The taking of Babylon put an end to the Babylonian empire, after a duration of two hundred and ten years, from the beginning of the reign of Nabonassur. Thus was the power of that proud city brought low just fifty years after she had destroyed the city of Jerusalem and her temple. And herein were accomplished those predictions which the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel had denounced against her. There is still one more, the most important and the most incredible of them all, and yet the Scripture has set it down in the strongest terms, and marked it out with the greatest exactness; a prediction literally fulfilled in all its points: the proof still actually subsists, is the most easy to be verified, and indeed of a nature not to be contested. What[4] I mean is the prediction of so total and absolute a ruin of Babylon, that not the least remains or traces should be left of it. In the first place, Babylon ceased to be a royal city, the kings of Persia choosing to reside elsewhere. They delighted more in Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, or any other place, and did themselves destroy a great part of Babylon. We are informed by Strabo and Pliny, that the Macedonians, who succeeded the Persians, did not only neglect it, and forbear to embellish it, or even repair it, but that, moreover, they built Seleucia in the neighbourhood, on purpose to draw away its inhabitants, and cause it to be deserted. Nothing can better explain what the prophet had foretold: “It shall not be inhabited.” Its own masters endeavour to make it desolate. The new kings of Persia, who afterwards became masters of Babylon, completed the ruin of it by building Ctesiphon, which carried away all the remainder of the inhabitants; so that from the time the curse was pronounced against that city, it seems as if those very persons who ought to have protected it had become its enemies. SECOND SIEGE, A.C. 510. So much connection is generally placed between some of the prophetic writings of the Bible and the destruction of the city of Babylon, that we have deemed it necessary to quote in the preceding siege considerably from an established historian on that point. But we must remember that the Scriptures, though intended for the blessing of mankind, are Hebrew books, and that the Jews of the time of the Prophets principally adduced, could not be expected to speak otherwise than they have done against their masters the Babylonians. That the ruin of this great city was not so sudden or so complete is proved by its being able to sustain the siege of which we are about to speak.