The beloved disciple declared that ‘God is love’. Before sin, this was evident in the beauty of nature, and the marvellous adaptions that God made to suit the needs of His creatures. But it was the entrance of sin and the mercy God showed to mankind that revealed the infinite depth of the Creator’s love. Jehovah not only extends mercy, He ‘delighteth in mercy’ – He takes great pleasure in forgiving His children for their trespasses (Micah 7:18). But sin has resulted in a situation where God has to perform that which He loathes. When justice is required, God is behoved to take actions to which He is averse. According to Jeremiah, ‘he doth not afflict from his heart’ (Lamentations 3:33 KJV Margin). Unlike His acts of mercy, God takes no pleasure in executing judgement upon the sinner (Ezekiel 33:11). Thus, Isaiah calls this ‘His strange work’. To a God that is love, meting out punishment upon His children is indeed ‘a strange act’ (Isaiah 28:12).
To the kings of Assyria and Babylon, however, causing affliction was not a strange work. The Assyrians so prided themselves on their cruelty that they had tablets made to document the gruesome deaths they would inflict upon the nations that dared to resist them.
It was the furthest thing from God’s desire to afflict His people with such men. Yet God knew that placing His people under the iron yoke of Babylon was the perfect means of curing their obstinate rebellion. The cruelty of these idolaters would cause the children of Israel to remember the goodness of God. By and by, the Jewish exiles in Babylon would yearn to serve God and return to their homeland, as Jeremiah prophesied:
In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the LORD their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten. Jeremiah 50:4-5
Having provided a stark contrast between Jehovah’s rule and that of pagan men, Babylon served her purpose in provoking a reformation. But while Judah came to her senses through Babylon’s unrighteousness and cruelty, Babylon was not healed by Judah’s righteousness and compassion. ‘We would have healed Babylon’, Jeremiah declared, ‘but she is not healed’ (Jeremiah 51:9). Daniel had witnessed in the courts of her kings, and Ezekiel had prophesied before the people in her streets. But the sinful city squandered her golden opportunity. And thus it was declared, ‘forsake her, and let us go every one into his own country: for her judgment reacheth unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies’ (Jeremiah 51:9). The time came for Babylon to answer for her sins.
Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD'S hand, that made all the earthdrunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad. Jeremiah 51:7
The great kingdom of Babylon had not risen to ascendancy merely by the shrewdness of Nebuchadnezzar. As are all kingdoms of the earth, she had been ‘in the LORD’S hand’, to be utilised or dispensed with according to His divine will. With this ‘hammer’, Jehovah had broken rebellious nations. From this golden cup, the nations had drunk of God’s wrath. While Judah was humbled by this oppression, the proud heathen nations were enraged by Babylon’s luxury and vice. Once Babylon had filled up the measure of her iniquity, a confederacy was formed against her, as prophesied by Jeremiah:
Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the LORD hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it… Jeremiah 51:11
Babylon had been appointed for a work, but she had overstepped her bounds. While there were many reasons why God turned upon this hammer, one is explicitly stated by Jeremiah – her desecration of God’s holy temple. As it is written, ‘his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the LORD, the vengeance of his temple’ (Jeremiah 51:11).
Babylon’s doom was made certain by one final act of sacrilege. While under siege by the army of Cyrus, King Belshazzar held a great feast. Emboldened through wine, the king ‘commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein’ (Daniel 5:2). As Cyrus and his army waded under Babylon’s fortifications, and walked through her open gates, Jehovah wrote on the walls of the banquet hall:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. Daniel 5:25-28
Too late the doomed king learned that his kingdom was not sustained by its fortified city. As Daniel revealed, the God whom Belshazzar blasphemed had sustained his very life and kingdom. Said the prophet: ‘the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified’ (Daniel 5:23).
That fateful night placed Cyrus among the greatest military strategists in history. But the real glory belonged to Jehovah. By bringing them into Babylon’s captivity, God had wounded and also healed His people. And through Babylon’s overthrow, He had shown His undisputed sovereignty over the kingdoms of earth. In the words of the converted Nebuchadnezzar:
And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?
Daniel 4:35