In this prophecy Isaiah regards Babylon as he has been regarding Egypt--certain to go down before Assyria, and therefore wholly unprofitable to Judah. If the Jews still thought of returning to Egypt when Sargon hurried back from completing her discomfiture in order to beset Babylon, Isaiah would tell them it was no use. Assyria has brought her full power to bear on the Babylonians; Elam and Media are with her. He travails with pain for the result. Babylon is not expecting a siege; but _preparing the table, eating and drinking_, when suddenly the cry rings through her, "_Arise, ye princes; anoint the shield._ The enemy is upon us." So terrible and so sudden a warrior is this Sargon! At his words nations move; when he saith, _Go up, O Elam! Besiege, O Media!_ it is done. And he falls upon his foes before their weapons are ready. Then the prophet shrinks back from the result of his imagination of how it happened--for that is too painful--upon the simple certainty, which God revealed to him, that it must happen. As surely as Sargon's columns went against Babylon, so surely must the message return that Babylon has fallen. Isaiah puts it this way. The Lord bade him get on his watchtower--that is his phrase for observing the signs of the times--and speak whatever he saw. And he saw a military column on the march: _a troop of horsemen by pairs, a troop of asses, a troop of camels_. It passed him out of sight, _and he hearkened very diligently_ for news. But none came. It was a long campaign. _And he cried like a lion_ for impatience, _O my Lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower by day, and am set in my ward every night_. Till at last, _behold, there came a troop of men, horsemen in pairs, and_ now _one answered and said, Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the images of her gods he hath broken to the ground_. The meaning of this very elliptical passage is just this: as surely as the prophet saw Sargon's columns go out against Babylon, so sure was he of her fall. Turning to his Jerusalem, he says, _My own threshed one, son of my floor, that which I have heard from Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you_. How gladly would I have told you otherwise! But this is His message and His will. Everything must go down before this Assyrian.