Babylon's Counselors Fail

With stinging sarcasm, Jehovah commands:  "Stand still, now, with your spells and with the abundance of your sorceries, in which you have toiled from your youth; that perhaps you might be able to benefit, that perhaps you might strike people with awe."  (Isaiah 47:12) Babylon is challenged to "stand still," or persist unreformed, in her reliance on magic. After all, as a nation she has toiled in the development of the occult arts from her "youth."

But Jehovah mocks her, saying:  "Your have grown weary with the multitude of your counselors.  Let them stand up now, and save you, the worshipers of the heavens, the lookers at the stars, those giving out knowledge of the new moons concern the things that will come upon you." (Isaiah 47:13)   Babylon will face the utter failure of her counselors.  True, centuries of astronomical observation will have gone into the development of Babylonian astrology.  But on the night of here fall, the pitiful failure of her astrologers will expose divination as useless. -Daniel 5:7, 8.

Jehovah concludes this section of the prophecy by saying:  "Look! They have become like stubble. A fire itself will certainly burn them up.  They will not deliver their soul from the power of the flame.  There will be no glow of charcoals for people  to warm themselves, no firelight in front of which to sit down.  Thus they  will certainly become to you, with whom you have toiled as your charmers from your youth.  They will actually wander, each one to his own region.  There will be no one to save you." (Isaiah 47:14) Yes, fiery times about about to come  upon these false counselors.  It will be, not a cozy fire around which people can warm themselves, but a destructive, consuming fire that will expose the  false counselors  as useless stubble.   Little wonder, then, that Babylon's counselors will flee in panic!  Babylon's last support gone, there will be no one to save her.  She will receive the very fate that she will have inflicted upon Jerusalem. -Jeremiah 11:12.

In the year 539 B.C.E., these inspired words start to be fulfilled.  The armies of the Medes and the Persians under the leadership of Cyrus capture the city, killing its resident king, Belshazzar.  (Daniel 5:1-4, 30)  In one night Babylon is toppled  from her position of world dominance.  Thus ends centuries of Semitic supremacy, and the world now falls under Aryan control. Babylon itself goes into a centuries-long period of decline.  By the fourth  century C.E., it is nothing more than "piles of stones."  (Jeremiah 51:37) Isaiah's prophecy is thus completely fulfilled.

Next time: A Modern-Day Babylon

From the Book Isaiah's Prophecy Light for all Mankind, Volume II, 2001