PROPHECIES OF NINEVEH AND

BABYLON.

BY REV. A. ALEXANDER, D. D.

THE walls of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, are said to have been a hundred feet in height, sixty miles in compass, and defended by fifteen hundred towers, each two hundred feet high. Diodorus Siculus relates, that the king of Assyria, after the complete discomfiture of his army, confided in an old prophecy, that Nineveh would not be taken unless the river should become the enemy of the city; that after an ineffectual siege of two years, the river, swollen with long continued and tempestuous torrents, inundated part of the city, and threw down the wall for the space of twenty furlongs, and that the king, deeming that the prediction was accomplished, despaired of his safety, and erected an immense funeral pile, on which he heaped his wealth, and with which himself, his household, and palace were consumed. The book of Nahum was avowedly

prophetic of the destruction of Nineveh; and it is there foretold, "that the gates of the river shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved-Nineveh of old like a pool of water-with an overflowing flood he will make an utter end of the place thereof.” The other predictions of the prophet are as literally described by the historian. He relates, that the king of Assyria, elated with his former victories, and ignorant of the revolt of the Bactrians, had abandoned himself to scandalous inaction; had appointed a time of festivity, and supplied his soldiers with abundance of wine; and that the general of the enemy, apprised by deserters of their negligence and drunkenness, attacked the Assyrian army while abandoned to revelling, destroyed a great part of them, and drove the rest into the city. The words of the prophet were hereby verified: "While they were folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry." Much spoil was promised to the enemy: "Take the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold; for there is no end of the store and glory, out of all the pleasant furniture." Accordingly, the historian affirms, that many talents of gold and silver, preserved from the fire, were carried to Ecbatana. The prophet declares, that the city was not

only to be destroyed by an overflowing flood, but the fire was also to devour it; which exactly agrees with the account of the historian.

The utter and perpetual destruction of the city was thus distinctly predicted: "The Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof. Affliction shall not rise up the second time; she is empty, void, and waste. The Lord will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in." In the second century, Lucian, who was born on the banks of the Euphrates, testified that Nineveh was utterly perished — that there was no vestige of it remaining and that none could tell where it was once situated. A late traveller, who has visited that country, testifies, "that neither bricks, stones, nor other materials of building," are now to be seen; but the ground is, in many places, grown over with grass, and such elevations are observable, as resemble the mounds left by the intrenchments and fortifications of ancient Roman camps; and the appearances of other mounds and ruins less marked than even these, extending for ten miles and widely spread, and seeming to be the wreck of former buildings, show that Nineveh is left

without any monument of royalty, without any token whatever of its splendor or wealth; that it is indeed a desolation, "empty, void, and waste;" its very ruins perished, and less than the wreck of what it was. "Such an utter ruin," says Bishop Newton, "has been made of it; and such is the truth of the divine predictions."

BABYLON.

The prophecies respecting the taking of Babylon, its utter destruction, and the complete desolation which should reign where this proud city once stood, have been remarkably fulfilled.

The very nations by whom Babylon was to be taken and destroyed, are predicted by name by the prophet Jeremiah. "Go up, O Elam! (this was the ancient name of Persia,) besiege, O Media! The Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; for his device is against Babylon to destroy it." And Isaiah says, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen ; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground." "Thus saith the Lord, that saith unto the deep, Be dry; and I will dry up thy rivers; that saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure. And I will loose the loins

of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” "Thus saith the Lord to Cyrus his anointed, to subdue all nations before him."

This prediction of Isaiah, in which Cyrus is named, must have been uttered at least two hundred years before he was born, and when the Persians were an obscure and inconsiderable nation.

A confederacy having been formed between the Medes and Persians, and Cyrus having in person taken the command of the Persians, and having disciplined them with consummate skill, and inspired them with heroic courage, joined his uncle Cyaxares, (by Daniel called Darius the Mede,) and their united forces having conquered the Armenians, the Hyrcanians, the Lydians, the Cappadocians, and other allies of the king of Babylon; and having so treated all these conquered nations as to conciliate their friendship, and add their forces to their own, they marched towards the city of Babylon. Although Cyrus commenced his military career with a small army of Persians, yet, by conquest and wise policy, his army had become exceedingly numerous before he reached the famous city. But what could be done by courage or military skill against a city so defended on every side? This consummate general,