![]() ![]() ![]() So we see an empty riverbed, a mighty conqueror, and a terrified defender of the city (terrified not by Cyrus, but by a direct act of God). But the believing Jews in Babylon on that night must have been struck by the parallel between this verse in Isaiah and the last night of Belshazzar, the last ruler in Babylon:ĥ In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.Ħ Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. This might be thought simply Hebraistic repetition, a varied way of stating “subdue nations before him.” We see similar things throughout the Old Testament. He ruled all of the Ancient Near East and much of central and western Asia, from modern day Turkey to parts of India. “To Subdue Nations Before Him”Ĭyrus the Great eventually ruled over Persia, the Median Empire, the Lydian Empire, and the Babylonian Empire. God seems to have foretold and even providentially directed Cyrus’ battle plan. Not so the Jews in the city of Babylon, when they discovered Cyrus’ armies had entered by an empty riverbed. ![]() The Jews of Isaiah’s day may have wondered what this talk about dried up rivers meant. ![]() Thus, the means by which Cyrus was able to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah 24:26, the return of the Jews to their homeland, was a dried up river. “I Will Dry Up Thy Rivers”Īccording to the ancient historian, Herodotus, the armies of Cyrus diverted the Euphrates River so they could enter Babylon in the riverbed, bypassing the city’s defences. Readers in Isaiah’s time might have wondered what verse 27 was talking about, wondered who Cyrus was, and tried to find a current meaning - but Isaiah was not writing about a post-Sennacherib rebuild. Sennacherib had taken Lachish and 45 other walled cities. If Isaiah wrote right after the invasion of Sennacherib, as seems likely, verse 26 would have been poignant for Isaiah’s readers. In this article I want to discuss several things in the immediate context of his naming, including things related to the Median-Persian battle plan in taking Babylon.Ģ6 That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built, and I will raise up the decayed places thereof:Ģ7 That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:Ģ8 That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.ġ Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates and the gates shall not be shut In that second article I said that chapters 40-48 deal with God’s deliverance from captivity in Babylon, and that there are other parts of the prophecy in that section related to Cyrus besides just his name. The first discussed the naming of Cyrus, and the second was on the context within the book of Isaiah. I’ve written two articles on this prophecy previously. In Isaiah 44-45, written around 700 BC, Isaiah the prophet, writing as he was moved by the Holy Spirit (II Peter 1:21), named the Persian emperor who would come to power and conquer Babylon more than 150 years later. ![]()
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