Babylon, and save every man his life: be not cut off in her iniquity. . . . My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and save yourselves every man from the fierce anger of Jehovah"
(Jer. H. 6, 45).
This also had a primary, though only a partial, reference to the time in which the prophet wrote his visions. Though a remnant had returned, by far the greater number were still in the land to which they had been exiled. Some of them had grown rich and prosperous in the strange land. Their love for Jerusalem and all that it stood for had cooled down, and they were content to become dwellers " with the daughter of Babylon." They were reluctant to leave their comfortable homes and vineyards (which they had indeed been encouraged to build and to plant, but only as temporary possessions during the seventy years of the Captivity, Jer. xxix.) for the rough journey and hard life in the desolated land.
And so they are exhorted to flee out of Babylon, not only because of the goodness of the Lord which is to be shown to His people in their own land, but because of the evil which was about to overtake the country of their sojourn, and the calamities which would come on its people, occasioned probably by the two great rebellions in Baby lonia, and the t\vo captures of the city of Babylon one by Darius in person, and the other by one of his generals which had just taken place when the prophet wrote his visions.[1]
At the same time, this call to come out of the Babylon
- ↑ An account of these events is given in the great inscription of Darius cut into the rock at Behistun, which was discovered by Sir H. Rawlinson, and supposed by him to have been made in the fifth year of the reign of Darius, i.e., about three years before Zechariah's visions. The first of these rebellions was that of Nadinta-belus, or Nidantabel, as it is in the Median text. He pretended to be Nebuchadnezzar, raised a powerful army and fought a pitched battle, in which he was utterly routed and slain after the capture of Babylon. The second rebellion was that of Aracus (Arakua), who also became King of Babylon on the same pretence (of being Nebuchadnezzar); but who was afterwards defeated by Nitaphernes and crucified. Sir H. Rawlinson's translations of the Behistun inscription will be found in Records of the Past, vol. i.; and the translation of the Median text by Dr. Oppert, in Records of the Past, vol. ii.
