A, Moody Stuart 
 
 The Fall of Babylon 
 
 
 Pgg^lBft 
 
 
B934-9 
 
 .B559 
 
".<•: 
 
 THE FALL OF BABYLON 
 
 ITS PREDICTION NOT ANONYMOUS. 
 
 A. MOODY STUART, D.D. 
 
 lEtiintiurfjf) : 
 
 JOHN MACLAREN & SON, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 LONDON : JAMES NISBET & CO. 
 
 GLASGOW : DAVID BRYCE & SON. 
 
 1880. 
 
 I 
 

THE FALL OF BABYLON: 
 
 ITS PREDICTION NOT ANONYMOUS. 
 
 BY 
 
 A. MOODY STUART, D.D. 
 
 JOHN MACLAREN & SON, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 LONDON : JAMES NISBET & CO. 
 
 GLASGOW: DAVID BRYCE & SON. 
 
 1880. 
 
\J 
 
 EDINBURGH : 
 
 PRINTED BY LORIMER AND GILLIES, 
 
 31 ST. ANDRE\V[SQUARE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. pjlOB 
 
 The Fall of Babylon, ...... 5 
 
 I. The Conjecture that Anonymous Prophets in Babylon Fore- 
 told ITS Fall, ....... 7 
 
 II. The Eespectful Loyalty of the known Exile Prophets to 
 
 THE Chaldean Kings, ...... 14 
 
 III. The Unsparing Denunciations of Babylon by the Older 
 
 Prophets in Jerusalem, ...... 20 
 
 IV. The Infatuation of Publishing such Threats in Babylon, and 
 
 THE Culpability of Publishing them Anonymously, . 24 
 
THE FALL OF BABYLON. 
 
 [^ ABYLON, " the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency," after all 
 its other power has long ceased, still retains the power of 
 attracting an unfailing interest on account of the extremes of its 
 history in its ancient greatness and its present desolation. The 
 restoration of " The Golden City," with its hundred gates of solid 
 brass, with its walls three hundred and fifty feet in height and 
 more than eighty in breadth, with its temple and tower of Belus, 
 with its magnificent palace and marvellous gardens, was designed 
 by Alexander the Great ; but the attempt was suddenly arrested 
 by his death, and its desolate site has for long ages been the 
 habitation of the " wild beast of the desert, and of doleful creatures." 
 To the Christian community, the chief interest in the extreme 
 contrast of the past and the present lies in the prophecies that fore- 
 told the doom of Babylon as the great enemy of Israel, and the 
 grand centre of ancient heathenism with its idolatry, sensuality, 
 and cruelty. 
 
 These prophecies have been received and valued by the Jewish 
 nation and the Christian Church as amongst the greatest predic- 
 tions in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the most remarkable attestations 
 to the truth of the Word of the Lord, which endureth for ever ; 
 and their well-known authors, living in Jerusalem, have been 
 honoured as bearing the highest names among the Hebrew pro- 
 
6 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 phets. But for nearly a hundred years the truth of the received 
 dates and authors has been disputed by the school of critics which 
 claims to be specially scientific. Their conjecture is that the 
 writers of the prophecies are anonymous, that the date is toward 
 the close of the Exile, and the place in Babylon, in the city or the 
 province or the kingdom. 
 
 In the following pages it will be our endeavour to show that 
 this conjecture, which is founded on no historical fact, is contrary 
 to the Scriptures ; is inconsistent with the known history of the 
 period; is incompatible with obedience to the Divine command, 
 and with a regard for their own lives on the part of the exiles ; 
 and rests on a moral contradiction by supposing a good man 
 capable of exposing the elders of Israel to a cruel death by con- 
 cealing his own name whilst he issues threats of destruction 
 against the King of Babylon, who holds them in his grasp. 
 
Conjecture of its Anonymous Prediction.^ 
 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CONJECTURE THAT ANONYMOUS PROPHETS 
 IN BABYLON FORETOLD ITS FALL. 
 
 jlTlN this part of our subject we shall notice, first, the origin and 
 (^ nature of the conjecture, and next the conjecture itself, 
 
 1. Our present argument is neither with blasphemers, like 
 Thomas Payne, who speaks of Isaiah and Jeremiah as " impostors 
 and liars," nor with extreme rationalists, who hold their prophecies 
 to be " predictions after the event ; " but with critics who believe 
 that the fall of Babylon was really predicted, but not by the 
 prophets named in the Bible. Of these critics there are two 
 classes, both of whom are embraced in our argument, for both 
 more or less deny that Scriptural prophecy includes the detailed 
 prediction of distant events. The critics of one class hold that the 
 foresight, although limited, is directly due to Divine inspiration ; 
 and the others hold that it is a quickened perception of approaching 
 events, through a deep moral persuasion of God's righteous govern- 
 ment combined with intellectual power. As regards personal 
 belief, we gladly acknowledge the great difference between the 
 recognition and the denial of Divine inspiration in the predictions ; 
 but in other respects these critics may be regarded as belonging 
 to one class, for their views of prophecy nearly agree. 
 
 There is no sound reason for limiting to purely Messianic pro- 
 phecies the great Scriptural rule of prophetic interpretation that 
 the prophets " searched what or what manner of time the Spirit of 
 Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand 
 the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow ; unto whom 
 
8 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 it jwas revealed that, not unto themselves, but unto us they did 
 minister the things which are now reported unto you." The 
 principle now maintained, though partially true, is combined with 
 destructive error. It is held by many that the great truth of a 
 divine Deliverance for men is embodied more or less clearly in all 
 the Scriptures ; but that Scriptural prophecy takes its rise in the 
 circumstances, the sins, and the wants of the time; that it is 
 addressed to the men of the existing generation ; and that, while 
 predicting the sure consequences of right and wrong, it does not 
 embrace the details of distant and complicated events. 
 
 This principle of interpretation, as applied by the critics, goes 
 far to overthrow the most important prophecies in the Scriptures, 
 The dates and authors of nearly all the great prophecies in the 
 Old Testament are altered so as to change their character com- 
 pletely. Prophecy is assigned to a time so near to its fulfilment 
 that the critic who accepts and the critic who denies its super- 
 natural character, may be very nearly or quite agreed regarding its 
 date, its author, and all the circumstances in which it was 
 delivered ; while one ascribes its origin to Divine inspiration, 
 and the other to the highest human sagacity. They are of 
 one accord in refusing to it so distant a date as would be accepted 
 by all as the proof of a foresight altogether and conspicuously 
 supernatural. 
 
 The exile theory of the prophecies against Babylon lies near the 
 source of what is called modem thought in Biblical researches. 
 It took an early place as a great historical conjecture for the over- 
 throw of what are now slighted as traditional opinions ; and has 
 nearly ceased to be discussed by the school of higher critics, being 
 held by them as proved. It is, therefore, one of the fairest of all 
 questions by which to test the value of the conclusions at which 
 the new Biblical criticism has arrived, in so far as it would alter 
 the authors and dates of the books of the Old Testament. 
 
 Biblical criticism is of the highest value in its own sphere ; it 
 has urgent and daily increasing claims on all of us in the ministry, 
 
Conjecture of its Anonymous Prediction. 9 
 
 and on all our students, and the Church is deeply indebted to the 
 able scholars who have made it the business of their lives. But 
 when it leaves its proper ground, and roams into historical con- 
 jecture, it is apt to be irrational in the extreme, and to become as 
 thoroughly unscientific as it is evidently unhistorical. The severe 
 and minute study of Biblical critics is not favourable to the 
 reasoning powers, because its almost irrepressible tendency is to 
 hang very weighty conclusions on very slender threads; and 
 although a study so laborious might be expected to work as a 
 check on the excesses of fancy, few classes of men are more liable 
 to be carried away with groundless conjectures. They appear as if 
 they held that whatever is not supernatural may therefore be 
 natural and probable ; and in their zeal to avoid the miraculous, 
 they are apt to frame supposititious histories, with little respect 
 for historical likelihood, and with no regard whatever for the 
 barrier of moral impossibility. The mistake of a single author 
 poring over a subject till he starts some impossible theory out of 
 it, is a snare into which any writer may fall; but criticism is 
 discredited when such theories are adopted and made their own by 
 a school of critics. 
 
 The well known prophets in Babylon who ventured at an early 
 period of the exile to foretell a speedy restoration for Israel, 
 brought upon themselves a painful death at the hands of the 
 haughty king, who effectually intercepted the expected return in 
 their own case by burning them in the fire — a favourite form of 
 punishment with the Chaldean monarch. This prompt severity 
 made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of the captives ; 
 and ought to have had weight enough with their modern critics to 
 dissuade them from* finding for the great Scriptural prophecies 
 against Babylon a later but equally Babylonian origin, which 
 would certainly have added a second fiery roll of sufferers near 
 the close of the captivity. 
 
 But the predictions of Jeremiah against Babylon were written 
 nearly seventy years and those of Isaiah at least one hundred and 
 
 a2 
 
.lo The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 seventy before the great event. Prophecies at once so distant and 
 so detailed many critics hold to be impossible, and others to be in 
 the highest degree improbable ; and they have conceived for them 
 this unknown Babylonian source, which they present to us as a 
 reasonable and likely origin for these writings. 
 
 It is most reasonable to believe that He who knoweth the end 
 from the beginning should have inspired His chosen prophets to 
 foretell clearly and at large the ruin of Babylon one or two 
 centuries before its fall. The prediction of its capture by Cyrus 
 more than a century before his birth cannot be regarded as so 
 marvellous as the central institution of Israel, the giving of the 
 law on Mount Sinai. Receiving the Bible as the Word of God, our 
 stand is on the ground that its prophecies are to be received as 
 altogether true, however distant their indicated time, and however 
 improbable the predicted event. But when critics reject the Scrip- 
 tural dates and authors of great prophecies, we are entitled to 
 demand that their own account of their date and authorship shall 
 be within the limits of what is historically probable and morally 
 possible ; and if the origin assigned by them is shown to be 
 impossible, then even on their own ground they have laboured in 
 vain to overthrow the received date and authorship. 
 
 2. In stating more fully the conjecture itself, we notice first the 
 prediction of the fall of Babylon as given in the Bible, and then 
 as it is altered by the critics. 
 
 (1.) The, fall of Babylon as ^predicted in the Bible. 
 
 " The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see : 
 
 "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, 
 shall be as when God overtlirew Sodom and Gomorrah " (Isa. xiii. 1, 19). 
 
 " Babylon is fallen, is fallen ; and all the graven images of her gods he hath 
 broken unto the ground" (Isa. xxi. 9). 
 
 " Come down, and sit in the dust, virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the 
 ground : there is no throne. ... Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, 
 daughter of the Chaldeans : for thou shalt no more be called. The lady of 
 kingdoms" (Isa. xlvii. 1, 5). 
 
 *' The word that the Lord spake against Babylon and against the land of the 
 Chaldeans by Jeremiah the prophet : 
 
Conjecture of its Anonymous Prediction. 1 1 
 
 " Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be 
 wholly desolate : every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss 
 at all her plagues'' (Jer. 1. 1, 13). 
 
 (2.) The authors and dates of the predictions as altered by the 
 modern critics. 
 
 In the dates assigned to these prophecies there is a general and 
 pretty close agreement among the scientific critics, if we omit those 
 who regard some of them as written after the taking of the city, or 
 those who take the prophecy in the twenty-first chapter, " Babylon 
 is fallen, is fallen," to be the description of an eye-witness who 
 wrote it down while the capture was progressing to its completion. 
 Excluding such extremes, the general date usually assigned is in 
 the last decade of the Exile ; and the specific date of each of the 
 prophecies is sometimes conjectured with great minuteness, ranging 
 from several years before to very close upon the event. 
 ^ As regards the authors of these prophecies, the general opinion 
 of the critics is that no name whatever can be attached to 
 them. In his translation of the Prophets, Professor Reuss of 
 Strasbourg has several sections which he entitles "Anonymes." 
 Under this title he classes about thirty-six chapters, or more than 
 the half of the Prophecies of Isaiah, and two chapters of Jeremiah. 
 Ewald, and other critics of the same school, hold similar views. 
 The prophecies with which we are at present more immediately 
 concerned are those against Babylon in the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
 twenty-first, and last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, and the 
 fifty-first and fifty-second of Jeremiah, all of which they hold to be 
 anonymous, and to have been written near the close of the exile 
 after Cyrus had begun his career of conquest. 
 
 The ascription of these predictions to prophets in Babylon 
 shortly before its fall is a suggestion that calls for no critical know- 
 ledge or acuteness, and would most readily occur to any reader 
 ;who was disposed to question the magnitude of prophecy. But 
 criticism ought not to have accepted the conjecture without 
 thoroughly sifting its soundness and its value, 
 
1 2 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 The conception that the writers of these prophecies are unknown, 
 and that they lived in Babylon, directly contradicts the Scriptures. 
 The latter half of Isaiah equally with the first is assigned to tha.t 
 prophet in the Old Testament, and is constantly cited under 
 his name in the New ; and the prophecies in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth chapters are not only included in the book of Isaiah, 
 but are expressly entitled, " The burden of Babylon, w^hich Isaiah 
 the son of Amoz did see." 
 
 The prophecy in the fiftieth and fifty-first chapters of Jeremiah 
 is introduced in the first verse with the words, " The word that the 
 Lord spake against Babylon, and against the land of the Chaldeans, 
 by Jeremiah the prophet." After the close of the prophecy we 
 read, " So Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come 
 upon Babylon, even all these words that are written against 
 Babylon. And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to 
 Babylon, and shalt see, and shalt read all these words ; then shalt 
 thou say, Lord, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, 
 that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it 
 shall be desolate for ever. And it shall be, when thou hast made 
 an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and 
 cast it into the midst of Euphrates : and thou shalt say, Thus shall 
 Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring 
 upon her : and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of 
 Jeremiah " (vers. 60-64). 
 
 Four times this prophecy is expressly ascribed to Jeremiah, and 
 not merely in the title, but in the narrative ; but notwithstanding 
 the clear testimony of Scripture, Kuenen, Keuss, and other critics, 
 some with more and others with less hesitation, ascribe it to an 
 anonymous exile in Babylon. Ewald calls it " the earliest example 
 of a piece written in the name of one of Israel's older prophets ; " 
 and Professsor Oort, taking the same ground, writes with profane 
 boldness, as if he had been in Babylon and had seen it all : 
 " One of the exiles composed an elaborate oracle on the humili- 
 ation which the Chaldean gods and Babylon itself would endure 
 
Conjecture of its Anonymous Prediction. 1 3 
 
 because Nebuchadnezzar had shattered Israel. The writer put this 
 prediction into the mouth of Jeremiah, and declared that this man 
 of God wrote it during the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign." 
 This view makes the whole prophecy a deliberate forgery, and not 
 only worthless but detestable. 
 
 More reverent critics satisfy themselves with calling the writer 
 anonymous ; an affirmation directly contrary to the Bible, which 
 states repeatedly that the writer was Jeremiah. A recognition of 
 that prophet as the author is incompatible with any theory that 
 would limit such predictions to nearly approaching events. But to 
 call the prophecy anonymous is a misapplication of language, for 
 its author could not be named either more expressly or more fully ; 
 and if it was not written by Jeremiah, the circumstantial narrative 
 of its origin and history cannot have been a mistake, but is a 
 deliberate falsehood embodied in the sacred writings. 
 
 For the existence of such anonymous prophets, either one or 
 several, in Babylon during the exile there is not the faintest trace 
 of historical proof, either as regards the prophets themselves, or 
 the effect of their writings on the people at the time, or on the 
 memories of the nation. Confessedly there is no such evidence 
 outside the Bible ; and the Bible itself, as we have seen, gives no 
 ground and leaves no room for the supposition. The Scriptural 
 prophecies against Babylon, far from being nameless, are expressly 
 assigned to two of the greatest names in the roll of the prophets, 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah ; and there is not the slightest intimation of 
 the existence of a single anonymous prophet in Babylon. At the 
 beginning of the exile there were false prophets there ; and their 
 names are not only recorded, but were handed down with a note 
 of infamy in the lips of the exiles. In the period of Exile there 
 lived two great prophets in Babylon, Ezekiel and Daniel, one in 
 the city, and the other in the kingdom ; their names are attached 
 to their prophecies, and have come down to us among the great 
 prophets of Scripture. Of anonymous prophets in Babylon, either 
 one or more, either true or false, Scripture acknowledges none. 
 
14 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE RESPECTFUL LOYALTY OF THE KNOWN EXILE 
 PROPHETS TO THE CHALDEAN KINGS. 
 
 TiX'^THEN we are asked to believe in supposititious prophets of 
 JV^» whom we have no record in Scripture and no tradition 
 out of it, our first recourse is to the known prophets of the period, 
 that by comparing them together we may ascertain if the new 
 conception is consistent with history and in so far worthy of con- 
 sideration, or if it is a hasty and crude idea with no verisimilitude 
 to commend it. 
 
 Now, in striking: contrast to the character and conduct of the 
 fictitious prophets of the critics, one of the most deeply marked 
 features of the historical prophets in Babylon is their fidelity to 
 the Chaldean kings. The exiles in Babylon and the prophets who 
 lived amongst them found themselves placed under a very peculiar 
 dispensation of Divine providence. They were exiled not only 
 from their own land, but from the house of their God and His con- 
 secrated dwelling in the earth ; and although the holy temple was 
 now lying desolate, its stones were dear to them, not merely for 
 the memories of the past, but for the hopes of the future, when it 
 should be raised again from its ruins. Daniel in Babylon prayed 
 with his windows open towards Jerusalem. The captives of Judah 
 had from the beginning of their exile the Divine promise of a sure 
 return to their own land after the lapse of seventy years ; and they 
 refused to sing in the land of their bondage the joyful songs of the 
 Lord's house, counting it better for their tongue to cleave to the 
 roof of their mouth than for. them to forget Jerusalem. It was the 
 
Loyalty of the Exile Prophets. 15 
 
 Lord's will that they should never reckon themselves at home in 
 Babylon; but always remain strangers, even as the followers of 
 Christ are now pilgrims in the earth, looking for their own city in 
 the better country above. 
 
 But while the Jews were, therefore, never to intermingle and 
 unite with the Chaldeans, they were expressly commanded to seek 
 the peace of Babylon, to give their sons and their daughters in 
 marriage, to build houses and dwell in them, to plant gardens 
 and eat the fruit of them, in that vast city within whose walls the 
 reaper " handled the sickle in the time of harvest." They were 
 to be in all respects peaceful, dutiful, and loyal subjects of the 
 kingdom in which they were captives ; not to conspire against it 
 or make efforts for its overthrow, but to promote its welfare and 
 pray for its safety. 
 
 This double attitude of intense affection for their own land and 
 of true loyalty to the land of their exile was very peculiar ; yet the 
 ordained duty to both was plain and unmistakable, and its fulfil- 
 ment is clearly brought out in the exiles with whose history we 
 are best acquainted, Daniel and his three companions, and the 
 prophet Ezekiel. 
 
 1. TliQ Book of Daniel. — The historical truth of this book is 
 denied by most of the critics who hold that the prophecies of 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah against Babylon are not authentic, and to any 
 argument derived from it they will attach no weight ; but for 
 those who duly reverence all the Holy Scriptures, it is interesting 
 to note the beautiful consistency and harmony of the whole. 
 
 Daniel and his friends in exile accept of high offices in the 
 government of the Chaldean kingdom. Against the three noble 
 youths who were set over the province of Babylon their enemies 
 can bring no charge of unfaithfulness or disloyalty, and they can 
 only accuse them of supreme devotion to the living God. In 
 Daniel the most steadfast fidelity to his God and his country 
 is combined with the most faithful loyalty to the King of Babylon. 
 "When he is called to interpret Nebuchadnezzar's dream, he opens 
 
1 6 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 the interpretation of the Divine judgment that is to fall upon him 
 with the dutiful and kindly preface : " My lord, the dream be to 
 them that hate thee, and the interpretation thereof to thine 
 enemies;" and concludes it with a respectful counsel of repent- 
 ance, " if it might be a lengthening of his tranquillity." 
 
 At Belshazzar's feast, while the revelry is resounding through the 
 palace, the enemy is already stealing into the city by the bed of 
 the river ; but even in that last night of the Chaldean kingdom, it 
 is at the king's command, and not from his own impulse, that 
 Daniel interprets the mysterious handwriting on the wall. He 
 boldly reproves the king for the sins that had provoked the 
 Most High to stretch out the hand that wi'ote his doom over 
 against the candlestick that lighted the banquet hall ; but he 
 neither invokes the Divine vengeance on Babylon, nor afterwards 
 refuses the high honours with which the king proceeds to invest 
 him. 
 
 In the sequel, when the Chaldean dominion has been quite over- 
 thrown, and when he understands, by the Sacred Books, that the 
 time has come for the restoration of Zion, he obeys the Lord's 
 command by Jeremiah : " Then shall ye go and pray unto me, and 
 I will hearken unto you, and I will turn away your captivity ; " 
 and he sets himself to seek God by prayer and supplication for the 
 desired deliverance. But he uses no other means except prayer 
 when God's full time had come ; and during the whole Chaldean 
 dominion he never denounces the government under which he lived, 
 and which he served for seventy years. 
 
 2. The Book of Ezehiel. — The other Babylonian prophet, Ezekiel, 
 is acknowledged by all the critics, however extreme, as one of the 
 exiles ; and of all the exiles the prophet on the banks of the Chebar 
 was best entitled to claim toleration in foretelling the fall of the 
 power under which he dwelt, because in the earlier years of his 
 own captivity he had faithfully warned his countrymen that 
 Jerusalem would be delivered into the hands of the Chaldeans. 
 But as well after the taking of the city as before it, we find in him 
 
Loyalty of the Exile Prophets. 1 7 
 
 the very same attitude as in Daniel toward Israel and toward 
 Babylon ; of ardent attachment to his land and to his people, and 
 of the most perfect loyalty to the government under which he 
 lives as a captive. 
 
 The delicate handling of prophetic truth, as affecting this double 
 relation, is brought out in a most remarkable manner in the thirty- 
 sixth chapter of his prophecies. The prophet has uttered his 
 oracles against the heathen nations, against Moab and Ammon, 
 against Tyre and Sidon, against Philistia, Edom, and Egypt. 
 Babylon alone has been omitted, and it may be said not unnatur- 
 ally hitherto, because Babylon is the instrument of Divine judgment 
 against these seven nations. But the prophecy in the thirty-sixth 
 chapter is for the land of Israel, which is now desolate, and has 
 been laid waste for years under the destroying sway of Babylon. 
 This prophecy contains a promise of a new heart and other 
 promises for Israel, that stretch onward past our own time ; but its 
 predictions are very specific on the return of the people, the re- 
 building of the cities, and the restoration of the wastes : " The 
 enemy hath said against you, Aha, even the ancient high places 
 are our's in possession. . . . But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye 
 shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people 
 of Israel ; for they are at hand to come. . . . And ye shall dwell 
 in the land that I gave to your fathers " (vers. 2, 8, 28). For this 
 end the one great and essential event is the breaking of the yoke 
 of Babylon, to set Israel at liberty to return to his own land ; yet 
 the prophet, speaking as he is moved by the Holy Ghost, never 
 speaks of Babylon, but carefully avoids the mention of the name, 
 even when referring to the enemies from whom Israel is to be 
 delivered : " Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken 
 against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which 
 have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all 
 their heart. ... I will take you from among the heathen, and 
 gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your 
 own land " (vers. 5, 24). Idumea and Egypt, and all heathen 
 
iS The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 countries together, did not stand in the way of Israel's restoration 
 like Babylon alone, whose iron yoke it was that must be broken to 
 set Israel free ; and, apart from the immediate moving of the Holy 
 Spirit, no motives can be assigned for the very remarkable, and it 
 would almost have seemed impossible omission, except obedience 
 to the Divine command to pray for the peace of that city, and 
 desire for the safety of his countrymen by not provoking the anger 
 of the king who held them in his grasp. It is the Lord Himself 
 who speaks through the lips of the prophet, and his mind is one ; 
 to deliver Israel into the power of Babylon, to subject them as 
 loyal subjects under that dominion, and to save them in the end 
 by his own right arm alone in answer to their prayers. So Ezekiel 
 concludes his prophecy with the words : " I will yet for this be 
 enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them." 
 
 The invocations of Divine vengeance on Babylon, which conclude 
 the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, form no exception to the 
 submissive attitude enjoined on the exiles and accepted by them, 
 because the Psalm was evidently written after the release of the 
 captives. On returning to Jerusalem they rehearse their past 
 condition when they sat and wept by the rivers of Babylon ; but 
 the city was not destroyed when it was taken by Cyrus, and as 
 before the Exile, so now after it, the still unfulfilled judgments are 
 prophetically announced against Babylon (Is.xiii.18; Ps.cxxxvii.8).* 
 
 * " There can be no doubt whatever as to the time when this Psalm was written. It 
 expresses the feelings of an exile who has but just returned from the land of his cap- 
 tivity. In all probability the writer was a Levite, who was one of the first, as soon as 
 the edict of Cyrus was published, to return to Jerusalem. He is again in his own land. 
 He sees again the old familiar scenes. Yet the change is terrible : the spoiler has 
 been in his home, his vines and his fig-trees have been cut down, the house of his God 
 is a heap of ruins. He takes his harp, the companion of his exile, the cherished relic 
 of happier days, — the harp which he could not string at the bidding of his conquerors by 
 the waters of Babylon ; and now with faltering hand he sweeps the strings, first in low 
 plaintive melancholy cadence pouring out his griefs, and then with a loud rush of wild 
 and strong music, answering to the wild and strong numbers of his verse, he raises the 
 psean of vengeance over his foes." — PEROWJfE. 
 
 " That the Psalm was sung after the return from Babylon is evident from the words 
 in ver. 1-3, ' we sat, we wept.' It was at the second capture by Parius Hj'staspes, 
 eighteen years after the first, that Babylon's hundred gates were laid waste and her 
 lofty walls prostrated. It is to this event that the statement (v. 8) must refer ; for it 
 is this properly that formed the first and the last destruction. The Divine retributive 
 righteousness is taught, precisely as here, by our Lord in Matt. vii. 2 : ' With what 
 measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.' " — Hengstenberg. 
 
Loyalty of the Exile Prophets. 19 
 
 Along with Daniel and Ezekiel there were two other prophets 
 in the exile ; who began, indeed, to prophesy only after the close of 
 the captivity, but one of whom, Haggai, has been reasonably sup- 
 posed to have seen " the glory of the first house," while the other, 
 Zechariah, was also living in Babylon. If the latter half of Isaiali 
 was written there, one of them might have been the author, 
 so far as the time is concerned, and his name would have given 
 authority to the predictions. Yet the writing of both is so different 
 from this latter portion of Isaiah, that no critic assigns it to 
 either. The evidence from these two prophets thus agrees with 
 that of the other two, and is quite against an exile origin for Isaiah. 
 
 The imaginary discovery of the critics of an exile prophet in 
 Babylon, who wrote like the prince of the prophets in Jerusalem, 
 or rather their fanciful supposition in the failure of any discovery, 
 is thus proved to be contrary to all the historical facts of the 
 period. There is no historical likelihood that the Babylonian exile 
 produced any prophet like Isaiah ; and there is ample proof that 
 if such a prophet had been raised up, it would have been no part 
 of his Divine commission to denounce the King of Babylon, but only 
 to speak of Israel's restoration like the exiled prophet Ezekiel. 
 
 In referring to Daniel we ought to have noted that in the 
 latter half of the book, in the seventh and eighth chapters, 
 there is the record of two visions which the prophet saw in 
 the reign of Belshazzar, after Cyrus had entered on his course. 
 The terms of the first vision are more general. In the 
 second there is an express mention of the Median and Persian 
 dominion, and likewise of the Grecian ; and throughout the pro- 
 phecy we find the same marked reserve as in Ezekiel regarding 
 Babylon, which is never named nor its destruction referred to, 
 although the two-horned ram of Media and Persia is represented 
 as conquering with irresistible power. In both the great Pro- 
 phets of the Exile there is a striking harmony of silence on the 
 doom of Babylon even when foretelling great events which involved 
 its fall. 
 
ao The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE UNSPARING DENUNCIATIONS OF THE CHAL- 
 DEAN KINGS BY THE OLDER PROPHETS IN 
 JERUSALEM. 
 
 IDE by side with the historical prophets of the Exile, Daniel 
 and Ezekiel, let us look at the prophecies which the critics 
 on their own exclusive authority allege to have been pub- 
 lished in Babylon. It is impossible to conceive a greater contrast 
 than we find between the true and the fictitious predictions of 
 the Exile ; between the prophecies actually given by the God of 
 Israel to His exiled servants, and the older prophecies theoretically 
 assigned to them by the critics ; the assiduous avoiding of offence 
 to the rulers in the first, and the severe and accumulated denun- 
 ciation of those rulers in the second. 
 
 These prophecies in addressing Babylon and its king contain 
 no suppliant appeals for mercy to the captives, and no calm 
 remonstrance with the great monarch in whose power they are. 
 In accosting Israel they summon them by no call to aid in their 
 own rescue by taking arms against their oppressors, or by other- 
 wise helping their deliverers. Except for the comforting assurance 
 of the bright day of Israel's return, they are without any sufficient 
 object in the Exile ; and that assurance had been already given to 
 Israel, not by anonymous Avriters, but by the well-accredited 
 prophet Ezekiel. 
 
 But they denounce in the strongest terms the cruelty, oppression, 
 and wickedness of the King of Babylon ; they foretell for him a 
 degradation as vile as his throne is now exalted ; they predict the 
 
Threatenings by the Older Prophets. 21 
 
 overthrow of the city and the destruction of its fondly cherished 
 gods ; they exhort the exiles to flee from within its walls after its 
 capture ; they name the conqueror as approaching with his resist- 
 less arms; they portray the faintheartedness of the Chaldean 
 soldiers, and they call on the hostile forces to prepare for the 
 assault of the city, which they triumph over as if already 
 fallen : 
 
 " How hath the oppressor ceased ! the golden city ceased ! The 
 Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked; ... he who smote 
 the people in wrath with a continual stroke. . . . The worm is 
 spread under thee, and the worms cover thee" (Isa. xiv. 4, 5, 6, 11). 
 " Go up, Elam : besiege, O Media ; . . • Babylon is fallen, is 
 fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto 
 the ground " (Isa. xxi. 2, 9). " 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. . . . Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols 
 were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle. . . . Come down, and 
 sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon. . . , Sit thou silent, 
 and get thee into darkness, daughter of the Chaldeans : for 
 thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms. ... Go ye 
 forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of sing- 
 ing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth ; say 
 ye. The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob " (Isa. xlv. 1 ; xlvi. 1 ; 
 xlvii. 1, 5 ; xlviii. 20). " Put yourselves in array against Babylon 
 round about : all ye that beud the bow, shoot at her, spare no 
 arrows : for she hath sinned against the Lord. . . . How is the 
 hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken ! how is 
 Babylon become a desolation among the nations ! . . . The voice 
 of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare 
 in Zion the vengeance of the Lord our God, the vengeance of His 
 temple. . . . Prepare against her the nations with the kings of 
 the Medes. . . . The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to 
 fight. . . . One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger 
 
22 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is 
 taken at one end. . . . For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God 
 of Israel ; The daughter of Babylon is like a threshingfloor, it is 
 time to thresh her : yet a little while, and the time of her harvest 
 shall come. . . . The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon 
 Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say ; and my blood upon the 
 inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say " (Jer. 1. 14, 23, 28 ; 
 li. 28, 30, 31, 33, 35). 
 
 Now, we know certainly that prophecies against Babylon of a 
 similar character were written in Jerusalem before the Exile by 
 the prophet Habakkuk ; and his prophecy is acknowledged to have 
 been written before the destruction of Jerusalem even by critics, 
 like Dr. Samuel Davidson, who disallow the more distant pro- 
 phecies of Isaiah and the more detailed predictions of Jeremiah. 
 He foretells the desolation of Judea by the Chaldeans: "Lo, I 
 raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall 
 march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling- 
 places that are not their's ; . . . they shall fly as the eagle that 
 hasteth to eat; . . . they shall gather the captivity as the sand; 
 . . . they shall deride every stronghold ; for they shall heap dust, 
 and take it" (Hab. i. 6-10). The prophet next comforts his own 
 people: "Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine 
 Holy One? we shall not die" (ver. 12). Then he severely 
 denounces the King of Babylon: "Who enlargeth his desire as 
 hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto 
 him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people : Shall not all 
 these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb 
 against him, and say, Woe to him that increaseth that which is 
 not his ! how long ? . . . Shall they not rise up suddenly that 
 shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou shalt be 
 for booties unto them ? Because thou hast spoiled many 
 nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee " (Hab. 
 ii. 5-8). 
 
Threatenings by the Older Prophets. 23 
 
 We have thus, on the one hand, a recognised prophet in Jeru- 
 salem denouncing and threatening the King of Babylon for de- 
 vastating Judea, and " devouring the man that is more righteous 
 than he " (Hab. i. 13) ; and, on the other hand, we have two known 
 prophets in Babylon respecting the Divine command to " seek the 
 peace of the city," and carefully avoiding to announce its certain 
 doom before it has come. The history, therefore, of both periods 
 is quite against the conjecture of the critics. It is clearly in 
 favour of the prophets in Jerusalem foretelling woe to Babylon 
 and its king ; and it is decidedly against any prophet in Babylon 
 issuing such a prediction. 
 
24 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE INFATUATION OF PUBLISHING SUCH THREAT- 
 ENING S IN BABYLON, AND THE CULPABILITY 
 OF PUBLISHING THEM ANONYMOUSLY. 
 
 aT is maintained by the scientific critics that the latter half 
 of Isaiah, and the other prophecies against Babylon, can 
 be understood in a natural and living way only by assigning 
 them to the period of the Exile; and on similar grounds it 
 might be held that the fifty-third chapter, with its natural and 
 vivid description of the Messiah's sufierings, must have been written 
 after the day of Pentecost, But it is only on a hasty glance at the 
 surface of the history that it could be supposed that such publica- 
 tions were lifelike and natural in the position of the exiles. On 
 the contrary, every consideration of reason proves — 
 
 1, TliQ infatuation of publishing such prophecies in Babylon. 
 
 Let us look at the first of the short prophecies in Isaiah against 
 Babylon, of which Ewald says that " these small pieces proceeded 
 from Babel itself," and that " being rapidly produced and sent 
 into the world as fly-sheets, they were published without any 
 name attached ;" and which amongst ourselves are, in like man- 
 ner, spoken of as anonymous broadsides. The prophecy in 
 the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Isaiah has forty-five 
 verses; and only two of these foretell the restoration of Israel 
 (xiv. 1, 2), while the rest consists of woes against Babylon, its city, 
 its citizens, and especially its king. There is every utterance that 
 
Exile Threatenings Incredible. 25 
 
 can wound his pride, awaken his fear, and arouse his anger, with 
 the constant avowal that the prophecy is by the God of Israel and 
 for Israel's sake : " I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of 
 hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and 
 nephew, saith the Lord. . . . Behold, I will stir up the Medes 
 against them. . . . For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will 
 yet choose Israel " (chaps, xiii. 17 ; xiv. 1, 2). 
 
 A feeble colony of captive foreigners cast contempt on the 
 majesty of the king. They accuse him of cruelty and wickedness, 
 and they summon his enemies to take his city, and to slay himself, 
 his children, and his subjects. They publish their prophecies as 
 fly-leaves or broadsides, vsriting them on an open page, and circulat- 
 ing them among the exiles. Although they attach no personal 
 signatures, they speak in the name of Israel and of his God ; and 
 only for Israel's sake they invoke and predict the terrible doom of 
 Babylon, its sovereign, and its people. No helpless community 
 of captives, that was not bereft of reason, would have allowed such 
 a writing to be circulated amongst them, for in their exile they had 
 still their elders over them with some authority. The mildest of 
 monarchs would not have suffered it for an instant; and if the 
 King of Babylon was as proud and as cruel as he is pictured in 
 these prophecies, no Jew in Babylon could hope to escape with his 
 life. If the Chaldean ruler could not arrest the hostile march of 
 the conqueror of other nations, he could easily exterminate avowed 
 traitors within his own city and kingdom ; he could quench in their 
 own blood their bright prophecies for Zion ; and their threatenings 
 against him he would in all likelihood fulfil upon themselves, and 
 leave to Israel " neither name nor remnant, neither son nor nephew." 
 
 This note on the first of the alleged anonymous prophecies 
 applies in substance to them all : Isa. xxi. 1, 10 ; xl. to Ixvii. ; Jer. 
 1. 50, 51. There is, indeed, abundant consolation to Israel in the 
 latter half of Isaiah, and not a little in the prophecy of Jeremiah ; 
 but they equally denounce Babylon and its king, and they exult 
 triumphantly in their destruction. Nothing can explain the 
 
26 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 suicidal madness that is imputed to the captives in issuing such 
 threats ; for with all their longing to return to Jerusalem and to 
 rebuild the temple, and with all the hardships which many might 
 suffer, they were not as a people driven to despair. They dwelt 
 in their own houses, ate the fruit of their own gardens, worshipped 
 their own God by the river sides, and when they were set at 
 liberty, many of them were not prepared to leave the comforts of 
 their foreign home, and return to the desolate land of their fathers. 
 As a people, they had no cause to rush on self-destruction by 
 circulating such threats against their rulers. 
 
 In the same predictions and solemn denunciations from the Lord 
 in the prophecies of Isaiah two hundred years before, the case is 
 entirely different. Consolation was treasured there for Israel, and 
 there the God of Israel made the express prediction of remote 
 events the proof to Israel and to the world that He is the God of 
 the whole earth, and that He knoweth the end from the beginning. 
 An ancient prophecy, forming part of a series of older books, 
 quietly kept amongst a foreign people, might easily escape either 
 the curiosity or the jealousy of a proud race of kings. 
 
 The later prophecy of Jeremiah bears a special character from 
 the symbolical act of sinking it in the Euphrates, so like that 
 prophet's method of teaching, and so unlike the publication of an 
 open broadsheet. The prophet would certainly retain a copy for 
 himself, the witnesses who heard it read on the banks of the river 
 would remember its substance, and communicate it to their brethren 
 and to their children, and a copy of it might be quietly preserved 
 in Babylon. If it became known to Nebuchadnezzar, that king 
 had a high esteem for Jeremiah, to whose predictions of his own 
 singular prosperity he owed so much ; there was nothing in the 
 prophecy that affected himself personally, for the greater part of 
 seventy years was to intervene before its fulfilment ; and there was 
 little fear of his resenting what he had every cause to respect as a 
 divinely inspired prophecy of the fall of his kingdom at a period 
 that was still remote. 
 
Anonymous Threat enings Culpable. 27 
 
 In all these prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah against Babylon, 
 and in their lasting fulfilment, we see, even at the present day, the 
 greatness, majesty, and power of the God of nations, the wonders of 
 His providence, the sovereignty of His dominion, His omnipotent 
 ordering and omniscient foresight of all events, with the exercise of 
 His right to speak to kings and to kingdoms according to their 
 character and their deserts. But if, in direct contradiction alike to 
 the Old Testament and the New, these prophecies are held to have 
 been published in Babylon toward the close of the Exile, they are 
 characterised by an infatuation which, in all historical likelihood, 
 could only have resulted in the extirpation of the Jewish people by 
 " the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation," at a crisis in their 
 history, when apprehension of danger must have aggravated their 
 bitterness and hastened their revenge. 
 
 Ewald's peculiar theory that the latter half of Isaiah was not 
 written in Babylon like the shorter prophecies, but in Egypt, makes 
 no material difference in our argument. These prophecies, written 
 in the Hebrew language, are addressed to the Jews in Babylon, to 
 whom they must have been sent, if they were not to remain with- 
 out purpose or use. If they were circulated without a name 
 amongst the Babylonian Jews with the permission of their elders, 
 the Chaldeans must have treated them as a national production, 
 while the distant author would escape the dangers in which he 
 recklessly involved his captive people. But the general opinion of 
 the modern critics is given by Dr. Samuel Davidson, who says that 
 the Deutero-Isaiah was one of the exiles, and lived in Babylon. 
 
 2. TliQ cul'pahility of 'puhlishing these threats anonymously. 
 
 It is a strangely misjudging conception of the critics that anony- 
 mous prophecies could bring to the Jewish captives any assurance 
 of their deliverance. By the prophets of hope at the beginning of 
 the Exile many of them had been deceived ; and the slaying of 
 these prophets " before their eyes " had left on the mind of the 
 nation a warninsr not soon to be effaced against being elated and 
 
28 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 seduced by professedly prophetic promises of a speedy return to 
 their own land. In their position, therefore, it was above all 
 things essential that a prophet of restoration should produce the 
 surest credentials of his Divine mission, and evidently no such 
 assurance could ever be given by means of an unsigned fly-leaf If 
 the prophecies of the taking of Babylon had never been written by 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah, it was a dangerous snare for Israel to believe, 
 on the assurance of an anonymous " pamphlet of the day " (Ewald), 
 that the Persian king was their appointed deliverer. By thought- 
 ful men amongst the captives the unsealed manifesto would have 
 been rejected as the device of an impostor, and denounced with the 
 olden exile curse of the false sons of Kolaiah and Maaseiah. 
 
 But it was impossible in the position of the exiles for any good 
 man to have written such predictions without attaching his name. 
 The prophets in Babylon at the beginning of the Exile foretold a 
 speedy return of Israel to Zion ; and their verbal predictions were 
 far less likely to have come to the knowledge of the king than 
 written tracts. They were false in their prophecies, and infamous 
 in their lives ; but they can hardly be held more guilty than the 
 fictitious prophets of the modern critics. Ahab, the son of Kolaiah, 
 and Zedekiah, the son of Maaseiah, did not publish their pro- 
 phecies on anonymous broadsheets to shield themselves and leave 
 others to die for their misdeeds. They avowed their own hopes of 
 Israel's return, as well as encouraged their fellows in exile; as 
 martyrs to a falsehood they sacrificed their lives; and they left 
 their names for a curse to be taken up by all Israel against any 
 who should follow them in Babylon with similar false predictions : 
 " The Lord make thee like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the 
 king of Babylon roasted in the fire " (Jer. xxix. 22). 
 
 The Jews in Babylon had therefore a very special and memor- 
 able warning of the doom that awaited the prophets Avho should 
 issue predictions of Israel's restoration by the breaking of Baby- 
 lon's yoke ; and the man who added denunciations against the 
 king might expect his furnace to be heated " seven times more 
 
Anonymous Threatenings Culpable. 29 
 
 than it was wont to be heated." Ezekiel's case, as we have seen, 
 was exceptional, because he had for many years counselled 
 the submission of the Jews to the Chaldeans, and foretold the 
 successful career of the Chaldean monarch ; but in predicting the 
 restoration of Israel, he has not a word of reproach or of threat 
 for Babylon, or even of deliverance from its yoke. In these cir- 
 cumstances, if any later prophet of consolation had arisen among 
 the captives, he would have scrupulously refrained from denounc- 
 ing their present rulers, both from the command of God through 
 Jeremiah and from the dangers it involved for Israel. But the 
 prophecies in Isaiah xiii., xiv., and Jeremiah 1., li. are full of such 
 denunciations ; and Isaiah xl. to Ixvi. calls Cyrus by name as the 
 conqueror of Babylon, and exults over her fall : " Come down, and 
 sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon ; sit on the ground : 
 there is no throne, daughter of the Chaldeans ; ... for thou hast 
 trusted in thy wickedness ; thou hast said, None seeth me " (xlvii. 
 1, 10). 
 
 To publish larger predictions without the prophet's name, 
 or to circulate the lesser ones as anonymous fly-sheets, would 
 have been an act highly culpable. The author knew well that, 
 if an exterminating decree did not go forth at once against the 
 whole nation, his saving of his own life by the cowardly conceal- 
 ment of his name would create a search for every Jew in Babylon 
 who could have been the writer, to be followed by a dreadful 
 death for all on whom suspicion might rest. The most ordinary 
 chance of such an issue would have made every good man shrink 
 from the thought of such concealment. But the circumstances of 
 the exiles, in the well remembered example of the fatal history of 
 the previous prophets in Babylon, and in the present jealousy of 
 the Chaldean rulers awakened by the victorious arms of Cyrus, 
 must have left no doubt of the execution of the severest measures. 
 In so critical a case we may well believe that no Jew in all the 
 nation would be found capB,ble of such an act; and nothing 
 can be more certain than that such writings could never have 
 
30 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 had the Divine sanction, or have been the laudable work of holy 
 men. 
 
 One of the great positions of the leaders of modern thought in 
 Biblical criticism, one in which they are generally agreed in the 
 midst of other discordances, the ascription of the prophecies against 
 Babylon to anonymous prophets during the exile, is thus proved to 
 be impossible. To hold that these prophets were inspired, or were 
 righteous men, and that they published these prophecies anony- 
 mously, is to adopt both halves of a plain contradiction. There is 
 no outlet from this conclusion. If these alleged prophets were 
 men worthy of the highest honour, which the critics not only allow 
 but earnestly maintain, it was clearly impossible that they could 
 have issued their prophecies as anonymous publications in the 
 Babylonian exile. The worst of the nation would not readily 
 have stained their hands with such a transaction as the view of the 
 critics, undesignedly but necessarily, imputes to the noblest of all 
 the prophets, the author of the latter part of Isaiah, whose words 
 have been a solace and a light to the Church for thousands of 
 years. To call the writer truly " great " is to deny that he was 
 " anonymous ; " and to call him " anonymous " is to deny that he 
 was " great." If he was not Isaiah, we know nothing of him except 
 by the writings which have made his memory immortal as one 
 of the greatest and best and most patriotic of men ; and if he was 
 not Isaiah, these very writings by being anonymous degrade him 
 to the lowest level. 
 
 The prophet sent of old to Nineveh takes his life in his hand, 
 walks through the broad streets of the city, cries aloud, " Yet 
 forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown;" the proud Assyrians 
 repent, and their city is spared. In the great city by which 
 Nineveh was outrivalled and dethroned, the prophets created by 
 the modern critics publish their oracular burdens : " Babylon is 
 fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath 
 broken unto the ground. . . . Put yourselves in array against 
 Babylon round about; all ye that bend the bow shoot at her, 
 
Anonymous Threatenings Ciilpable. 31 
 
 spare no arrows, for she hath sinned against the Lord." Babylon 
 remains proud, sensual, impenitent; and for the prophets who 
 have predicted her doom, there is nothing left but the burning 
 furnace that consumed the seers who preceded them. But 
 beneath the mask of their anonymous fly-leaves' they lie safely 
 hid ; and in cold blood they look on their friends and brethren 
 exposed on their account to certain death at the hands of the 
 haughty and justly offended king. Such must have been the 
 prophets whom the new critics first create and then commend 
 with their highest laudations; whom they ask us to admire, 
 and for whom Isaiah and Jeremiah are to be cast behind our 
 backs. 
 
 The criticism that calls itself scientific confidently refuses to 
 own as geniiine the sublime oracles of Isaiah and Jeremiah against 
 Babylon, because it conceives either that all supernatural predic- 
 tion is impossible, or that predictions so distant from the event, 
 although not impossible, are highly improbable. We hold that 
 God, to whom all the future is known, can reveal it to men; and 
 we firmly believe in the " sure word of prophecy " as we have it 
 in the Bible, however far beyond mere human foresight. In 
 holding these prophecies to be genuine we are not chargeable with 
 a blind and bigoted adherence to an effete tradition. But, on the 
 contrary, when we are asked by the critics to give up the genuine- 
 ness of two of the most important chapters in Jeremiah, and of the 
 larger and nobler half of the prophecies of Isaiah, because they 
 contain those marvellous predictions against Babylon which re- 
 main in their striking fulfilment at this hour, and to assign them 
 to anonymous prophets in the Exile, we are called to sacrifice not 
 merely faith, but reason, and history, and sound criticism, for a 
 crude and impossible conjecture. 
 
 Oh that grace and wisdom were now granted to Scotland, and 
 especially to our own beloved Church, to hear in this day of 
 trial and of sifting the old prophetic warning and counsel to 
 Jerusalem : — 
 
32 The Fall of Babylon. 
 
 "They have caused them to stumble in their ways from the 
 ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up. 
 " Thus saith the Lord, Stand in the ways, and see, and 
 
 ASK FOR the old PATHS, WHERE IS THE GOOD WAY, AND WALK 
 THEREIN, AND YE SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS." — Jer. 
 xviii. 15; vi. 16. 
 
 LORIMER AND GILLIES, PRINTERS, 3I ST. ANDREW SQUARE, EDINBURGH. 
 
PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Z^IZ Syracuie, N. Y. 
 ^^ Stockton, CaVil. 
 
'W^ 
 
 ^^2 
 
 ;.-iL 
 
 ^"^l^ttt^ 
 
 BS649 .B3S9 
 
 The fall of Babylon : Its prediction not 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00055 9700 
 
 X 
 
 '"■.i,?^^ '