King Nebuchadnezzar and his beloved Babylon.

by Alejandro Roque Glez.

“And Isaiah said to Hezekiah; hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: Behold, the days come, that all that is in your house… shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left… and of your sons… they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon… Behold, I am bringing such evil on Jerusalem... and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipes a dish, wiping it… and I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance, and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies.”

(2 Kings 20:16-18; 21:12-14)

For centuries God had sent his prophets rebuking Israel for its idolatry and false satanic cults. Because of the injustices done in the land, abuse of power, forgetting the more faint and needy. The manipulation of the law for selfish gains by an elite at the expense of the people, misrepresenting the piety and mercy that God had demanded for the fellowmen. 

Blind watchmen and leaders of the blind and ignorant; like dumb dogs that cannot bark and looking each one on their own selfish ways and wellness (Is 56:9-11); they did not want to hear, but––as in today’s world––thought God was lost and he had forgotten everything. God is the same yesterday, today and forever, who remains in his Word (Ps 33:11), he does not change or is inconstant like humans who fickle as the waves of the sea, driven by the wind of the times and fashions (Jm 1:6-7); only trusting in the dictates of their own hearts and that is why the prophet emphasized about: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer 17:9-10).

This prophecy was embodied 100 years later (587 BC) when Jerusalem began to be surrounded with war machines and destructive military hardware by Nebuchadnezzar, then king of the Babylonian Empire, who came with his army besieging the city for months; and finally destroying their neighborhoods and setting it afire with its Temple, while taking captives to Babylon, together with the vessels, utensils and as much gold was found in it.

They were taken to that Babylon once called cradle of the human race. In 1935 Sir Henry Rawlinson, a British officer who was under commission to the service of Persia, in the north of Babylon found a rock over 400 meters high, with a recorded time of around 516 BC. This Behistun Rock––as it has been called since then––was the key to deciphering the Babylonian language. From 1845-1851 Sir Austen Henry Layard discovered around Nineveh and Calah ruins of palaces with inscriptions of the kings mentioned in the Bible, also the library of Assur-Banipal which had about 100, 000 volumes between writings and tablets. Thus Nebuchadnezzar was the head of a powerful Empire that extended its rule over much of the known world, making of Babylon an extremely beautiful city, beyond our imagination.

Nebuchadnezzar did not forget also burning down the houses of the leaders among the people (21:8-21), carrying the rest of them to that Babylon. Once there they suffered a prolonged exile that lasted 70 years (Jer 25:12; Dn 9:2). Regarding what was said above that among the royal Jewish youth they would take for eunuchs (20:18) and ministers at the court and palace of the king in Babylon, it was confirmed not only by what happened to the Hebrew children Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Dn 3:1-29); but one of them would be the wise prophet Daniel (Dn 1:3-7), who later became an influential and personal friend of the king.

(What will life be on our planet once the Lord fulfills the promise of his coming? If interested you can read it in the form of a literary narrative, recreated in the author's book entitled: 'The King Victorino').

[These and other Old Testament prophecies are explicatively compiled in the author's book entitled: 'Minor Prophets of the Old Testament;' in print and digital editions]

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