Scriptural Basis
“The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.” Isaiah 13:1
“Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.” Isaiah 13:17
“Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.” Isaiah 13:18
“And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” Isaiah 13:19
“Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself…” Isaiah 44:24
“That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers” Isaiah 44:27
“That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure…” Isaiah 44:28
“Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut” Isaiah 45:1
“I will go before thee… I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron…” Isaiah 45:2
“The word that the LORD spake against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans by Jeremiah the prophet.” Jeremiah 50:1
“Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans…” Jeremiah 50:8
“For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain.” Jeremiah 50:9
“… the LORD hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the LORD…” Jeremiah 51:11
“Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz; appoint a captain against her; cause the horses to come up as the rough caterpillers.” Jeremiah 51:27
“Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his dominion.” Jeremiah 51:28
“And the land shall tremble and sorrow: for every purpose of the LORD shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation without an inhabitant.” Jeremiah 51:29
“The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as women: they have burned her dwellingplaces; her bars are broken.” Jeremiah 51:30
“One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end,” Jeremiah 51:31
“And that the passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.” Jeremiah 51:32
“Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.” Jeremiah 50:31
“And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up: and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all round about him.” Jeremiah 50:32
“O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come…” Jeremiah 51:13
“The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.” Jeremiah 51:42
“Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby.” Jeremiah 51:43
Historical Basis
“In the first year of Neriglissar (king of Babylon), only two years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, broke out that fatal war between the Babylonians and the Medes, which was to result in the utter subversion of the Babylonian kingdom.”
“Cyaxares, king of the Medes, who is called “Darius” in Daniel 5:31, summoned to his aid his nephew, Cyrus, of the Persian line, in his efforts against the Babylonians.”
“The war was prosecuted with uninterrupted success on the part of the Medes and Persians, until, in the eighteenth year of Nabonadius (the third year of his son Belshazzar)…”1
By this time we have the testimony…
“… Cyrus continued some time in Lesser Asia, till he had brought all the several nations which inhabited in it, from the Egean Sea to the Euphrates, into thorough subjection to him. From hence he went into Syria and Arabia, and there did the same thing; and then marched into the upper countries of Asia, and, having there also settled all things in a thorough obedience under his dominion, he again entered Assyria, and marched on towards Babylon, that being the only place of all the East which now held out against him…”2
“The Babylonians, gathered within their impregnable walls, with provision on hand for twenty years, and land within the limits of their broad city sufficient to furnish food for the inhabitants and garrison for an indefinite period, scoffed at Cyrus from their lofty walls, and derided his seemingly useless efforts to bring them into subjection.”
“And according to all human calculation, they had good ground for their feelings of security. Never, weighed in the balance of any earthly probability, with the means of warfare then known, could that city be taken. Hence, they breathed as freely and slept as soundly as though no foe were waiting and watching for their destruction around their beleaguered walls. But God had decreed that the proud and wicked city should come down from her throne of glory; and when he speaks, what mortal arm can defeat his word?”
“In their very feeling of security lay the source of their danger. Cyrus resolved to accomplish by stratagem what he could not effect by force; and learning of the approach of an annual festival, in which the whole city would be given up to mirth and revelry, he fixed upon that day as the time to carry his purpose into execution.”
“There was no entrance for him into that city except he could find it where the River Euphrates entered and emerged, passing under its walls. He resolved to make the channel of the river his own highway into the stronghold of his enemy.”
“To do this, the water must be turned aside from its channel through the city. For this purpose, on the evening of the feast-day above referred to, he detailed three bodies of soldiers, the first, to turn the river at a given hour into a large artificial lake a short distance above the city; the second, to take their station at the point where the river entered the city; the third to take a position fifteen miles below, where the river emerged from the city; and these two latter parties were instructed to enter the channel, just as soon as they found the river fordable, and in the darkness of the night explore their way beneath the walls, and press on to the palace of the king, where they were to meet, surprise the palace, slay the guards, and capture or slay the king. When the water was turned into the lake mentioned above, the river soon became fordable, and the soldiers detailed for that purpose followed its channel into the heart of the city of Babylon.”
“But all this would have been in vain, had not the whole city, on that eventful night, given themselves over to the most reckless carelessness and presumption, a state of things upon which Cyrus calculated largely for the carrying out of his purpose.”
“For on each side of the river, through the entire length of the city, were walls of great height, and of equal thickness with the outer walls. In these walls were huge gates of solid brass, which when closed and guarded, debarred all entrance from the river-bed to any and all of the twenty-five streets that crossed the river; and had they been thus closed at this time, the soldiers of Cyrus might have marched into the city along the river-bed, and then marched out again, for all that they would have been able to accomplish toward the subjugation of the place.”
“But in the drunken revelry of that fatal night, these river gates were all left open, and the entrance of the Persian soldiers was not perceived. Many a cheek would have paled with terror, had they noticed the sudden going down of the river, and understood its fearful import. Many a tongue would have spread wild alarm through the city, had they seen the dark forms of their armed foes stealthily treading their way to the citadel of their strength. But no one noticed the sudden subsidence of the waters of the river; no one saw the entrance of the Persian warriors; no one took care that the river gates should be closed and guarded; no one cared for aught but to see how deeply and recklessly he could plunge into the wild debauch. That night’s work cost them their kingdom and their freedom. They went into their brutish revelry subjects of the king of Babylon; they awoke from it slaves to the king of Persia.”
“The soldiers of Cyrus first made known their presence in the city by falling upon the royal guards in the very vestibule of the palace of the king. Belshazzar soon became aware of the cause of the disturbance, and died vainly fighting for his imperiled life.”
“The feast of Belshazzar is described in the fifth chapter of Daniel; and the scene closes with the simple record, “In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.”3
But the story does not end there…
“the great lake, and the canal leading to it.. how wisely soever they were contrived for the benefit both of the city and country, turned to the great damage of both; for Cyrus, draining the river by this lake and canal, by that means took the city. And when, by the breaking down of the banks at the head of the canal, the river was turned that way, no care being taken afterward again to reduce it to its former channel, by repairing the breach, all the country on that side was overflown and drowned by it; and the current, by long running this way, at length making the breach so wide as to become irreparable… a whole province was lost by it; and the current which went to Babylon afterward grew so shallow, as to be scarce fit for the smallest navigation, which was a further damage to that place.”
“And here ended the power and pride of this great city… and hereby were in a great measure accomplished the many prophecies which were, by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Daniel, delivered against it.”
“And here it is to be observed, that in reference to the present besieging and taking of the place, it was particularly foretold by them, that it should be shut up, and besieged by the Medes, Elamites, and Armenians; that the river should be dried up; that the city should be taken in the time of a feast,” while her princes and wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men, were drunken ; and that they should thereon be made to sleep a perpetual sleep, from which they should not awake”.”
“And so accordingly all this came to pass, Belshazzar, and all his thousand princes, who were drunk with him at the feast, having been all slain by Cyrus’s soldiers when they took the palace. And so also was it particularly foretold by the prophet Isaiah, (xiv.) that God would make the country of Babylon a possession for the bittern, and pools of water, (ver. 23,) which was accordingly fulfilled by the overflowing and drowning of it, on the breaking down of the great dam, in order to take the city…”4
References
- 1 — pg 50.3- 53.1, Daniel and the Revelation by Uriah Smith 1909.
- 2 — Book II, Pg 215, Par 2 The Old and the New Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and the Neighbouring Nations from Declension of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah to the Time of Christ by Humphrey Prideaux D. D
- 3 — Daniel and the Revelation by Uriah Smith 1909. pg 51.2- 53.1
- 4 — Book II, Pg 218-219, The Old and the New Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and the Neighbouring Nations from Declension of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah to the Time of Christ by Humphrey Prideaux D. D