God's Unflinching Justice: The Fall of Babylon Text: Isaiah 13:17-22
Introduction: The Unblinking Sovereignty of God
We live in a soft and sentimental age, an age that has tried to domesticate the Lion of Judah and turn Him into a housecat. We want a God who is endlessly affirming and never offending, a God who is all mercy and no majesty, all grace and no government. Our generation has crafted a deity in its own image: tolerant, pliable, and ultimately, powerless. But the God of the Scriptures, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not such a God. He is the sovereign ruler of the cosmos, and His judgments are as righteous and as real as His mercies are tender.
The prophet Isaiah was not given the luxury of tailoring his message to the felt needs of his hearers. He was a herald of the Most High God, and his task was to declare the whole counsel of God, which includes words of both staggering comfort and terrifying judgment. In this thirteenth chapter of his prophecy, Isaiah delivers a burden, an oracle, against Babylon. Babylon was not yet the world-dominating empire it would become, but God, who declares the end from the beginning, sees its future pride and pronounces its future doom.
Babylon in Scripture is more than just a historical city on the plains of Shinar. It is an archetype. It is the city of man, built on pride, rebellion, and self-deification, standing in perpetual opposition to the City of God. From the Tower of Babel in Genesis to the final, mystical Babylon the Great in Revelation, it represents the organized, arrogant, and idolatrous world system that sets itself against the Lord and against His Christ. And the message of Isaiah, and the message of the whole Bible, is that Babylon will fall. God will not be mocked. Whatsoever a man, or a nation, or a civilization sows, that will it also reap.
The passage before us today is not comfortable reading. It is hard and sharp-edged. It speaks of a violence and desolation that makes our modern sensibilities recoil. But we must not look away. We must not sanitize the Word of God to make it more palatable. For in these severe words of judgment, we see the absolute sovereignty of God, the certainty of His justice, and a necessary backdrop that makes the gospel of His grace shine all the brighter.
The Text
Behold, I am going to awaken the Medes against them, Who will not think about silver or take pleasure in gold.
And their bows will dash the young men to pieces, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.
And it will be that Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the honor of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
It will never be inhabited or dwelt in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.
But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will dwell there, and shaggy goats will leap there.
And hyenas will howl in their fortified towers And jackals in their luxurious palaces. Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged.
(Isaiah 13:17-22 LSB)
The Divine Instrument (v. 17)
God begins by naming the specific tool He will use to execute His judgment on Babylon.
"Behold, I am going to awaken the Medes against them, Who will not think about silver or take pleasure in gold." (Isaiah 13:17)
Notice the first word: "Behold." This is a call to pay attention. God is pulling back the curtain of history to show us how the world really works. World events are not a chaotic series of random occurrences. History is His story. God is the one who directs the rise and fall of nations. He says, "I am going to awaken the Medes." The Medes were a people from the mountainous region of modern-day Iran. At the time Isaiah wrote this, Assyria was the dominant power, and Babylon was a secondary concern. But God, who sees the end from the beginning, names the very people who, along with the Persians, would conquer Babylon over a century later.
This is a staggering display of divine sovereignty. The Medes do not rise by their own ambition alone. God stirs them up. He awakens them. He is the primary cause behind the secondary causes of political maneuvering and military conquest. As Proverbs tells us, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will" (Proverbs 21:1). God uses pagan nations as His axe and His saw to accomplish His purposes. Assyria was His rod of anger against Israel (Isaiah 10:5), and here the Medes are His instrument against Babylon. This doesn't excuse the sin of the Medes, as we will see, but it does establish that they are operating under the sovereign decree of God.
And God describes their character. They "will not think about silver or take pleasure in gold." This is not to say they were ascetics. It means their motivation was not primarily plunder. They could not be bought off. Babylon was fantastically wealthy, and many conquering armies could be appeased with a sufficient bribe. But not the Medes. Their lust was for blood and conquest, not for treasure. God had stirred in them a ferocity that could not be sated with money. When God ordains judgment, He raises up an instrument perfectly suited for the task.
The Unsparing Reality of Judgment (v. 18)
The description of the Medes' work is brutal and unflinching. This is what divine judgment in history looks like.
"And their bows will dash the young men to pieces, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children." (Isaiah 13:18 LSB)
This is hard to read. Our instinct is to recoil. And we should. The slaughter of the young, the pregnant, and the children is a horrific evil. This is the language of imprecation, similar to what we find in Psalm 137, where the psalmist says of Babylon, "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." This is not God commanding or approving of the sinful brutality of the Medes in and of itself. Rather, it is a raw, unvarnished depiction of the historical reality of war and the terrible logic of covenantal judgment.
Babylon had sown the wind, and now they would reap the whirlwind. They themselves had shown no mercy in their conquests. They had dashed other nations' children against the rocks. Now, the principle of lex talionis, an eye for an eye, is being applied to them on a national scale. The judgment fits the crime. God is giving them over to the same kind of ruthless violence they inflicted on others. This is the outworking of the covenant curse. When a people or a nation sets itself against God, the very fabric of their society unravels, and they are given over to the brutality they embraced.
This verse forces us to confront the reality of corporate sin and corporate judgment. The children of Babylon were not personally guilty of the empire's atrocities, but they were part of the covenantal entity that was being judged. A nation is a corporate body, and its destiny is tied together. When God judges a nation, the consequences fall upon all. This should sober us as we consider the state of our own nation. We cannot indulge in corporate rebellion against God and expect that the consequences will be neat, tidy, and confined only to the guiltiest parties.
The Finality of the Overthrow (v. 19-20)
Isaiah now describes the totality and permanence of Babylon's destruction, comparing it to the most infamous judgment in all of Scripture.
"And it will be that Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the honor of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited or dwelt in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there." (Isaiah 13:19-20 LSB)
Babylon was the pinnacle of human achievement. It was "the beauty of kingdoms, the honor of the Chaldeans' pride." Think of the hanging gardens, the massive walls, the ziggurats, the wealth, the power. It was the New York, London, and Tokyo of its day, all rolled into one. It was the epitome of man's glory. And God says He will obliterate it. The comparison to Sodom and Gomorrah is key. That was not a mere military defeat; it was a direct, supernatural, de-creative act of God. It was a complete and final erasure.
The prophecy here is one of utter and permanent desolation. "It will never be inhabited." This is not hyperbole. Other great cities of antiquity, like Rome or Jerusalem, were destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. But the site of ancient Babylon remains a desolate ruin to this day. For centuries, it was so deserted that its exact location was unknown. God's word was fulfilled with painstaking accuracy. The prophecy is specific: not even nomadic Arabs will pitch their tents there, nor will shepherds graze their flocks. This indicates a place that is not just ruined, but cursed. It is a place considered haunted, unclean, a monument to divine wrath.
A Habitation for Wild Things (v. 21-22)
The description of Babylon's future state concludes with a chilling picture of nature reclaiming the ruins of human pride.
"But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will dwell there, and shaggy goats will leap there. And hyenas will howl in their fortified towers And jackals in their luxurious palaces. Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged." (Isaiah 13:21-22 LSB)
The glorious palaces and fortified towers, once filled with the sounds of music, commerce, and arrogant boasting, will be filled with the eerie cries of wild, unclean animals. The imagery is one of complete reversal. Order returns to chaos. Civilization is swallowed by the wilderness. The Hebrew words for some of these creatures, like "shaggy goats," are sometimes associated with demons or satyrs in folklore, adding a layer of spiritual dread to the physical desolation. The place where men tried to build a tower to heaven becomes a haunt for creatures of the night and the desert.
This is the end of all humanistic pride. This is what happens when man builds his city in defiance of God. The glory is fleeting, the pride is temporary, and the end is desolation. God's judgment is not a maybe. "Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged." From God's perspective, the judgment is imminent and certain. Though it was over a century away for Isaiah's audience, in the council of God, Babylon's fate was already sealed.
Conclusion: The Tale of Two Cities
So what are we to do with such a passage? First, we must see the absolute sovereignty of God over history. Kings and empires are but pawns on His chessboard. He raises them up, and He casts them down, all according to His good pleasure and for His ultimate glory. This should fill us with a holy fear and a profound comfort. Our times are in His hands.
Second, we must understand that pride is the fundamental sin, and God hates it. Babylon's sin was its arrogant self-sufficiency, its belief that it was the master of its own fate. "You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven... I will make myself like the Most High'" (Isaiah 14:13-14). Any nation, any institution, any individual that walks in this pride is on a collision course with the judgment of God.
Finally, we must see that the story of Babylon is the story of the world in miniature. The Bible tells a tale of two cities: Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon is the city of man, built by pride, destined for destruction. Jerusalem, the heavenly city, is the city of God, built by grace, destined for eternal glory. Every human being is a citizen of one of these two cities.
The judgment that fell on historical Babylon is a type and a shadow of the final judgment that will fall on the mystical Babylon, the world system that has rejected Christ. But the good news, the glorious gospel, is that God has provided a way of escape. God's own Son entered our ruined and desolate world. On the cross, He endured the ultimate curse. He was forsaken, cast out into the darkness, so that we who were citizens of Babylon by birth could be made citizens of the New Jerusalem by grace.
Therefore, the call of this passage is a call to repentance. It is a call to flee from the City of Destruction and take refuge in the City of God. It is a call to abandon all trust in the fleeting beauty and pride of this world and to place our faith entirely in the King who is building a kingdom that cannot be shaken. For Babylon will fall. Her palaces will become haunts for jackals. But the City of our God, the New Jerusalem, will descend from heaven, and in it there will be no more curse, for the Lord God will be its light, and His people will reign with Him forever and ever.