Who Is Babylon in Isaiah’s End-Time Prophecy?

People apply the name “Babylon” to many things today. But how do the prophets, specifically Isaiah, define Babylon? Especially as Isaiah uses ancient peoples and events as an allegory of an end-time scenario. Did the regulatory Old Babylonian Empire of Hammurabi influence his idea of an end-time Babylon? Did the idolatrous, materialistic empire of King Nebuchadnezzar, which Isaiah saw in vision, impact his idea of a Babylon that would exist at the end of the world?

Indeed, Isaiah’s Seven-Part Structure, which transforms his book into an end-time scenario, defines Babylon as a composite entity. It consists of several individual entities, each of which has a precedent in the past (Isaiah 13–23; 47). The global cartel they make up shares a universal and multi-national consciousness as its participants hang together in a kind of codependence. Underlying this Babylon’s ideology are an unrestrained arrogance and an utter godlessness.

Babylon—A Composite Entity

The Nations of the World

Aggressive World Powers

Tyrants and Oppressors

Greater Babylon                                     Rulers and Men of Power

Enemies and Adversaries

Proud Kindred Peoples

God’s Rebellious People

This Greater Babylon resembles John’s “Babylon the Great” in the Book of Revelation. It forms the antitheses of, and diametrically opposes, an end-time Zion. That Zion, Isaiah identifies as those of God’s covenant people who repent and the place to which they return at the end of the world. There, they receive permanent lands of inheritance. In fact, in Isaiah’s end-time scenario, Babylon is everything Zion is not, and vice versa. People belong to either one or the other.

In short, Isaiah’s Babylon is a classic example of a composite entity that has been in the past and shall be at the end in a repetition of history of the kind expressed in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “That which has been, it is what shall be; there is nothing new under the sun.” The regulatory socio-economic system of the Old Babylonian Empire, the idolatrous materialistic civilization of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and all that doesn’t constitute Zion defines Isaiah’s end-time Babylon.

Babylon consist of the sinners, wicked, insolent men and tyrants of the earth and world:

Isaiah 13:1, 9, 11

                                                   An oracle concerning Babylon,

which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw in vision:

The Day of Jehovah shall come

as a cruel outburst of anger and wrath

to make the earth a desolation,

that sinners may be annihilated from it.

I have decreed calamity for the world,

punishment for the wicked;

I will put an end to the arrogance of insolent men

and humble the pride of tyrants.

Prideful Babylon, Mistress of Kingdoms, will be humiliated and go into the dust:

Isaiah 47:1–5

                                                   Get down and sit in the dust,

                                                        O Virgin Daughter of Babylon;

                                                   squat on the ground, dethroned,

                                                        O Daughter of the Chaldeans.

                                                   You shall no more be spoken of

                                                        as delicate and refined.

                                                   Take two grindstones and grind flour;

                                                        unveil, disrobe, bare your legs,

                                                        wade through streams:

                                                   your nakedness shall be exposed

                                                        and your shame uncovered.

                                                   I will take vengeance

                                                        and not be entreated of men,

                                                   [says] our Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,

                                                        whose name is Jehovah of Hosts.

                                                   Sit speechless; retire into obscurity,

                                                        O Daughter of the Chaldeans.

                                                   No longer shall you be called,

                                                        Mistress of Kingdoms.

Neither its wizardous technology nor bribes can save Babylon from disaster and ruin:

Isaiah 47:10–11

                                                   Secure in your wickedness,

                                                        you thought, No one discerns me.

                                                   By your skill and science you were led astray,

                                                        thinking to yourself, I exist,

                                                        and there is none besides me!

                                                   Catastrophe shall overtake you,

                                                        which you shall not know how to avert by bribes;

                                                   disaster shall befall you

                                                        from which you cannot ransom yourself:

                                                   there shall come upon you sudden ruin

                                                        such as you have not imagined.

God will overthrow Babylon as he did the wicked cities of Sodom & Gomorrah:

Isaiah 13:19

                                                   And Babylon, the most splendid of kingdoms,

                                                        the glory and pride of Chaldeans, shall be [thrown down]

                                                   as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

Babylon’s lands and peoples will be utterly destroyed and remembered no more:

 

Isaiah 14:22–23

                                                   I will rise up against them, says Jehovah of Hosts.

                                                        I will cut off Babylon’s name and remnant,

                                                        its offspring and descendants, says Jehovah.

                                                   I will turn it into swamplands, a haunt for ravens;

                                                        I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,

                                                   says Jehovah of Hosts.

God warns his people who repent to escape Babylon on the eve of its destruction:

Isaiah 48:20–21

                                                   Go forth out of Babylon, flee from Chaldea!

                                                        Make this announcement with resounding voice;

                                                   broadcast it to the end of the earth.

                                                        Say, Jehovah has redeemed his servant Jacob.

                                                   They thirsted not when he led them through arid places:

                                                        he caused water to flow for them from the rock;

                                                   he cleaved the rock and water gushed out.

God’s people flee Babylon in an orderly manner as at Israel’s Exodus out of Egypt:

Isaiah 52:11–12

                                                   Turn away, depart;

                                                        touch nothing defiled as you leave [Babylon].

                                                   Come out of her and be pure,

                                                        you who bear Jehovah’s vessels.

                                                   But you shall not leave in haste or go in flight:

                                                        Jehovah will go before you,

                                                        the God of Israel behind you.

Those who comprise the people of Zion by repenting of evil inherit the place Zion:

Isaiah 51:11

                                                   Let the ransomed of Jehovah return!

                                                        Let them come singing to Zion,

                                                   their heads crowned with everlasting joy;

                                                        let them obtain joy and gladness,

                                                   and sorrow and sighing flee away.