THE FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY IN THE CAREER OF CYRUS
Isaiah 44:28. Cyrus, my shepherd, shall perform all my pleasure.
The fulfilment of prophecy is one of the two supernatural arguments for the truth of the Scriptures. I now present in some detail the fulfilment of prophecy in the career and conquests of Cyrus.
Isaiah wrote not less than a hundred and thirty years before Cyrus was born; and not less than a hundred and fifty years before his conquest of Babylon. It was long before the Median kingdom existed. The captivity of Judah had not begun. Three or four generations lived and died between the prophet and the Persian prince. The prophet could not possibly have other means of knowing who Cyrus was to be, or what he was to do in the world, than the simple revelation of the facts by the Spirit of God. Yet that he foretold the conqueror’s career, down to minutest details, is established by precisely the same kind and amount of evidence which proves that either Cyrus or Isaiah existed at all.
1. The name of Cyrus, the point of the compass indicative of his birthplace, and the direction of his march upon Babylon, are distinctly foretold. “Thus saith the Lord to Cyrus, I have raised up one from the North. From the rising of the sun—that is, from the East—shall he call upon my name.” The two points of the compass named in this language of Isaiah are singularly true. Cyrus was born in Persia, which was east of Babylon. It was commonly called “the East.” One historian speaks of it as the “land of the sunrising.” But at a very early age Cyrus was removed to Media, lying on the north of Babylon; and it was from Media that he came down, at the head of victorious hosts, upon the doomed capital. The prophet thus sees in a vision a prince of eastern birth marching upon the city from the north, and that his name is Cyrus.
Small matters these, but all the more significant for that. The question is: Who told Isaiah such minute details about a man he never saw or heard of; coming from a kingdom which at that time had no existence; achieving a conquest which then had not been dreamed of? How did he know what name the future conqueror would bear, a hundred and thirty years before he had a name?
Did anybody ever predict Bonaparte’s conquest of Italy a century before his birth? Did ever statesman or magician, as far back as A.D. 1650, declare that, a century and a half later, a conqueror born in the west of Italy would come down from the north and take possession of Rome, and that his name would be Napoleon? Yet this is in kind what the Hebrew prophet did. The question is, Who told him all that? How did he alone, of all the inhabitants of the world, find out the facts so exactly and so minutely?
2. Isaiah furthermore describes with remarkable accuracy the personal character of Cyrus. His warlike spirit, his towering ambition, the rapidity of his conquests, the equity of his administration, and his heathen religion, are all declared after the manner of prophecy. “Calling a ravenous bird from the East,” is the prophet’s language. Prophetic vision deals largely in symbols. The eagle is its favourite symbol of an aspiring, warlike, swift conqueror. “Who raised up the righteous man from the East” is the prophetic description of Cyrus. It is almost the exact language in which historians describe the government of the Persian king. “The just one” he is often called. “Take example from the Persian,” the tutors of Oriental princes used to say to their royal pupils. “I have girded thee, though thou hast not known Me,” are the words which prophecy puts into the mouth of God concerning him. This is a distinct prediction of his ignorance of the true God.
These are but a few specimens of the prophetic touches of which there are many more, portraying with an artist’s skill the character of this monarch. Imagine now that, in addition to announcing the name and the birthplace of Napoleon a hundred and thirty years before he was born, the magician had described him as an eagle in his conquests; had said that he would originate a superior code of jurisprudence,—the “Code Napoleon;” and that in his religion he would be a Romanist. Would not such hints, added to the items before named, redouble the surprise at the magician’s power? Would not men ask with astonishment who he was, where he came from, by whose authority he spoke, and where he got his information? Yet this is just what Isaiah declares of the great conqueror of the East.
3. The significance of the prophecy deepens, when it comes to describe the conquests achieved by Cyrus. Passages abound of which these are specimens: “He gave the nations before him. He made him ruler over kings. He made them as dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow. The isles saw it and feared, they helped every one his neighbour. Every one said to his neighbour, ‘Be of good courage.’ I will subdue nations under him. I will loose the loins of kings.”
By such rapid glances, the half of which I do not quote, the prophet foretells the victories of Cyrus over the great nations of the East; the consternation of their kings; their alliances for mutual defence; and the velocity with which the Persian legions marched from victory to victory.
Turn we now to history: what has that to say? It does but repeat the prophecy in describing the facts as they occurred. Says one: “He had scarcely gained one victory, before his tumultuous forces poured down on other battle-grounds. Scarcely had one city fallen, before he stood thundering at the gates of another. Empires were like dust before him, and cities like chaff.” That prophecy, “I will loose the loins of kings,” had its exact fulfilment in the consternation of Belshazzar at the handwriting on the wall, when the Persian armies were on the march, and within twenty-four hours would be heard tramping the streets of the doomed capital.
4. The prophecy of the downfall of Babylon deserves distinct review. The prophetic story runs in this style: “Evil shall come upon thee. Thou shalt not know from whence it ariseth. Thou shalt not be able to put it off. Desolation shall come suddenly, which thou shalt not know.” Thus is expressed the sudden, the unexpected, the irresistible, and the improbable calamity which was coming upon that haughty city.
Just such, in fact, was its conquest by Cyrus. That event, to begin with, was in itself, and in any form, improbable. The military science of the age pronounced Babylon impregnable by any methods of assault or siege then known. So secure did king and people feel that it could not be taken by human force or strategy, that on the very night of its capture by Cyrus, they were given up to feasting and carousal behind their insurmountable walls. The king would not believe the rumour of the enemy’s entrance, even when the blood of his people was flowing in the streets.
Here, again, little incidents are detailed which no soothsayer would have thought of, or would have dared to predict, if he had thought of them. “I will say to the deep, ‘Be dry.’ I will dry up thy rivers. I will open before him the two-leaved gates. The gates shall not be shut.” The significance of this language will appear from arraying it side by side with the historic facts. Babylon was a city fifteen miles square. It was intersected by the river Euphrates, as London is by the Thames, and Paris by the Seine. Solid walls surrounded it three hundred and fifty feet high, and broad enough on the top for four chariots to be driven abreast. The two sections again were separated by walls running along both banks of the river. Fronting the streets on either side were folding gates for convenience of access to the stream by day, which the police were instructed to close at the setting of the sun.
Cyrus took the city by a remarkable stratagem. He invented a novel way of marching his army into impregnable Babylon. If he could not march over the walls, he would contrive to march under. He did it by a very simple expedient, when once thought of, but only he had the genius to think of it. He dug an immense canal around the walls, and turned the river Euphrates into it. Then he marched his army at dead of night, and in dead silence, under the walls, in the vacant bed of the river. But this brought him only between the two other immense river-walls inside. How to surmount these was the question. The indomitable general had provided scaling-ladders for the purpose. But the God of Isaiah had done better for him than that. He found those gates which let the citizens down to the river in the day-time—“two-leaved,” that is, folding-gates—wide open. Like other drunken policemen, the custodians of Babylon had neglected to close those gates. Even the palace gates were not closed. The invader got near enough to hear the drunken carousals of the king and his courtiers inside, before they were convinced of his approach. Do you not now see a new meaning in the words, “I will dry up thy rivers; I will open the two-leaved gates; the gates shall not be shut; I will loose the loins of kings”?
Herodotus, writing seventy years afterwards, says, “If the besieged had been aware of the designs of Cyrus, they might have destroyed his troops. They had only to secure the folding gates leading to the river, and to have manned the embankments on either side, and they would have enclosed the Persians in a trap from which they could never have escaped. As it happened, they were taken by surprise; and such is the extent of the city that they who lived in the extremities were made prisoners before the alarm reached the palace.” “As it happened.” Yes, it happened; but a hundred and more years before God had said by His prophet how it should happen. He had said, “I will open the two-leaved gates.” So Cyrus found them wide open, and the way clear to the very banquet-hall of the palace, just as Isaiah had said, before Cyrus was born, that they should be.
The question therefore returns, laden with redoubled significance, Where did Isaiah get his information? Who told him that Babylon, a hundred and fifty years afterwards, would be shut off from the Euphrates by gates? Who told him that they would be folding-gates? How did he know that a man named Cyrus would enter the capital in the bed of the river, and on that particular night, contrary to usage and to law, would find that the police had left those gates open, as if on purpose to let the invader in? In short, how came he to write history a hundred and fifty years beforehand? Did any other historian ever write his history a century and a half before it happened, instead of a century and a half later, and be lucky enough to have it all happen to be true, even down to the structure and the opening of gates?
5. One other feature of the prophecy and the history in parallels remains to be noticed. Isaiah explicitly foretells the restoration of Judah from captivity, and the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, through the agency of Cyrus, God declares by the mouth of the prophet: “I will direct all his ways. He shall let go my captives;” even saying to Jerusalem, “Be built,” and to the temple, “Thy foundations shall be laid. He shall let go my captives, not for price or reward. Ye shall be redeemed without money. Ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight.”
Here we find another group of details which no uninspired mind could have guessed at, and no soothsayer would have dared to predict. Every one of them was to the last degree improbable. No statesman of the age did conjecture them. In the prophet’s time there were no captives at all in Babylon from Judah. When they became captives, long after, it was improbable that they would be released in any way by an Oriental despot, flushed with victory. They were very valuable captives. They were of an intelligent race. Good servants, able-bodied men and women for household use, skilful artisans, honest labourers, were abundant among them. Men of learning and genius, like Daniel, some of whom were deservedly advanced to high places in the realm, were Hebrews. Never was a more valuable class of slaves of equal number held by the rights of war than those held under command of Cyrus from Judea. It was the last thing to be expected from an Eastern despot, that he should let such a people go free; that he should charge no ransom for them; that they should not be compelled to take their freedom by force or stratagem; that their master himself should restore to them their plundered treasures, and direct the rebuilding of their desolated temple. Never was a prediction more improbable on the face of it.
Yet all these things happened, just as Isaiah said they would. The truth of the history no infidel presumes to question, whatever he may think of the prophecy. The question therefore returns again, How did Isaiah get his knowledge of coming events? Who told him facts a hundred and more years before the wisest statesman of the age had once thought of them as conjectures? Did any other man, not inspired of God, ever coin history thus out of guess-work? Did ever romance fall true like this? Sir Walter Scott wrote historical romances. Has “Ivanhoe” or “Quentin Durward” ever come true? Toss up a font of alphabetic type at random in the air, and will they come down all set and ready for the press in the form of the “Arabian Nights?” Yet this is, in substance, what infidelity asks us to believe, when it denies the gift of Divine inspiration to the Hebrew prophets.
Such, then, is the argument from fulfilled prophecy for the Divine origin of the Scriptures. The career of Cyrus is but a single sample. Other cases of the same kind swell the proof to volumes. The present condition of Babylon, the destruction of Moab, the fall of Tyre, the conquest of Egypt, the doom of Damascus, the desolation of Idumea, the sack of Jerusalem, the life, death, and burial of Christ, are events which belong to the same class. They all abound with the same sort of coincidence between the prophecy and the history. The coincidence extends to minute details. It is sustained without a break through long-continued narrative, covering years—yes, centuries, and involving the destiny of individuals with the fate of nations and of empires.
Such intricate and involved prevision no human mind could have painted without a break in the truthfulness of the story, unless inspired by an omniscient God. Any other solution of the mystery throws upon us a weight of credulity a hundredfold greater than that of faith in the “Arabian Nights” as authentic history. For the most part infidelity feels this, and very shrewdly decides to let the fulfilled prophecies of the Bible alone. There is no other argument for the truth of the Christian Scriptures, which infidels so generally agree to ignore as this.—Austin Phelps, D.D.