Part 2 (2/2)
”He will make an utter end of the place thereof.” ”The palace shall be dissolved [”molten,” margin].” ”She is empty, and void, and waste.”
Nahum 1:8; 2:6, 10. ”How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!” Zeph. 2:15.
The Medes and the Babylonians overthrew Nineveh. The king immolated himself in his burning (”molten”) palace. Nineveh became a desolation.
Describing a battle that took place there in the seventh century of our era, between the Romans and the Persians, the historian Gibbon bears testimony to the fact that it has indeed become ”empty, and void, and waste:”
”Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected: the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long since disappeared; the vacant place afforded a s.p.a.cious field for the operations of the two armies.”--_”The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” chap. 46, par. 24._
And to this day, the site of Nineveh is pointed out across the river from Mosul, only mounds of ruins, these almost obliterated by the drifting sands of centuries. The word spoken is fulfilled, though at the time it was spoken it little seemed to proud and prosperous Nineveh that such a fate could ever be hers.
”Before me rise the walls Of the t.i.tanic city,--brazen gates, Towers, temples, palaces enormous piled,-- Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen!
In all her golden pomp I see her now, Her swarming streets, her splendid festivals.
”Again I look,--and lo!...
Her walls are gone, her palaces are dust,-- The desert is around her, and within Like shadows have the mighty pa.s.sed away.”
From Nineveh's mounds we seem to hear a voice that says: ”All flesh is as gra.s.s, and all the glory of man as the flower of gra.s.s. The gra.s.s withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever.” 1 Peter 1:24, 25.
The Burden of Tyre
[Ill.u.s.tration: TYRE BY THE SEA
”They shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers.” Eze.
26:4.]
Tyre was the greatest maritime city of antiquity. Its inhabitants, the Phoenicians, traded in the ports of all the known world. Ezekiel describes the heart of the seas as its borders. ”Thy builders have perfected thy beauty,” he says. He tells how all countries traded in its marts and contributed to its wealth. And then, obeying the word of the Lord, the prophet bears a message of rebuke and warning,--”the burden of Tyre,”--and p.r.o.nounces the coming judgment:
”Thus saith the Lord G.o.d: Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee.... And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also sc.r.a.pe her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord G.o.d.” Eze. 26:3-5.
The accounts of travelers bear witness that the prophecy has been fulfilled. As to the site of the island city of Ezekiel's day, Bruce, nearly a century ago, said that he found it a ”rock whereon fishers dry their nets.” (See ”Keith on the Prophecies,” p. 329.)
In more recent times, Dr. W.M. Thomson found the whole region of Tyre suggestive only of departed glory:
”There is nothing here, certainly, of that which led Joshua to call it 'the strong city' more than three thousand years ago (Joshua 19:29),--nothing of that mighty metropolis which baffled the proud Nebuchadnezzar and all his power for thirteen years, until 'every head' in his army 'was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled,' in the hard service against Tyrus (Eze.
29:18),--nothing in this wretched roadstead and empty harbor to remind one of the times when merry mariners did sing in her markets--no visible trace of those towering ramparts which so long resisted the utmost efforts of the great Alexander. All have vanished utterly like a troubled dream, and Tyre has sunk under the burden of prophecy.... As she is now, and has long been, Tyre is G.o.d's witness; but great, powerful, and populous, she would be the infidel's boast. This, however, she cannot be.
Tyre will never rise from her dust to falsify the voice of prophecy.
”Dim is her glory, gone her fame, Her boasted wealth has fled; On her proud rock, alas! her shame, The fisher's net is spread.
The Tyrian harp has slumbered long, And Tyria's mirth is low; The timbrel, dulcimer, and song Are hushed, or wake to woe.”
--_”The Land and the Book,” Vol. II, pp. 626, 627._
The Desolation of Babylon
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