Babylon’s Desolation Foretold

However, Babylon’s excessive cruelty to Jehovah’s people would not go unpunished. Through Jeremiah, God had said: “And I will pay back to Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their badness that they have committed in Zion before the eyes of you people.” And through Isaiah he had foretold: “I am arousing against them the Medes.”​—Jeremiah 51:24; Isaiah 13:17.

Some two centuries in advance, Jehovah even gave the name of the leader who would bring Babylon down and liberate His people​—Cyrus, known also as Cyrus the Great. The prophecy about Cyrus said there would be open “before him the two-leaved doors, so that even the gates will not be shut.” (Isaiah 44:26–45:1)

In the course of time, however, the prophecy was fulfilled: “And Babylon, the decoration of kingdoms, the beauty of the pride of the Chaldeans, must become as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. She will never be inhabited.”​—Isaiah 13:19, 20.

Today, mighty Babylon is nothing but dusty piles of stones, ruins in a wasteland​—a silent and eloquent testimony to the unfailing accuracy of Jehovah’s prophetic Word.​—Jeremiah 51:36, 37.

Many years in advance, the prophet Jeremiah had written a graphic description of Babylon’s fall: “The mighty men of Babylon have ceased to fight. . . . One runner runs to meet another runner, and one reporter to meet another reporter, to report to the king of Babylon that his city has been captured at every end, and that the fords themselves have been seized, and the papyrus boats they have burned with fire.”​—Jeremiah 51:30-32.

The Nabonidus Chronicle, now in the British Museum, confirms this description. It says that “the army of Cyrus entered Babylon without battle.”