Isaiah 13:19-22 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

I pray the Reader to read this prophecy very attentively, and mark well the awful destruction threatened. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed in a day; and Babylon in a night. In the same moment when Belshazzar was rioting, came his death. Daniel 5:30. The glory of Babylon is not only related by profane historians to have been the greatest of all monarchies; but sacred scripture makes mention of it as such. Thou saidst (saith the Lord) I shall be a lady forever; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children: but these two things shall come upon thee in a moment, in one day; the loss of children, and widowhood. See Isaiah 47:5 to the end; and the accomplishment, Daniel 5:31. And what is yet, if possible, more remarkable in the fulfillment of this prophecy, is the astonishing overthrow. All conquerors, when they subjugate kingdoms, conquer them to possess them; and the more splendid they are, the more they delight in their conquests. But concerning Babylon, the Lord had said, it should never be inhabited, nor. dwelt in from generation to generation; unless by doleful creatures, satyrs, and beasts of the desert; and this was literally fulfilled: for historians who have visited Babylon, all agree in one report, that the very spot where it stood, though in its splendour it covered over thirty miles in breadth; cannot now be ascertained. None indeed have ventured to explore the interior parts of it, on account of the beasts of prey, and serpents which dwell in it. There is one thought more, which this prophecy, connected with its accomplishment, furnisheth; and that is the view winch the gospel hath taken of it, when speaking of it as a type of the utter destruction of Babylon under the New Testament dispensation. If the Reader will consult Revelation 17:1 and Revelation 18:1 and compare them with this prophecy, and the passage already referred to, Isaiah 47:5 to the end, he will find abundant matter to furnish him with subjects of the most improving nature. - I only add, as a finishing comment on the whole, when the Reader hath made his own observations upon these solemn scriptures, looking up to God the Holy Ghost for instructions to improve the whole to the divine glory, and his own happiness, I beg of him to look into the human heart, yea, into his own, and see whether, by the fall of man, there is not a similar ruin induced, so that the heart which was once the temple of the living God, is now become the habitation of corrupt passions, like dragons and beasts of prey? Oh! the state, the fallen state of fallen man!