The Promise of Return and the Fall of Babylon

…remained hard and disobedient, and lived a loathsome and utterly lawless life. So the God of all, in His wise ordering, after the blow and the scourges and the things that had befallen them at the hands of their enemies from time to time, foretells also things most pleasant and able to gladden them. He promises that He will bring back home even those already taken captive, will release them from the bonds of their misery, and will hand over to their enemies those very people who had once conquered them.

For it was surely very likely that, even if they had stayed uncorrected by the earlier things, they would at least now be delighted by the later ones, take wing toward the hope of what they longed for, and choose from then on to honour the worship dearest to God and keep their mind unshaken toward Him.

Many had sacked the land of the Jews at various times, but the harshest and fiercest of all were above all the Chaldeans and those who reigned over Babylon in their turn. So the word of prophecy leaps on them first, as it were, and says: “Raise a signal on a mountain of the plain” (Isaiah 13:2).

Since we have chosen to give an exact account in interpreting the passage before us, I think we must first relate some of the most necessary facts. Cyrus, then, son of Cambyses by his father and of Mandane by his mother, who reigned over the Persians and the Medes, marched against Babylon and against the whole land of the Chaldeans, which was wide and very large, and he conquered it.

He did not take it by his own forces, nor because he could use a stronger hand, for the Chaldean nation was unbeatable and without rival because of its numbers and its thorough training in warfare. Rather, God put his opponents under him and shook down the ungodly power of the Babylonians. He did this because sorcery abounded among them beyond measure and the swarm of their idols was past counting. Indeed, it has been called “the land of carved images” (Jeremiah 50:38), either because of the multitude of idols or because each of those who lived there was found to differ in no way from an idol, I mean in turning aside to error without check or restraint.

Besides this, He did it because they laid waste the holy land allotted to God, that is, Judaea, burned Jerusalem and the divine temple itself, carried off the sacred vessels to their own land, and in unrestrained fury killed Israel, though it was called a holy people, the portion and lot of God. That God handed Israel over into the hands of enemies when it worshipped idols is not unclear to those who know the sacred writings; but they punished him beyond measure…