffering’s own sake. It’s hard to say how badly the perpetrator’s soul is warped in the process. But this kind of evil puts the person on a direct path to facing God as the angry lion instead of as the merciful Savior. Despite their wickedness God sent a warning because He wanted Babylon to repent – but they chose to walk their own course.
Understanding who God is would have brought terror to the Babylonians and comfort to the people of Israel. He is the Lord of Hosts, which means He has all power in heaven and on earth. The entire creation is at God’s command. For Babylon to go to war against God was as foolish as going to war against the creation itself. God is also the Holy One of Israel. This title indicated that He was in covenant with His people and He took up residence with them. The fall of Babylon was a scene of God’s power manifesting as judgment for Babylon and salvation for Israel. Jesus Christ is the Lord of Hosts as well as the Holy One of Israel.
Babylon was one of those cities that was exceedingly impressive by appearance but terribly corrupt beneath the surface. The city was such a feat of engineering that it wasn’t uncommon for visitors to descend into idolatry of Marduk – Babylon’s state-sponsored god. After all, if Marduk could produce power and advancement like this city, certainly he must be the most true and most powerful god. I think modern technological advancement has caused many people to view science this way. After God’s judgment Babylon lost all of its prestige and honor. Once enthroned at the top of the world, Babylon was left so impoverished that there wasn’t so much as a chair to keep it out of the dust.
With all of its power gone, Babylonian dominion simply became a thing of the past. Nations would no longer have to submit to Babylonian legislation. This is precisely what happens to people who abuse their powerful positions in life. Sooner or later God humbles them and strips them of their honor. The Babylonians also lost all of their luxuries. Babylon was an incredibly wealthy city so many of its leaders lived pompous and excessive lifestyles. The pampered Babylonian people would be put to hard labor and for the first time they would experience want and deprivation. They shouldn’t have been so gluttonous while in power. There’s something to say here for the value of experiencing deprivation and hard work. It’s easier to voluntarily train yourself to endure such hardships than it is to be thrust into them against your will when you’re not ready.
In addition to losing their power and their wealth, the Babylonians also lost their freedom. God’s judgment reduced them to servitude. Their bondage was severe and reflected the kind of experience others had suffered under their own boot. The nobility of Babylon were treated no different than conquered peasants. So you have to imagine these elitist people being set to do the same work as slaves. They were made to traverse through rivers and difficult geography in nothing but their clothes. This would have been incredibly embarrassing for people who were accustomed to being courted around everywhere. Babylon is a classic of example of why it’s so important to be mindful when you have the power. You should always love your neighbor as yourself because you never know when your neighbor will have control over your future.
All the glory of Babylon would be gone. During the height of its power, being a Babylonian was something you could brag about. But after God’s judgment, those who were from Babylon hid their faces in shame. When Babylon conquered a nation, they stripped their captives because they wanted to keep and sell their clothing. The Babylonians left Israel wearing rags that were hardly sufficient to cover up their nakedness. Their treatment of Israel revealed the depraved condition of their spirits. Babylon had lost all modesty and all respect for human dignity. After Babylon fell many of its people found themselves wearing the same kind of rags they forced their captives into.
We can learn from this today. We can learn that no matter how powerful we are God is capable of humbling us and driving us into hiding. If we are going to glory in anything we should only glory in God. God never changes. Wealth, power, pleasure, honor, politics – all of these things change. You never want to become dependent on glorifying yourself because sooner or later the waves will shift and you won’t be glorified anymore. But if you boast in the Lord and glorify God, then you can be sure that you’ll come out on the winning side. Let’s read verses 7-15:
Isa 47:7 You said, “I shall be mistress forever,” so that you did not lay these things to heart or remember their end.
Isa 47:8 Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children”:
Isa 47:9 These two things shall come to you in a moment, in one day; the loss of children and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments.
Isa 47:10 You felt secure in your wickedness; you said, “No one sees me”; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.”
Isa 47:11 But evil shall come upon you, which you will not know how to charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, for which you will not be able to atone; and ruin shall come upon you suddenly, of which you know nothing.
Isa 47:12 Stand fast in your enchantments and your many sorceries, with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you may be able to succeed; perhaps you may inspire terror.
Isa 47:13 You are wearied with your many counsels; let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons make known what shall come upon you.
Isa 47:14 Behold, they are like stubble; the fire consumes them; they cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. No coal for warming oneself is this, no fire to sit before!
Isa 47:15 Such to you are those with whom you have labored, who have done business with you from your youth; they wander about, each in his own direction; there is no one to save you.
When Babylon was in power they built up tremendous confidence in their own wisdom and their own methods of prediction. It was common for the Babylonians to turn to astrologers for counsel and prophecy. Their pride, luxury, and security led them to believe they had achieved mastery over the world and full control of their own fate. Their arrogance and their fallacious epistemology was exposed to bring Babylon to greater shame and prove the righteousness of God’s judgment. When a population stands in defiance of God and chooses to glorify something other than Him, they can get away with it for a while but God’s vengeance always shifts the glory back to Him and leaves the malevolent people enslaved to their deep confusion.
Great success and a history of widespread dominion caused both the governmental structures and the individuals inside Babylon to adopt an attitude of conceit. The culmination of this attitude could be articulated in the statement: I am, and none else besides me. Notice the similarity of their claim to God’s claim that He is God and there are none else besides Him. Enlargement of the self and the desire to be your own God is at heart of a sinful nature. We see this statement repeated throughout this passage which indicates that the Babylonians considered it often. When God says, I am, and none else besides me, He’s describing His self-existence, His infinite and incomparable perfection, and His sole supremacy.
Human beings end up thinking the same about themselves when they are told that they are perfect just the way they are and the world needs to change to accommodate them. The only difference between God claiming perfection and humanity claiming perfection is that humanity is wrong. We do our youth a tremendous disservice when we make them think they don’t need to improve and get better as human beings. All of us need to improve and get better. That’s what it means to stumble uphill toward the city of God. Of course, none of us will achieve God’s perfection on our own which is why Christ went to the cross – so that He could save us from our sins. But there’s a massive difference between someone who picks up their cross and makes an effort to improve versus someone who sits back and demands that the nature of reality change itself to reflect their own image.
Another issue Babylon suffered from was complacency. They were so rich and so well-off that most Babylonians simply wasted away their days in gluttonous pleasure. You should know that I’m the kind of person who enjoys lazy days and a cozy home. So I’m not suggesting that you trudge through unnecessary suffering simply for the sake of doing it. But the truth is that you are not wired for constant pleasure and enjoyment. You’re wired for meaning and purpose. If you suffer from a strong sense of meaninglessness, then even the most pleasurable experiences are going to feel dull and depressing to you. You need a burden of responsibility to shoulder in your life. Almost all of your positive emotion is associated with watching yourself progress forward to a desired goal. Once you achieve that goal, you’ll find that it doesn’t take very long before you begin craving meaning and purpose again. To allow the Spirit of God to sanctify you and make you evermore Christlike is a goal that will supply you with meaning that is eternal.
The Babylonians made the mistake of believing that their worldly security would last forever. They had an attitude of: that will never happen to me. So it’s not like the Babylonians were unaware of the vicissitudes of life – they knew perfectly well that civilizations end and individual lives end. The problem is they didn’t take that fact to heart. They lulled themselves to sleep by way of pleasure and excess. Their thoughts were fixated on making each moment as full of revelry and mirth as the previous one. Basically they wouldn’t allow themselves to think about the end of their story. They paid no attention to the fact that one day their injustice and oppression was going to come back around and sting them. Babylon never looked at the ruin of Jerusalem and thought, maybe that might be me someday.
This is a common issue for people in prosperous societies. Any time spent on the big questions of death and destiny is time we must take away from the pleasures of the moment. The more an individual becomes slave to the pleasures of the moment the less he or she is aware of the future. It can get so bad that entire families are broken apart and terrible crimes are committed for the sake of this moment. That is the very definition of a regret. Something you did in a given moment that you wish you hadn’t done in the future. The irony is that you can’t even live your best life in this moment until you settle your destiny. Accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior opens up an entire new plane of experience in each moment. You can taste life in light of eternity and with the security of belonging to an omnipotent God. That is a peace of mind that goes beyond comprehension.
Not only did Babylon fail to acknowledge the temporal nature of their security, but they also failed to remember that a lot of it was ill-gotten gains. Their wealth came from defrauding other nations and the economic oppression of their captives. So in a sense they had more confidence in their wickedness than they had in the refuge of God. They took shelter in the same iniquity that caused their own destruction. A good example of this is the person who is proud of the fact that he or she is willing to do anything to succeed. This attitude manifests itself as people boasting about how cold-hearted they are and how they’re capable of anything. This type of person brags in the wake of a successful manipulation or a clever scheme of lies. This type of person believes he can build security in the fact that he’s seared his own conscience. But the truth is that his seared conscience will bring about his own demise. Rather than trusting in God, he’s trusting in the very thing that’s killing him.
It’s very dangerous to be an intelligent person who does not know God. If you’re smarter than most people, you will be laid open to the temptation of manipulating them. After a few successful attempts you’ll really be dug in with the confidence that you can change the world according to your own liking. But sooner or later your lies will catch up to you. That’s why psychopaths tend to be nomadic, they can’t stay in the same place for very long without being discovered. Once an intelligent person starts getting rejected in their attempts to warp the world, their arrogance causes them to conclude that there must be something wrong with the world and not with themselves. They tend to be unwilling to humble themselves into doing work that is not befitting their cognitive capacity. And so they spiral down into a nihilistic, cynical, web of lies that they can’t find their way out of. When they do get a glimpse of the truth it stabs them right in the heart and is incredibly painful. There’s no way out for these people without the forgiveness and redemption of Jesus Christ. This was the attitude of the Babylonians that carried them into divine wrath.
Babylon expressed this attitude with claims that they would sit in honorable status forever. They didn’t look to the eternal Lord as the fountain of their honor – rather they looked to themselves and to their heirs. Their arrogance had reached such dizzying heights that they became blind to any possibility that they could be humbled in the future. Human beings do this all the time during the prime of their lives. It’s one of the reasons why deathbed conversions are so common. When you’re young and powerful, you can easily fall into the trap of believing it will last forever. Sometimes you don’t wake up from that until you see yourself in a vulnerable condition and receive a shock to your system. The truth is that even the most powerful and honorable among humanity will be buried in the same dirt as the least of us. Death doesn’t discriminate. So the proper attitude to have is confidence and trust in Lord – who is eternal. It is by this faith and this trust that you, too, will have eternal life. If your honor is tapped from the fountain of God and not from yourself, then you can be sure that your honor will never tarnish.
The Babylonians were convinced that their population would be wealthy and strong forever. They totally took for granted the delicate balance of life and the miracle of their own existence. They paid no thought to the possibility that someday the Babylonians would be lost to the ash heap of history. After all, who could contend with their might? I see this attitude a lot in the West today. The United States is the world’s foremost superpower and it can be tempting to think she has no match. But that’s the Babylonian thought process as well. The truth is even the most powerful nations still exist under the eternal sovereignty of God and He is the only one who has no match. So while it’s true to reflect on how certain countries are far ahead of others – we would all do well to remember the Lord and maintain healthy reverence of Him.
Another issue Babylon suffered from was the confidence in the secrecy of their sins. It’s not uncommon for sinners to believe that their sins are okay because they are private. But God sees in secret. It’s far better to acknowledge that your sin is a sin – even if you struggle with it – than to think you are successfully hiding it from God. Another variant of this is called virtue signaling. Many people will do a good thing solely because they seek the accolades and the approval of the spectators. But God knows your heart and He knows the real reason why you are doing it. So if you think you are successfully reshaping institutions and acquiring power while masquerading as champion of love and tolerance – guess what – God knows what you’re up to.
Notice how God’s judgment of Babylon brought them the very thing they boasted would never happen to them – widowhood and loss of children. And these afflictions were brought to them in perfection. That means there was nothing to comfort them in their afflictions. For example, a person who belongs to God may experience widowhood and loss of children – and this is a terrible affliction even when you do have a relationship with God. But it’s not perfectly terrible. There’s still the hope that you will see them again and the faith God is with you through your suffering. This wasn’t the case for Babylon. They chose to depart from God and so they suffered alone with no hope for the future.
In addition to the degree of God’s judgment on Babylon, there was also the fact that it came as a surprise to them. It struck them like a thief in the night and was so swift it might as well have been completed in a moment. This is what happens to those who ignore the written word of God. God warned Babylon through the prophet Isaiah but Babylon dismissed Isaiah as not credible. Their false sense of security coupled with their massive blind spot meant that they never saw judgment coming until it was upon them.
This same sort of thing happens today. Our generation has had easier access to Scripture than any generation before it – and yet how many people would be in shock to see a judgment of this magnitude? Carl Jung said that man fails to see God because he won’t look low enough. It’s not that God hides what we need to know or deceives us into not knowing it. It’s that He has revealed everything we need to know in Scripture and we simply don’t want to know it. If Babylon simply had the humility and desire to seek God then they could have known exactly what they needed to know plainly, repented of their sins, and avoided judgment altogether. Today Scripture is sufficient for everything we need know concerning our relationship to God. If we ignore or dismiss Scripture then we should not expect God to give us special revelation in any other way.
The swiftness and thorough nature of God’s judgment meant that Babylon could do nothing to defend against it. Once judgment comes it’s here and there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves from it. Observing the wickedness of Babylon with the crushing certainty of God’s judgment – and then understanding that this condition is the natural proclivity of humanity – really helps us see the gravity of our Savior. It’s only when you understand the holy perfection of God in comparison to your own sinful shortcomings that you can see what a miraculous gift God’s love is that He would sacrifice Himself to bring us home to Him.
Babylon was notorious for their diviners, magicians, and astrologers. Since the city was so magnificent, other nations borrowed these corrupt arts from them. These cults were specifically cited by Isaiah and one of the reasons why God brought judgment upon Babylon. Relying on enchanters, fortune tellers, mediums, witches, and other such nonsense is considered sinful. That’s because on the off chance these people aren’t simply lying to you and they really are tapped into some mystical power, the mystical power is guaranteed to be demonic. To seek this sort of thing is to seek communion with Satan instead of communion with God. It’s to turn to the father of lies as your counselor.
This rampant idolatry could possibly be the main issue that prevented Babylon from seeing God’s warnings. Divination was so widespread that it had worked its way into the Babylonian government. It was protected by legislation and these practitioners became counselors and prime ministers of the state. Babylon became so bewitched and enamoured with these sins that they spread through the city like infection. Deceit was so common that most people held to the postmodern idea that truth didn’t exist. It was a stagnant and rotting pool of lies where the most successful individuals were deceivers themselves.
The Babylonians considered these manipulative arts to be one of their sources of security. That confidence in itself was a deception because none of these arts were able to predict God’s judgment – if anything they obscured it. And it is appropriate to call these practices arts even though they were arts of deception. The reason is because many Babylonians had practiced and labored to perfect this sorcery from youth. They set up institutions of learning where young men would spend countless hours studying books and making experiments. You have to imagine their shock when the critical moment came and none of these practices were able to save them from Cyrus and the invading Persians.
A really good modern analogy is how individuals or groups of people will cite research and studies to support deceptive claims. If you don’t believe me try looking at nutrition science. There’s such a widespread number of conflicting studies when it comes to nutrition that it’s hard to tell good science from a special agenda. Since you can’t get values from facts, scientific studies are often cherry picked to support the ideology of the person or group who cited them. So you end up with a vacuous fog of human opinion coming from a wide array of different perspectives and people get so tired of sorting it all out that postmodernism rules the day. Since there are so many different perspectives, the culture begins to think there must not be such a thing as absolute truth.
Babylon suffered the same problem. They had astrologers who claimed to tell the future by studying the stars. They had star-gazers who claimed to predict the status of governments based on cosmological movement. They had monthly prognosticators who developed almanacs that claimed to predict things like weather and news. They had mediums, fortune tellers, and enchanters who claimed to be in touch with secret magic. All of these practitioners were manipulative deceivers who made God only knows how much money off of sham businesses. This is no different than the multitude of armchair philosophers we hear from today. If you use Facebook or Twitter, you are daily exposed to memes stating empty truth-claims about humanity and the nature of reality. Depending on the diviners of ancient Babylon would have been the equivalent to shaping your life around memes today.
But as is often the case, the deception and emptiness of these practitioners was exposed the day Cyrus marched on the city. There was nothing they could do to encourage Babylon or put the Persians to flight. Their fake magic didn’t stand a chance against the very real sword of Cyrus. And for all their subtleties they failed to speak a single word of warning about the incoming invasion. God’s prophets speak of the future and the future lays itself out according to the word of God. But the false prophets could do nothing but stare in confusion when they saw the writing on the wall the night Babylon was captured and Belshazzar was slain. The purported wise men of Babylon were summarily executed by the Persians and their false wisdom died with them.
Even the economic fortitude of Babylon could do nothing to prevent their collapse. Fortune-telling was one of the wealthiest trades in Babylon. Astrologers and other soothsayers made piles of money through consultations. But during and after the Persian invasion those who weren’t devoured by the sword abandoned Babylon and did nothing to comfort the city. The same thing happened with their merchants. These were business owners who had made incredibly livelihoods in the city but were nowhere to be found when it fell. They offered no assistance or humanitarian aid to those who couldn’t escape. Their primary concern was their own safety and they failed to extend a hand even to their own friends.
Such is the nature of humanity without God. Deceptive, self-interested, and nowhere to be found when trouble strikes. Real love is the exact opposite of that. Jesus Christ is the exact opposite of that. Real love looks like Christ on the cross. He chose to suffer so we wouldn’t have to. God is the only one who will always be there for you no matter how hard the situation gets. So do your best to imitate that love for all those who are around you. When the temptation comes to fulfill your own desires, security, and destiny by seizing power in defiance of God – remember Babylon. Walk in the light of God’s word and clear your mind of useless speculation. Choose today to make God your refuge and you can be certain that you will have an everlasting home.
If you enjoy this podcast, please rate it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to it. You can follow The MHB Podcast on Facebook or Twitter @mhbpodcast. Tell your friends about it and share it on social media. If you’d like email notifications of new episodes or if you’d like to support my work directly, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on my website at mhbpodcast.com. This work is made possible by listener support so your generosity is greatly appreciated. Thank you all for joining me, and I will see you in the next episode.
The MHB Podcast 