Isaiah 13:19 - Exposition

Babylon, the glory of kingdoms . The " glory " of Babylon consisted:

1. In her antiquity. She had been the head of a great empire long before Assyria rose to power.

2. In her origination of literature, architecture, and the other arts, which all passed from her to Assyria, and thence to the other nations of Asia.

3. In her magnificence and the magnificence of her kings, which provoked the admiration of the Assyrians themselves. As time went on, she grew in wealth and splendor. Perhaps it was granted to Isaiah to see her in ecstatic vision, not merely such as she was in the time of Sargon under Merodach-Baladan, but such as she became under Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest of her kings, who raised her to the highest pitch or glory and eminence. The beauty of the Chaldees' excellency. The Kaldi appear to have been originally one of the many tribes by which Babylonia was peopled at an early date, From the expression, "Ur of the Chaldees," which occurs more than once in Genesis ( Genesis 11:28 , Genesis 11:31 ), we may gather that they were inhabitants of the more southern part of the country, near the coast. The same conclusion may be drawn from the Assyrian inscriptions, especially those of Shalmaneser II .—the Black Obelisk king. The term never became a general name for the Babylonian people among themselves or among the Assyrians; but, somehow or other, it was accepted in that sense by the Jews, and is so used, not only by Isaiah, but also by the writers of Kings and Chronicles, by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Habakkuk. As when God overthrew Sodom . Equally sudden and complete as that destruction.