Babylonia

Babylonia was the great power of southern Mesopotamia, the flat alluvial land between the lower Tigris and Euphrates where the two rivers run down toward the Persian Gulf. Scripture calls its southern heartland the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11:2) and, later, the land of the Chaldeans, after the people who gave the Neo-Babylonian empire its ruling dynasty. Its capital was Babylon on the Euphrates; from this fertile, canal-laced plain rose the kingdom that destroyed Jerusalem and carried Judah into exile. Apart from the Promised Land itself, no foreign power looms larger in the Old Testament — at once a literal empire and the abiding symbol of proud, God-defying civilization.

Babylonia frames the whole biblical story. Here, in the plain of Shinar, men built the tower of Babel to make a name for themselves, and the LORD scattered them and confused their speech (Genesis 11:9); the same Shinar held the first cities of Nimrod's kingdom — Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh (Genesis 10:10). From Ur of the Chaldeans God called Abram out toward the land of promise (Genesis 11:31), so that redemption history begins as a journey away from Babylonia. Centuries later the Chaldeans rose again: God himself declared, "I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation" (Habakkuk 1:6). Under Nebuchadnezzar they crushed Egypt at Carchemish in 605 BC (Jeremiah 46:2) and became the LORD's chosen rod against his own unfaithful people, for he called Nebuchadnezzar "my servant" (Jeremiah 25:9).

The decisive act is the exile. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, carried off the temple vessels to the land of Shinar (Daniel 1:1–2), and at last burned the city and temple and deported the people (2 Kings 25:8–11). By the rivers of Babylon the exiles wept for Zion (Psalm 137:1), yet Jeremiah had fixed a limit of seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10) and bidden them seek the welfare of the city of their captivity. In that pagan court Daniel and his companions kept faith; by the canal Chebar Ezekiel saw the glory of God (Ezekiel 1:1). Then, at Belshazzar's feast, a hand wrote the kingdom's doom upon the wall (Daniel 5:5), and that night Babylon fell to Cyrus the Persian (Daniel 5:30), whose decree the next year sent the Jews home (Ezra 1:2).

The prophets see Babylon two ways at once: the instrument of God's anger that is itself judged for its pride — overthrown like Sodom (Isaiah 13:19), her doom filling whole oracles (Jeremiah 50:1). The New Testament gathers this charge into a single image: "Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes" (Revelation 17:5), the whole world-system of idolatry and violence whose fall is announced, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great" (Revelation 18:2). Yet within Babylonia God also planted hope: Daniel saw that the God of heaven would set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed (Daniel 2:44). That kingdom is Christ's. He is the true Israel who comes out of exile, gathering his people from every Babylon into the city that endures, the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb.