Verse 22
22. Beasts of the islands See note on Isaiah 11:11. Literally, the first idea is islands, then coasts, and, on further advance of the conception, some desolate place.
Shall cry As in responsive wailing, like that of jackals.
Dragons The word may mean serpents, and when the idea is fitted to the conditions of the place, it probably does mean this. See further in notes on Job 7:12; Job 30:29. No man ever excelled Isaiah in painting deep, strong, tragic, thrilling words into a scene. Compare Isaiah 10:28-32.
That Cyrus, at the head of the greet Medo-Persian army, is seen in the foreground as the commencing agency of this terrific desolation, there can be no doubt. Unbelievers admit this. But the point of chief importance in this prediction is, the thorough eventual desolation of Babylon. For hundreds of years the prophecy has been completely fulfilled. Travellers furnish a description quite well enough answering to a state of things presented in the prediction. It answers little for an objection to this, even if here and there, on the large tract once occupied by the great city, a miserable village or larger town like Hillah has now and then sprung up, for the main truth stands; and as to Hillah, a town of ten thousand inhabitants, (NEWMAN’S Babylon and Nineveh,) Rawlinson is authority for doubt whether it stands on any part of the ancient site. Be it that it does so stand, it occupies but a speck in the area of two hundred square miles or more of old Babylon. The prophet’s vision had “its appointed time;” but at the end it spake, and did not lie: it came and tarried not. Habakkuk 2:3.
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