jeremiah – Grace Still Amazes

Taken into Exile (Daniel 1:1-2)

After World War II many of the Eastern European countries were under the control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. For those living in these countries the control and intimidation were oppressive. It was a time of terror and intense sufferings. The Socialists were determined to stamp out the culture and religion of the occupied nations, seeking to change their culture, their language and their religion. Their children were indoctrinated into the Socialist worldview. Anyone who was a potential leader was either executed or exiled to some distant part of the Soviet empire.

Can you imagine what it would have been like to have been torn from your families, to be alone and scared, to be stripped of all you formerly believed in and held dear, to be tortured for any sign of disloyalty or disobedience? How could you possibly cope in such a situation? Would your faith and loyalty to Jesus Christ remain intact, or would you just give up and assimilate into the new norm?

While we here in the U. S. have not had to imagine such circumstances, we do have to take seriously that God has called us to live as “strangers and aliens” in whatever country we live in. This world is not our home, and its values are not supposed to be our values. This world will try to squeeze us into its mold (Romans 12:2) and make us conform to the crowds so that we don’t stick out as different (holy). All around us we feel the pressure to fit in, to be like others, to not make waves or stand out, but to go along with the crowd. We are expected to like the same kind of music and TV shows, to laugh at the same jokes, to enjoy gossiping about others. We are expected to cut corners at work, to not work so hard as to make others feel lazy, to lie for our bosses. Whenever we are in public we are asked to leave our religious beliefs at home. They are “not for the public square.” So we, too, have to choose daily whether to act like this world we are “exiled” to, or to take the difficult path of standing against it.
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So how do we remain faithful and obedient to the God of heaven? When life gets hard, and everything and everyone around us is forcing us to bow to the pressure of becoming like them, what do we do? These are the kind of questions that the book of Daniel helps us with. Again, it was a book written to God’s Old Testament people, the Jews, when they were experiencing the hardness and harshness of life in exile, far away from home and all that they knew. It was written to encourage them to still walk with and depend upon God, who was still with them even in the midst of their pain.

What they needed to know and rely upon, what that God was still their God and He was faithful to keep His promises to them.

Daniel’s story began like this:

1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god. 3 Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, 4 youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. 5 The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king.

In order to live faithfully in exile, we first need to know and rely upon God’s constant faithfulness. How did Daniel experience God’s faithfulness?

Well, first of all, he experienced God’s faithfulness in the fact that God’s people were now being judged with exile in Babylon. Verses 1 and 2 show very clearly that Judah’s exile in Babylon was no accident of history, nor was it simply that Babylon had a stronger army than Judah’s. Nebuchadnezzar may have thought that, but God makes it very clear here that the reason Judah was in exile is because “the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.” Generally when an army of the Ancient Near Eastern culture dominated and destroyed another culture, they believed that their god was the stronger god. But the emphasis of this passage, the true account, is that “the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.” Nebuchadnezzar’s strength wasn’t the cause, God’s sovereignty was.

Proverbs 21:1 tells us, “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.” Kings had absolute, irresistible, despotic rule at this time in history, yet in God’s hands they are like water. As Charles Bridges says, “The king’s heart he directs as a responsible agent, without interfering with the moral liberty of his will.”

Yahweh had warned Israel of the determined consequences of their sins in the book of Leviticus. At the beginning of Israel’s history as a nation, God made a covenant with the people, a covenant that was explained in Leviticus 26 as containing curses if they disobeyed it and blessings if they obeyed.
If they served the Lord faithfully, being loving him (no idolatry) and their neighbors (no social sins), then they were experience blessing and favor (Lev. 26:3-13). BUT, if they abandoned the LORD for idols and mistreated one another, they would be visited with wrath and curses (26:19-25). They would experience famine, diseases, defeat by their enemies (26:19-25). If they didn’t learn from their disasters and persisted in disloyalty and disobedience, Yahweh would scatter them among the nations and take them into exile (Lev. 26:33, 39).

Nebuchadnezzar’s actions in Daniel 1:1-2 represent only the first of three stages of Jerusalem’s fall. The dates of 597 and 586 BC complete the second and third stages. From 605 to 586 BC, Judah’s status seemed dark, unfathomable, chaotic, and hopeless. This judgment was an expression of God’s faithfulness to the Mosaic covenant, which contained fitting curses for disobedience and idolatry, one of which was exile: “The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone” (Deut. 28:36-37).

Another reason Judah went into exile is more specific. In fact, it relates to the seventy years that they were in captivity (605 B. C. to 536 B. C.). This 70 years was not some random number, but was determined according to the exact number of sabbath years that had been missed in Israel’s history.
“He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years” (2 Chronicles 36:20-21).

Israel had been instructed, upon entering the land, that they were to leave the land fallow every seventh year (Lev. 25:1-4). That year they weren’t to plow; they weren’t to plant. But Israel had failed to keep that once-in-seven-years Sabbath for 490 years, thus their captivity would make up for it, seventy years.

Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem because the Pharaoh of Egypt invaded Babylon. In response, the young prince Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish, then he pursued their fleeing army all the way down to the Sinai. Along the way (or on the way back), he subdued Jerusalem, which had been loyal to the Pharaoh of Egypt.

This specific attack mentioned by Daniel is documented by the Babylonian Chronicles, a collection of tablets discovered as early as 1887 and now kept in the British Museum. Nebuchadnezzar’s 605 B.C. presence in Judah is documented and clarified in these tablets.

God was already angry with Judah “because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him” (2 Kings 23:26) and had resolved to remove Judah from his sight (v. 27). This began the seventy-year captivity because of Israel’s idolatry (1 Kings 11:5; 12:28; 16:31; 18:19; 2 Kings 21:3-5; 2 Chron. 28:2-8). This is the beginning of the important prophetic time period — the times of the Gentiles. This period began in 605 B.C. and will extend until Jesus returns as the Messiah.
They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. (Luke 21:24)

Yet the fate of Daniel and his friends hung not merely on these violations of the covenant stipulations as a nation, but also because of the specific fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah in 2 Kings 20:18.
Judah’s King Hezekiah had received envoys and a gift from Merodach Baladan, then the king of Babylon. In response, Hezekiah showed him everything that was of value in his storehouses and all of his treasures (20:13).

Now, why was the LORD so upset over what Hezekiah had done? What was the problem with giving the envoys of Babylon a tour of the palace? Well, as you might know, in the world of diplomacy, nothing comes for free.

When Merodach Baladan sent envoys and a gift to Hezekiah, it wasn’t merely a friendly gesture of goodwill on his recovery from illness. Rather, he was seeking Hezekiah’s help and support in his ongoing struggle against Assyria.

Thus, Hezekiah showing Merodach Baladan’s envoys around the palace indicates that he was responding positively to his overtures of an alliance and seeking to prove to him that he had resources that Merodah Baladan could use to be successful.

And this in spite of the fact that God had only recently miraculously rescued Jerusalem from the surrounding armies of Sennacherib and the Assyrians. Instead of trusting in God, who had just shown Himself strong in Hezekiah’s behalf, now Hezekiah is looking to political means for resolving his Assyria problem.

This is by far merely an ancient temptation. Our own elections prove that. Every four years we get to vote on a new Savior who will deliver us from the evils of the previous administration. We get so tied into one or the other political party that we lose our voice as a church because our values are co-opted and soon corrupted by our alliance with any political party.

I’m not saying that being political knowledgeable or active is wrong, but political leaders, parties or platforms will not save us or sanctify us. Instead, the church is to be a prophetic voice in society that calls either party back to God and back into the ways of His righteousness.

Isaiah’s word of judgment on Hezekiah’s strategy was very specific and very severe. Because Hezekiah sought to preserve his treasures by trusting in Babylon, it would be the Babylonians themselves (what irony!) who would come and carry off everything in his palace (2 Kings 20:17; Dan. 1:2).

Far from guaranteeing the safety and security of his line, his foolish alliance would even result in some of his own offspring being taken off to become eunuchs in the palace of the Babylonian king.
Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” (2 Kings 20:17-18)

It is these specific words that are being fulfilled in the first verses of the book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and carried off treasures from the temple of God to put in the house of his own god (Dan. 1:2), and he also took some of the royal family and nobility—likely the very descendants of Hezekiah—and put them under the charge of Ashpenaz, the chief of his court officials, or eunuchs (1:4). Thus, God’s judgment upon the line of Hezekiah had been faithfully carried out just as Isaiah had said.

Matthew Henry notes how ironic it is that Judah, who had begun to worship the idols of other gods in their own temple, now suffer the vessels of their temple to be carried off to the temples of other gods. In the Babylonian worship, they would only see Israel’s God as a defeated god, a god inferior to their own.

Now, back when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and brought it into the temple of their god, Dagon. That time, God caused Dagon’s statue to fall broken on its face before the Ark, and the true God was shown to be the most powerful (1 Sam. 5). But this time, nothing happened. The articles were brought into the Babylonian temple, but God didn’t show up to avenge their theft. But God was still on the throne and He would reveal over and over again that He is sovereign over empires, over kings and over history.

No, the Babylonian statues wouldn’t literally fall on their faces. But God would reveal Himself in other ways. And in the very next chapter of Daniel, He would use a statue as an allegory of earth’s kingdoms, and reveal that – in the end – He will smash that statue to pieces and replace it with His own everlasting kingdom that will never be destroyed (Daniel 2).

So just as the Assyrians had been God’s rod against Israel, Babylon performed the same disciplinary action against Judah. God said He had ordained Babylon “for judgment” and that he had “marked them for correction” (Habakkuk 1:12). For the next seventy years the people of Judah would live in Babylon in a constant state of upheaval under the successive control of the Babylonians, Medo-Persian, and Persian empires (David Jeremiah, Agents of Babylon, p. 13).

Yet, the recognition that their fate came from the hand of God as a faithful act of judgment was itself also an encouragement to these exiles. Their future was not controlled by the Babylonian kings or their gods, but rather by the LORD, the God of heaven (Dan. 2:19).

The one who had sent them into exile had promised that He would be with them there, and that he would ultimately restore them from exile after a time of judgment.

Iain Duguid points out an implicit parallel between the sacred articles pilfered from the temple and the Hebrew children who were taken by Nebuchadnezzar: these young men were described as “free from defect” (me’um), a word more commonly used of sacrifices (1:4). Just as the Lord allowed Nebuchadnezzar to carry away the precious temple vessels, he also allowed him to carry away the best of his people. And just as after seventy years these temple vessels would be returned to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:7-11), so many of the exiles, or at least their children and grandchildren, would be able to return home. God does not abandon those who are His own. (Daniel, Reformed Expository Commentary, pp. 7-8).

God promises in Jeremiah 29:10, “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.” Daniel counts on this fact in his prayer in Daniel 9. It is possible, however, that Daniel and his friends did not know this until Ezekiel arrived in Babylon in 597 B.C., some eight years later.
How important this is for us to remember. Even during our hardest moments, when life seems out of control or hardly worth living anymore, we need to remember that God is with us and He is for us (Romans 8:31).

We may believe that our situation is due to unfortunate accidents, or due to the malevolence of wicked people, but in reality it is all always under the control of a all-loving and all-wise God. If we remember that no sparrow falls to the ground without God’s knowledge (Matthew 10:29) and that he knows every hair of our heads (Luke 12:7), then we can be assured that even the most trivial events do not escape either his notice or his control. At the other extreme, God is still in control of even the most wicked, heinous sins that were ever committed against the most innocent Person who ever lived (Acts 4:28). Although sinners were responsible, it was all according to God’s plan. Everything…everything that we experience in life, no matter how difficult or how much it may seem to be meaningless, is God’s purpose for us. All of these circumstances, the good and the bad, are God’s means of sanctifying us. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). And that “good,” the very best thing for us, is defined in verse 29 as being “conformed to the image of his Son,” becoming more and more like Jesus Christ.

“All things” includes both the good and the bad. In other words, God uses the good things, like our obedience and faith and sacrifice and Bible reading and prayer and worship and fellowship to conform us to the image of His Son, but He will also use the bad things like trials, sickness, pain, financial hardship, rebellious children, a failed marriage, being hated and mistreated, as ways to conform us to the image of His Son.

In fact, we usually learn how to love not by being around lovely, lovable, loving people, but by being around unlovely, unlovable, unloving people. We learn patience not by getting whatever we want right away, but by having to wait in lines, or wait for our birthday. The fruit of the Spirit grows best in difficulties.

Introduction to the Book of Daniel, part 1

Well, today we are starting a study of the Old Testament major prophet, the book of Daniel. You might wonder, “Why study the book of Daniel?”

In many corners of the world these days the climate of hostility hangs over any overt Christian faith commitment or any gathering of believers in Jesus Christ. Any kind of Christian commitment is now assumed to imply intolerance and often prompts reactions that range from a low-grade hostility and exclusion in the West to the vicious and murderous assaults on Christian believers in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq and elsewhere.

Such issues are not new. Christians have faced them ever since Nero’s lions, and even before that. Jews also have faced the same questions all throughout their history, most tragically sometimes enduring horrendous persecution from states claiming to be Christian. So, it is not surprising that the Bible gives a lot of attention to these questions.

The book of Daniel tackles the problem head on, both in the historical stories of Daniel and his friends, and in the prophetic visions he received. A major theme of the book is how people who worship the one, true, living God—the God of Israel—can live and work and survive in the midst of a nation, a culture, and a government that are hostile and sometimes life-threatening. What does it mean to live as believers in the midst of a non-Christian state and culture? How can we live “in the world” and yet not let the world own us and squeeze us into the shape of its own fallen values and assumptions? How can one stay faithful to God in the midst of a hostile culture in the midst life-threatening pressures to bow the knee to another god? Can God be trusted in such times?

The book was written to encourage believers to keep in mind that both the present and the future, no matter how terrifying they may become, rests in the faithful hands of the sovereign Lord God—and in that assurance to get on with the challenging task of living in God’s world for the sake of God’s mission. We need that encouragement even today.

We want to start today by examining the historical background of the book of Daniel. It’s always important to put the books of the Bible in their historical time and situation. It helps us dive deeper into the text instead of just skimming the surface.

The Assyrian Empire ruled and reigned over the Ancient Near East for nearly 300 years, beginning with an expansion under Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.) and ending with attacks from the Babylonians and Medes around the mid 7th century B.C.

Map 75 Assyrian Supremacy in the Seventh Century, Holman Bible Atlas, p. 151

After Solomon, the kingdom of Israel was divided. Jeroboam took ten tribes and they became known as the Northern Kingdom, leaving only Judah and Benjamin with Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.

Map 57 The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Holman Bible Atlas, p. 118

Shalmaneser V sacked Damascus, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C., taking those people captive and scattering them among the other conquered peoples of that campaign. The Southern Kingdom, ruled by the line of David, lasted another roughly 150 years. There were no good kings in all the history of the Northern Kingdom, but there were a few in the Southern Kingdom.
Josiah was the last good king of Judah. Under his leadership a religious reform took place (640 B.C. to 609 B.C.). That reform is described in the Bible in 2 Kings 22–23 and 2 Chronicles 34–35. The author of Kings describes the accession of Josiah to the throne at 8 years of age, and then some busy years of reform in his teenage years (age 16-18). So as far as teenagers go, he was a pretty good one! Even as a youth “he began to seek the God of his ancestor David” (2 Chron. 34:3)

It begins with the decision to renovate the Temple, which leads to the discovery of the Book of the Law. Josiah removed pagan altars and idols from the temple, destroyed rural sanctuaries, and took down other places of worship. He centralized worship in Jerusalem, having destroyed the temple at Bethel. He renewed the covenant with his people. Josiah restored the Passover after many years of neglect and he returned the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple.

Both books [2 Kings and 2 Chronicles] bookend the story of Josiah with the highest possible praise for this king. Unlike so many of the kings of Judah, Josiah “walked in the way of his father David, turning aside neither to the right or the left.” But he was even greater than David: “Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him” (2 Kings 22:2; 23:25; cf. 2 Chron. 34:2; 35:18).

However, Josiah met an early death at the hand of the Egyptian King Neco II. Neco was leading an Egyptian force northward to support a final Assyrian effort to recapture Haran. Josiah intercepted Neco near Megiddo, was mortally wounded, and eventually was buried in Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:28-30; 2 Chronicles 35:20-27).

Josiah Battles Neco

The consolidation of the Chaldean Dynasty at Babylon was completed by 609 B.C. The victory of Nabopolassar over the Assyrian and Egyptian armies made Babylon the new master. From there, the Babylonians began to invade southward into Syria and Palestine.

The prophet Habakkuk foresaw these events, declaring that God was “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own” (Hab. 1:6)

The ensuing power struggle between Babylon and Egypt caught Israel in a vice-grip and put the kings of Judah in a precarious position. To whom would they appeal for help?

With the death of Josiah in 609 B.C., Neco removed Jehoahaz, a son of Josiah chosen by the people of Judah, and replaced him with another son whose regal name was Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:30-35). Judah was for a short time an Egyptian vassal, and Jehoiakim reigned at the pleasure of Neco.
The Battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C. established Babylon as the dominant power all the way to the border of Egypt.

Jeremiah 46

In 604 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar campaigned in Palestine and conquered Ashkelon. Jehoiakim quickly switched his allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar. It was during this campaign that Nebuchadnezzar took hostages from Jerusalem, which included such men as Daniel and his three companions Hanniah, Mishael and Azariah and carried them to Babylon (Daniel 1:1-7) and the seventy years of captivity had begun (Daniel 9:1-2; Jeremiah 25:11; 2 Chronicles 36:17-21).

Jeremiah’s prophecy foretold that the “land shall be a desolation” and that the Jews would “serve the king of Babylon seventy years” (Jeremiah 25:11; compare 2 Chronicles 36:17-21). After the 70 years were completed in Babylon, God told them, He would cause them “to return to this place [Jerusalem]” (Jeremiah 29:10).

However, Jeremiah 29:4-7 also tells the Israelites who were exiled to Babylon to settle down, build homes, and work for the welfare of the city. The passage also instructs them to pray for the city’s prosperity, as their own prosperity would be tied to it. However, this wouldn’t be easy. Psalm 137 hauntingly records, “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!” (Psalm 137:1-6)

These people, who once experienced the favor of the true God, find themselves debased and enslaved by their enemy. Far from home. Paralyzed with fear. Their identity stripped from them. Their captors taunt them, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” And instead they wept, remembering Zion and their glory days there.

Some of these people would grow comfortable in Babylon and would forget Zion. Some would return, and some of them, like Daniel would remain as a faithful remnant in a foreign, anti-God culture.

But Jeremiah had prophesied that their captivity would last 70 years. This prophecy of punishment came upon the people of Judah because of their disobedience to God’s laws. As Jeremiah explained to the people of Judah, “3 For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened. 4 You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets,” (Jeremiah 25:3-4).

This prophecy of punishment came upon the people of Judah because of their disobedience to God’s laws. According to the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary, the 70 years was “the exact number of years of Sabbaths in four hundred and ninety years, the period from Saul to the Babylonian captivity.

James Tissot’s painting “The Flight of the Prisoners” illustrates Judah’s exile from Jerusalem.

Nebuchadnezzar also came against Jerusalem on two other occasions, first in 598 B.C. against Jehoiakim. Jerusalem was besieged and finally surrendered on March 16, 597 B.C. and Jehoiakim apparently died during the siege. He was replaced by Jehoiahin, who surrendered the city.
The Babylonians plundered the city, including the temple treasuries and deported Jehoiachin and his family along with other Jewish leaders (2 Kings 24:13-16), including the prophet Ezekiel.
After the surrender of Jerusalem in 597 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar appointed Mattaniah, the young uncle of Jehoiachin, as king of Judah and changed his name to Zedekiah. Zedekiah’s reign of 11 years was marked with anti-Babylonian conspiracy despite Jeremiah’s condemnation of this policy (Jere. 27-29).

Nebuchadnezzar’s Final Campaign against Judah

The final collapse of the southern kingdom of Judah as an independent nation came at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in 586 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar’s army besieged Jerusalem again from 588-586 B.C., and when the city’s supplies were completely depleted, Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed. Zedekiah fled towards Egypt but was captured and forced to witness the execution of his sons before being blinded and led away to Babylon in chains. A third deportation of Jews occurred at this time.

Judah Is Exiled to Babylon

Babylon: The Heart of the Empire

Daniel and his friends were taken to Babylon (Daniel 1:1-6). Babylon was the chief city of Babylonia, long the capital of the kingdom and empire that controlled the whole or a large part of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. This was the Neo-Babylonian empire, the latest rendition of Babylonian dynasties.

It was spiritually like walking into the mouth of the lion. Who is our lion-enemy? Living in Babylon was no vacation from home, as Psalm 137:1 reports: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” It was indeed a very sad time.

Although we are not sure of the origin of Babylon, its roots lie in Genesis 10:8-12.

8 Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord.” 10 The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah, and 12 Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

It appears to be mentioned in a historical inscription by Agu-kak-rime (about 1650 B.C.), who restored the shrines of Marduk and Sarpanit in the temple of E-sagila.

View of the Ruins of Babylon. (From Perrot and Chipiez, “Art in Chaldæa and Assyria.”)

The ruins which have been identified with ancient Babylon lie about 50 miles south of the city of Bagdad and on the east bank of the Euphrates.

Of course, most of us are familiar with the historical situation in Genesis 11, where the nations, which were supposed to ““Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1), instead migrated from the west and found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there, and said “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4).

God was against this, confused their language (Gen. 11:7) and “dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth” (11:8). That place was called Babel “because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth” (11:9). It is quite possible that the Nimrod mentioned in Genesis 10 took over this region and established his new kingdom.

After Nimrod established himself as a king and began conquering the surrounding lands (Genesis 10:10-11), he was sadly elevated to a godlike status by his descendants, worshipped simply as “Belus/Bel,” or the more common “Baal/Ba’al” (John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, notes on Genesis 10:6). He was also known as Marduk/Merodach, who is equated with “Bel” in Jeremiah 50:2. The tower became known as the tower of Bel, after “Belus Nimrod” or the “Temple Tower of Marduk”—another variant name for Nimrod.

From its beginning, as a center lifted up against God, Babel and Babylon became known as the anti-God city. In the Bible, Babel and Babylon are cities that represent human rebellion against God, idolatry, and oppression.

Later in its history the Assyrian king Sennacherib sacked Babylon around the same timeframe as King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah (around the seventh to eighth centuries BC). In fact, Sennacherib even tried conquering Jerusalem, which caused Hezekiah to cry out to God for help and resulted in God rescuing the city and sending Sennacherib back to Nineveh.

When the city of Babylon rebelled, Sennacherib had Babylon destroyed and then flooded. The following king of Assyria, Esarhaddon (one of Sennacherib’s sons), rebuilt Babylon back to its famed glory in his short 12-year reign.

Esarhaddon’s oldest son and heir died young. But in a strange twist, Esarhaddon gave the power of his throne, not to his son next in line for the throne (Shamash-shum-ukin), but instead to his younger son (Ashurbanipal). In a consolation attempt, Shamash-shum-ukin was given charge of Babylon itself, yet still under the authority of his younger brother. This, of course, had the initial makings of a rebellion (in case you didn’t notice).

Ashurbanipal of Assyria and Nineveh (the younger brother and now supreme ruler of the empire) defeated the city of Babylon (ruled by his older brother Shamash-shum-ukin) as it tried to revolt. After the fall of the Assyrians, Babylon was taken over by the Chaldeans (descendants of Heber) under Nabopolassar. This was the beginning of the Neo-Babylonian empire.