Isaiah’s Babylon category consists of the wicked of the world who are chronic evildoers. Their state is comparable to persons whose iniquity is full. Unlike “sins” people commit—of which they may repent and be forgiven of God—“iniquities” are dysfunctional patterns that are often generational. Repenting of them and reversing their cursed effects can be difficult.
Both Babylon and Perdition are levels of descent people choose by breaking God’s laws and refusing to repent. Idolatry, arrogance, apostasy, immorality, injustices, oppression, and rebellion against God characterize the Babylon category. Averse to God and what is of God, its adherents perceive good as evil and evil as good, light as darkness and darkness as light.
Babylon’s materialistic socio-economic system—based on the manufacture, promotion, and sale of idols, the “works of men’s hands”—collapses in God’s Day of Judgment. Men’s pride, worldly wealth, technical achievements, licentious lifestyles, and hedonistic behavior lead to God’s intervening to restore justice on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the world.
Isaiah 44:9–11All who manufacture idols are deranged; the things they cherish profit nothing. Those who promote them are themselves sightless and mindless, to their own dismay. Who would fashion a god or cast an idol that cannot benefit them? Their whole society is confused; their fabricators are mere mortals.
Isaiah 47:10–11By your skill and science you were led astray, thinking to yourself, I exist, and there is nothing besides me! Catastrophe shall overtake you, which you shall not know how to avert by bribes; disaster shall befall you from which you cannot ransom yourself: there shall come upon you sudden ruin such as you have not imagined.
Isaiah 57:12–13I will expose your fornication and the wantonness of your exploits. When you cry out in distress, let those who flock to you save you! A wind shall carry all of them off; a vapor shall take them away.
Many of God’s end-time people ultimately form a part of Isaiah’s Babylon category as they wallow in sins and ripen in iniquity. When God’s blessings that followed on the heels of their righteousness turn into curses on the heels of their wickedness, their condition turns worse than if they had never known God. Their fate, therefore, is that of Babylon as a whole.
Isaiah 1:4Alas, a nation astray, a people weighed down by sin, the offspring of wrongdoers, perverse children: they have forsaken Jehovah, they have spurned the Holy One of Israel, they have lapsed into apostasy.
Isaiah 59:13Willfully denying Jehovah, backing away from following our God, perversely planning ways of extortion, conceiving in the mind and pondering illicit transactions.
Isaiah 65:11–12You who forsake Jehovah and forget my holy mountain, who spread tables for Luck and pour mixed wines for Fortune, I will destine you to the sword; all of you shall succumb to the slaughter. For when I called, you did not respond; when I spoke, you would not give heed. You did what was evil in my eyes; you chose to do what was not my will.
Isaiah 3:9The look on their faces betrays them: they flaunt their sin like Sodom; they cannot hide it. Woe to their souls; they have brought disaster upon themselves!
As God destroyed the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sodomy and injustices with a hail of fire and brimstone, so in like manner he destroys end-time Babylon. Nothing is left of its human institutions that sought to displace God in the world. God had destined a new, millennial civilization grounded in his covenants to arise from Babylon’s ashes.
Isaiah 1:28Criminals and sinners shall be altogether shattered when those who forsake Jehovah are annihilated.
Isaiah 14:22–23I will cut off Babylon’s name and remnant, its offspring and descendants, says Jehovah. I will turn it into swamplands, a haunt for ravens; I will sweep it with the broom of destruction.
Isaiah 13:19And Babylon, the most splendid of kingdoms, the glory and pride of Chaldeans, shall be [thrown down] as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.