Today's Scripture Reading (September 17, 2026): Jeremiah 50
The city of Babylon was planted sometime
before 2300 B.C.E., because we know the city (or town at that time) existed in some
form in 2300 B.C.E. For most of its existence since then, the city was nothing
more than a minor administrative center. Babylon was mildly important, but not
really important. It was an average city, the capital of a small province. But
by the middle of the 7th century B.C.E., all of that was changing.
Babylon, this obscure administrative city, was becoming very important. With
the rise of Nebuchadnezzar II (more commonly known as just Nebuchadnezzar), the
city was not only becoming significant, but it was also becoming powerful.
By the time Jeremiah wrote his prophecy,
Babylon was like our modern-day Washington, D.C.; it was a place where the
powerful gathered. For those who lived then, it was impossible to imagine a
world without Babylon in control. Nobody in the world was unaware of what was
happening in Babylon, and either you served Babylon, or you feared Babylon; or
quite possibly you did both.
But Jeremiah prophesied that, while the exiles
needed to settle down because they were going to be there for a while,
Babylon's time dominating the world stage would be short-lived. In fact, the
city would not just cease being the most important city in the world; it would
not even return to being the minor administrative city it had been for much of
its history. The city was going to disappear off the face of the earth.
Jeremiah also makes one more prediction: not only would Babylon disappear, but
after it was finally emptied (an event that didn't happen for another 1500
years after Jeremiah), it would never be inhabited again.
History records no major battle that destroyed
the city. But over the years, the city simply dwindled; people began to migrate
away until Babylon disappeared. By 1000 C.E., Babylon was a site people visited
to steal bricks to build other cities in the area. Two hundred years after
that, people in the area lost track of where the city once stood. While it is
hard for us to understand what exactly happened historically to the city from
our vantage point, the original readers of Jeremiah's prophecy couldn't imagine
such a thing ever happening to the great city of Babylon. However, history
records that Jeremiah was right.
Over 1000 years after the final emptying of Babylon,
the site of the city remains empty. And the truth is that there have been plans
throughout history to rebuild the city, but every time something has happened
to stop the rebuilding process. Most recently, Saddam Hussein made plans to
rebuild the city. He portrayed himself as the Son of Nebuchadnezzar and wanted
to rebuild the city of his adopted father. For Saddam, the Gulf War stopped the
process. The current plan is to build a tourist center on the site of old
Babylon. But as of right now, nothing has happened. There are currently no
plans to make the city a place where the generations live once more, just as
Jeremiah prophesied over 2500 years ago.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 51
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