Bible Commentaries

The Burden of Babylon

Isaiah 13:2). Does that mean geographically high? Not necessarily. Here again we have need to commit ourselves to the genius of Biblical interpretation. The high mountain is really a bare mountain, not bearded with a forest, not tufted with a few trees, with which the banner might be confused, but a bare, bald, rock-like height, where nothing is to be seen but the uplifted banner of God. Truly, in Christian warfare we might learn something from military enterprise. Have we put our banner in the right place? It is not enough to have a banner, we must be careful where we plant it; it may be mistaken for a tree, it may get entangled among the branches of great oaks or cedars: it is not enough to have a light, we must put it on the candlestick, and set it on the table, and not cover it with a bushel so that the darkness may be unrelieved by its presence: it is not enough to have intelligence, we must properly display it, use it for the benefit of those who are not so intelligent as we are: it is not enough to have schools, we must set the doors wide open, and compel the ignorant to enter that they may return from the sanctuary of wisdom instructed and mentally fortified: it is not enough to have a church, we must open every door and every window, and bid all the people welcome—the more wicked, the more welcome; the more ignorant, if willing to learn, the more desired with the solicitude of sympathy and interest. "Shake the hand" ( Isaiah 13:2). Is that a common signification? Is it to be read as the words would be read to-day in describing social approaches and intercourses? The word is a military word, and it signifies an emphatic gesture of the hand, so that there may be no mistake as to the place indicated: the index-fingers seems long enough to reach the top of the mountain, and to point out the very locality which the banner is to occupy. In military exploits men are not afraid of emphasis: how much afraid we are of it in the Church! The children of this world are wiser than the children of light. When men are determined upon conquering a position with guns and swords, they go about it as if they meant to conquer. How is the Church going about the conversion of the world to-day? Hardly going about the work at all, mumbling where it should roar, giving vague directions where it should give specific indications. Carlyle has said we are lost in many enterprises for want of emphasis. And there may be emphasis which is not properly distributed. We may be earnest about little things instead of great things: "Thy servant was busy here and there," and the king passed by; not, Thy servant was slothful, slumbering, but was busy "here and there," and it is impossible for any man to be busy both here and there. That is the difficulty of misdirected effort, ill-spent vigour, and vain earnestness, that men do not keep to the line, they are not found constantly at the point: they are preaching in Genesis in the morning and in Timothy in the evening; therefore the Bible is scattered, broken up; its continuity is lost, its pressure ceases to be one of the master-forces in life. Yet do not the people love the emphatic gesture, the soldier who knows the gate he means to take? Do they not applaud him in their journals, and celebrate him in their songs? Is it to be Isaiah 13:2). The strongest gates are to be broken down. The great judgments of God do not seek little postern entrances; they are royal judgments, and must enter by royal ways. There are gates in parks and in castles which are only opened when the monarch approaches. God is the Monarch, and when he comes we must open the central gates—gates passed only by the nobles and the crowned ones of the land. "The nobles." Aristocracy, then, is of some antiquity; not by any possibility of such high antiquity as the common people. But the word "lord," as used in ordinary speech, is a word we would not willingly let die, if we could keep it to its first meanings. It comes by abbreviation from an old Saxon word, laford, and laford comes from an old Saxon verb which means to sustain, to succour. When our lords are succourers we will never violate their house, meet where they may. When the greatest are the kindest they can never be dispossessed. The time has come by the agency of Christian thought and sympathy when men must vindicate their claim to every primacy by their Isaiah 13:5): "They come from a far country, from the end of heaven." What a small solar system Isaiah had! He had great advantages in his vision of the Eternal; when he describes God we are touched by the majesty of his description; but when he talks about "a far country" and "from the end of heaven" we long for some little boy of our own common schools to teach him a little about geography. This is good, and most helpful to a right interpretation of the Bible; this brings us to its high point, to the things it means at all times and under all circumstances. This shows the fearlessness of truth; it will occupy any instrument, or use any medium we can supply; it attaches itself to the intelligence of the day, and uses that for purposes of enlightenment and progress. Who can tell where is the end of heaven? The destruction which is to fall upon Babylon is to come as a destruction from the Almighty. Here is a curious play upon words, which, as the old commentators would say, cannot be Englished. The word "Almighty" here means "the destroyer." In the original language it is almost a pun, a play upon syllables and tones, "it shall come as a destruction from the destroyer." How seldom is the word "Almighty" used in connection with the tender aspects of the divine nature; power would always seem to have been associated with thoughts of judgment, penalty, sovereignty of a stern and exacting kind. In this sense the word is found eight times in the Pentateuch, and twenty-three times in the Book of Job alone. All we can do with a prophecy of this kind is to find out its central principle, which belongs to all ages and to all countries. The prophecy brings God before us as the God of nations. That is a thought which we seldom realise. We fix our unit in the individual. So does God, but he also uses the unit as descriptive of a totality. Babylon is a unit; yea, Assyria, of which Babylon was part—the haughty capital—is a unit; so Media, Egypt, Damascus, Syria. Always understand what the unit is that God is speaking about—sometimes an individual, sometimes a country, sometimes a world, sometimes the universe. A unit is more than one. It is one literally, but there may be a unit of simplicity and a unit of complexity. God handles the nations as single entities: Babylon counts one, Nineveh counts one, every nation is a one; they are millions in the detail, but God lifts up the nation in its unity, examines it, judges it, sentences it, in its unity. Are we not accustomed to the same method of dealing with great questions? Do we not invest a nation with a character? How would the nation of the Jews have been described in olden times? How would the health of England or America or any other country be now stated? As if the country were but one individual. Who hestitates to speak about the function of a whole people, assigning one function to the Roman character, and a totally distinct function to the Greek instinct and culture? We ourselves, therefore, speak as God speaks of nations in their unity. A very mysterious thought this, and full of urgent instruction and suggestiveness. A metropolis may be pronounced healthy, as we have already seen, when there are hundreds of dying men in it. So there are two standards of judgment, or two views and aspects, under which questions may be considered. Say, for example, London is the healthiest city in the empire. That might be met by the assurance that indisputable statistics prove that in London at the very time of the declaration of its healthfulness there are five thousand men whose lives are despaired of. Yet the statement regarding the sanitary condition of the metropolis may be perfectly right. So we speak of England, or some other country, being honest, inspired by a spirit of equity, or honour, or courage. When a country with such a character issues a loan, all the eagles of the earth come down upon it at once. Why? Because of the character which lies behind. The word is the bond. If a country with a great character has made a proposal, the proposal will be carried out, come what may. Whoever, therefore, helps the improvement of individual character, helps the elevation of all the best national characteristics. To work for a child is to work for the nation; to work in the Sunday-school is to amend the national reputation. Thus we operate together, and co-operate with God, and the great purpose is to turn the burden into a blessing.

God is also represented as the destroyer of nations—"Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt" ( Isaiah 13:7). How terrible is this! But this is not the worst. There is a purposed cruelty which the Almighty infuses into his judgments when he has to deal with a people like the cities of Babylon; he says: "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it" ( Isaiah 13:9). The word "cruelty" is not withheld. It may startle us and shock us until we come to the explanatory word, which is also to be found in the document. We must not stop at the adjective, we must go in quest of the substantive which has brought it into relation, and which it either qualifies or is explained by. Our inquiry must be: On whom will God visit a cruel judgment? And if the answer Isaiah 13:19-22).

You remember Milton's description of what happened at the time of the flood: "And in their palaces, where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelped and stabled." "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Oh, Babylon—Pride—where art thou when touched from above? The withering fire passes through all pomp until it burns the hidden root. All this we may say is historical and local. On the other hand, all this is moral and suggestive. This process may take place in the Babylon of the mind. The greatest mind is only safe whilst it worships. The most magnificent intellectual temple is only secure from the judgment and whirlwind of heaven in proportion as its altar is defended from the approach of every unworthy suppliant. If we hand over God's altar, whether mental or ecclesiastical, to wrong custodians, or devote either to forbidden purposes, then make way for God's judgments: wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and the houses that were full of beauty and colour and charm shall be full of doleful creatures; and the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces. This may happen to any one of us. Beware of arrogancy, pride, worldliness, self-sufficiency; beware of the betrayal of trusts: nature will Isaiah 14:10-14).

Now we see the quantity with which God had to deal, and also the justice of his judgment and the wisdom of the very cruelty which plagued an arrogancy which nothing else could touch. You do not appease a tiger by sprinkling scented water upon his open mouth. You must deal with cases as you find them, taking a complete measure of them, and understanding all the forces in them and exercised by them; and so judged it will be found that God, whilst a consuming fire, is also a God of love. The eye that looked upon the Egyptians struck off the iron wheels of their chariots: that same eye, looked at from the position occupied by Israel, made morning and warmth and comfort and security infinite. God is to us what we are to God: to the froward he will show himself froward; to the good he will show himself good. This is the abiding and the unchangeable law. If we were wise with the superior—yea, the supreme wisdom—we should consider that the first thing to be done is to set ourselves in a right relation to God; then all the other relations will fall into their proper place. A quaint old critic has said that if the treble string of the viol be right, he knows that the rest will be right: the bass seldom gets wrong; he looks for the treble string. Out of that we may gather some lessons of a spiritual kind. Look for the religious line in a man's character—for his veneration, his reverence, his sense of moral dignity and moral responsibility; and if his heart be right toward God he may have his little eccentricities and vanities, but all these will sink into nothingness before the power that can pray, and before the passion that can love.

Prayer

Almighty God, thou hast promised that death shall be swallowed up in victory. Thou canst not bear death. There is no death in God. The wages of sin is death: but thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thy Son hath abolished death, obliterated it, wiped it out, turned it into nothingness. The broad river is narrow now; men need not pass through it, they can step over it. How near is heaven! how close at hand the invisible! how all but within hand-reach all that we call heaven! We bless thee that in this little life we have hope of immortality. Corruption is not a constant companion. We look for the Lord Jesus, who shall change our common body and make it like unto his own glorious body; then when our citizenship in heaven is completed we shall walk with the saints in light, and do all thy will without reluctance and without weariness. These great anticipations make us strong even now, so that the valley is as a mountain, and the rough place as a road smoothed by God. Such are the miracles thou dost work in our consciousness and our experience, that we have no apprehension of time and space and sense and imprisonment and limitation, but are oftentimes with thy very self in the innermost, uppermost places, where the light never fades. We bless thee for all men who have gone down into the depths valiantly, who have sung in the deep places the song of the redeemed, and who have sent us messages in whispers that the rod and the staff of God can comfort the lone traveller in the darkest valley. This is enough. We are often affrighted, we carry our anticipated death like a burden and die many deaths even whilst we live; but for all sweet messages, all comforting assurances, all inspiring words, all exceeding great and precious promises, we thank God, for they are God's word only. Grant us strength that we may do thy will; when we have accomplished thy purpose in our life upon the earth make the last time brief, and let us see our Lord, if it please thee, even with somewhat of suddenness. We pray always at the Cross. It is the altar on which no prayer dies, but every prayer is multiplied a thousandfold because of the pleading blood, the infinite, the eloquent Sacrifice. Amen.