kinds of preparations for war. When they thought the city sufficiently stored with provisions for many years, they set up the standard of rebellion: which obliged Darius to besiege them with all his forces. Now God continued to accomplish those terrible threatenings he had denounced against Babylon: that he would not only humble and bring down that proud and impious city, but depopulate and lay it waste with fire and blood; utterly exterminate it, and reduce it to an eternal solitude. In order to fulfill these predictions, God permitted the Babylonians to rebel against Darius, and by that means to draw upon themselves the whole force of the Persian empire: and they themselves were the first in putting these prophecies in execution, by destroying a great number of their own people, as will be seen presently. It is probable, that the Jews, of whom a considerable number remained at Babylon, went out of the city, before the siege was formed, as the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had exhorted them long before, and Zechariah very lately, in the following terms: Thou Sion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon, flee from the country, and save thyself.
No sooner was Darius in possession of Babylon, but he ordered the hundred gates to be pulled down, and all the walls of that proud city to be entirely demolished, that she might never be in a condition to rebel more against him, and in order to hinder the depopulation of the city, he caused fifty thousand women to be brought from the several provinces of his empire, to supply the place of those, which the inhabitants had so cruelly destroyed at the beginning of the siege. Such was the fate of Babylon; and thus did God execute his vengeance on that impious city, for the cruelty she has exercised towards the Jews, in falling upon a free people without any reason or provocation; in destroying their government, laws and worship; in forcing them from their country, and transporting them to a strange land; where they imposed a most grievous yoke of servitude upon them, and made use of all their power to crush and afflict an unhappy nation.
