Our Day. William Ambrose Spicer
in her markets—no visible trace of those towering ramparts which so long resisted the utmost efforts of the great Alexander. All have vanished utterly like a troubled dream, and Tyre has sunk under the burden of prophecy. … As she is now, and has long been, Tyre is God's witness; but great, powerful, and populous, she would be the infidel's boast. This, however, she cannot be. Tyre will never rise from her dust to falsify the voice of prophecy.
"Dim is her glory, gone her fame,
Her boasted wealth has fled;
On her proud rock, alas! her shame,
The fisher's net is spread.
The Tyrian harp has slumbered long,
And Tyria's mirth is low;
The timbrel, dulcimer, and song
Are hushed, or wake to woe."
—"The Land and the Book," Vol. II, pp. 626, 627.
The Desolation of Babylon
Yet another city of ancient times there was, the mightiest of them all, whose fate was a subject of prophecy, and whose history bears special testimony for us today; for, more than any other, the Lord used that city as a symbol of the pride of life and the exaltation of the selfish heart against God.
Let us study briefly the desolations pronounced upon Babylon of old.
While Babylon was still the mightiest city of the world, with the period of greatest glory yet before it, the Lord revealed its ignoble end. By the prophet Isaiah He declared:
"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." Isa. 13:19–22.
Never could a more doleful future have been pictured for a city full of splendor, the metropolis of the world. About one hundred and seventy-five years after this word was written on the parchment scroll, the Medes and Persians were at the gates of Babylon. Her time had come, and Chaldea's rule was ended.
"Fallen is the golden city! in the dust,
Spoiled of her crown, dismantled of her state.
She that hath made the Strength of Towers her trust,
Weeps by her dead, supremely desolate!
"She that beheld the nations at her gate
Thronging in homage, shall be called no more
'Lady of Kingdoms!'—Who shall mourn her fate?
Her guilt is full, her march of triumph o'er."
But still, under Medo-Persia, and later under the Greeks, the city itself was populous and prosperous and beautiful. The skeptic of the time may have pointed to it as evidence that here, at least, the Hebrew prophet had missed the mark.
Apollonius, the sage of Tyana, who lived in the days of Nero and the apostles, has left an account of Babylon as he saw it, as late as the first century of our era. Still the Euphrates swept beneath its walls, dividing the city into halves, with great palaces on either side. He says:
"The palaces are roofed with bronze, and a glitter goes off from them; but the chambers of the women and of the men and the porticoes are adorned partly with silver, and partly with golden tapestries or curtains, and partly with solid gold in the form of pictures."
And of the king's judgment hall he reported:
"The roof had been carried up in the form of a dome, to resemble in a manner the heavens, and that it was roofed with sapphire, a stone that is very blue and like heaven to the eye; and there were images of the gods, which they worship, fixed aloft, and looking like golden figures shining out of the ether."—Philostratus, "Life of Apollonius," book 1, chap. 25.
Evidently Babylon was still "the land of graven images," and the desolation foretold by the prophet had not yet befallen its palaces. But that prophetic word, written eight hundred years before, was still upon the scroll of the Book, the sure Word of God, who sees the end from the beginning.
The view given us by Apollonius is perhaps the last glimpse we have of Babylon's passing glory. Even then for centuries the walls had been a quarry from which stones were drawn for Babylon's rival, Seleucia, on the Tigris. And Strabo, the Greek geographer, who also wrote in the first century, had described Babylon as "in great part deserted," adding,
"No one would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic writers said of Megalopolitæ, in Arcadia, 'The great city is a great desert.'"—"Geography," book 16, chap. 1.
Already pagan writers had begun to describe its condition in the terms of the prophecy uttered so long before. And now what is its state? The doom foretold has fallen heavy upon the city, upon its palaces, and "upon the graven images of Babylon." For a century and more, travelers' accounts have frequently borne witness to the exact fulfilment of the prophecy in the remarkable desolations of that city, once mistress of the world.
"Babylon shall become heaps," said the prophecy, "and owls shall dwell there." This is what Mr. Layard, the English archeologist, found on his visit in 1845:
"Shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land. … On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and a hideous waste. Owls [which are of a large gray kind, and often found in flocks of nearly a hundred] start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows."—"Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon," chap. 21, p. 413.
The prophecy said, "Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there." The words might be construed to mean that the famous site would never become the place of a Bedouin village. But it is literally true, say travelers, that the Arabs avoid the place even for the temporary pitching of their tents. They consider the spot under a curse. They call the ruins Mudjelibe, "the Overturned." (See "Encyclopedia of Islam," art. "Babil.")
As late as 1913, Missionary W.C. Ising visited the site where Professor Koldeway was excavating the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace. He wrote:
"Involuntarily one is reminded of the prophecy in the thirteenth of Isaiah and many other places, which, in course of time, have been fulfilled to the letter. No one is living on the site of ancient Babylon, and whatever Arabs are employed by the excavators have built their mud huts in the bed of the ancient river, which at the present time is shifted half a mile farther west."—European Division Quarterly, Fourth Quarter, 1913.
Egypt and Edom
The massive ruins by the Nile bear witness to prophecy fulfilled. When Egypt rivaled Babylon, the word was spoken: "It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations." Eze. 29:15. It was not utterly to pass, as Babylon, but to continue in inferior state. Thus it came to pass. Once populous Edom, famed for wisdom and counsel, now lies desolate, according to the word: "Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth