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
20,000,000_l_, 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_.
BADGER, תחש. This word in a plural form occurs, Exod. xxv, 5; xxvi, 14;
xxxv, 7, 23; xxxvi, 19; xxxix, 34; Num. iv, 6, 8, 10–12, 14, 25; Ezek.
xvi, 10; and is joined with ערת, skins used for the covering of the
tabernacle in the wilderness. The Jewish interpreters are agreed as to
its being some animal. Jarchi says it was a beast of many colours, which
no more exists. Kimchi holds the same opinion. Aben Ezra thinks it some
animal of the bovine kind, of whose skins shoes are made; alluding to
Ezek. xvi, 10. Most modern interpreters have taken it to be the badger,
and among these our English translators; but, in the first place, the
badger is not an inhabitant of Arabia; and there is nothing in its skin
peculiarly proper either for covering a tabernacle or making shoes.
Hasæus, Michaelis, and others, have laboured to prove that it is the
mermaid, or _homo marinus_, the _trichekus_ of Linnæus. Faber, Dathe,
and Rosenmuller, think that it is the seal, or sea calf, _vitulus
marinus_, the skin of which is both strong and pliable, and was
accounted by the ancients as a most proper outer covering for tents, and
was also made into shoes, as Rau has clearly shown. Niebuhr says, “A
merchant of Abushahr called _dahash_ that fish which the captains in
English vessels call porpoise, and the Germans, sea hog. In my voyage
from Maskat to Abushahr, I saw a prodigious quantity together near Ras
Mussendom, that were all going the same way, and seemed to swim with
great vehemence.” Bochart thinks that not an _animal_, but a _colour_,
was intended, Exodus xxv, 5; so that the covering of the tabernacle was
to be azure, or sky blue.
BAG, a purse or pouch, Deut. xxv, 13; 1 Sam. xvii, 40; Luke xii, 33; Job
xiv, 17. The money collected in the treasuries of eastern princes was
reckoned up in certain equal sums, put into bags and sealed. These are,
in some parts of the Levant, called _purses_, where they estimate great
expenses by so many purses. The money collected in the temple in the
time of Joash, for its reparation, seems, in like manner, to have been
told up in bags of equal value; and these were probably delivered sealed
to those who paid the workmen, 2 Kings xii, 10. In the east, in the
present day, a bag of money passes, for some time at least, currently
from hand to hand, under the authority of a banker’s seal, without any
examination of its contents. See Tobit ix, 5; xi, 16.
BAKING BREAD. Abraham directed Sarah to bake cakes upon the hearth, for
the use of the strangers who had visited him, Genesis xviii, 6. Elijah
requests the same of the widow of Zarephath, 1 Kings xvii, 13. Amnon the
son of David requests Tamar his sister to come and make cakes in his
sight, that he might eat at her hand, 2 Sam. xiii, 6. These and other
allusions to the preparation of bread will be explained by referring to
eastern customs. Rauwolff observes that travellers frequently bake bread
in the deserts of Arabia, on the ground heated for that purpose by fire,
covering their cakes of bread with ashes and coals, and turning them
several times till they are enough. The eastern bread is made in small
thin cakes, and is generally eaten new. Sometimes it was however made to
keep several days, as the shew bread; and a sort of rusks, or bread for
travelling, Joshua ix, 12. The eastern ladies of rank often prepare
cakes, pastry, &c, in their own apartments.