Isaiah 13:19 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Babylon, the glory of kingdoms Which once was the most noble and excellent of all the kingdoms then in being, and was more glorious than the succeeding empire, and therefore is represented by the head of gold, Daniel 2:37. The beauty of the Chaldees' excellency The famous and beautiful seat of the Chaldean monarchy; shall be as when God overthrew Sodom, &c. Shall be totally and irrecoverably destroyed, as is more fully expressed in the following verses. Babylon, “according to the lowest account given of it by ancient historians, was a regular square, forty-five miles in compass, enclosed by a wall two hundred feet high and fifty broad; in which there were one hundred gates of brass. Its principal ornaments were the temple of Belus, in the middle of which was a tower of eight stories,” (or towers placed one above another, diminishing always as they went up,) “upon a base of a quarter of a mile square; a most magnificent palace; and the famous hanging gardens, which were an artificial mountain, raised upon arches, and planted with trees of the largest, as well as the most beautiful sorts.” What is very remarkable, “this great city was rising to its height of glory at this very time, while Isaiah was repeatedly denouncing its utter destruction. From the first of Hezekiah to the first of Nebuchadnezzar, under whom it was brought to the highest degree of strength and splendour, are about one hundred and twenty years.” See Bishop Lowth.