53 Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall destroyers come to her, says Yahweh.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The Prophet again teaches us, that however impregnable Babylon might be, there was yet no reason to fear but that God would be its judge; for it is by no means right to measure his power by our thoughts. And nothing does more hinder or prevent us from embracing the promises of God, than to think of what may be done naturally, or of what is probable. When, therefore, we thus consult our own thoughts, we exclude the power of God, which is superior to all the means that may be used. Hence the Prophet says here, that though Babylon ascended above the heavens, and in the height fortified strength for itself, yet from me, he says, shall come wasters to it [1] There is to be understood here a contrast between God and men; for if there be a contest between men, they fight one with another; but the way of God is different, for he can thunder from heaven, and thus lay prostrate the highest mountains. We now, then, perceive the purpose of the Prophet by saying, that desolators would come from God to destroy Babylon, were it to ascend above the clouds. It follows, --
1 - The idea seems to be, if Babylon ascended the heavens, or the skies, and fortified there a high place for her strength, yet to this place desolators would come, -- Though Babylon mounted the skies, And though she fortified the height as her strength, From me would come to her destroyers, saith Jehovah. -- Ed
Though Babylon should mount up to heaven - Though it were fortified even to the skies, it shall fall by the enemies that I will send against it.
Though Babylon should mount up to (g) heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, [yet] from me shall spoilers come to her, saith the LORD.
(g) For the walls were two hundred feet high.
Though Babylon should mount up to heaven,.... Could the walls of it, which were very high, two hundred cubits high, as Herodotus (p) says, be carried up as high as heaven; or the towers of it, which were exceeding high, ten foot higher than the walls, as Curtius (q) says, likewise be raised to the same height:
and though she should fortify the height of her strength: make her walls and towers as strong as they were high; unless this is to be understood particularly of the temple of Bel, in which was a solid tower, in length and thickness about six hundred and sixty feet; and upon this tower another; and so on to the number of eight, towers; and in the last of them a large temple, as the above historian (r) relates: but if these towers could have been piled up in a greater number, even so as to reach to heaven, it would have availed nothing against the God of heaven, to secure from his vengeance. The Targum is,
"if Babylon should be built with buildings as high as heaven, and should fortify the strong holds on high:''
yet from me shall spoilers come, saith the Lord; the Medes and Persians, sent and commissioned by him, who would pull down and destroy her walls and towers, be they ever so high and strong.
(p) L. 1. sive Clio, c. 178. (q) Hist. l. 5. c. 1. (r) Herodot. l. 1. c. 181.
We are not to measure God's power by what seems to our perceptions natural or probable. Compare Obadiah 1:4 as to Edom (Amos 9:2).
Babylon shall by no means escape punishment. Even though it mounted up to heaven (cf. Job 20:6; there may, at the same time, be an allusion to Isaiah 14:12, and possibly also to the tower at Babylon), and תּבצּר, "cut off (i.e., made inaccessible) the height of its strength," i.e., the height in which its strength consists, its lofty wall of defence (probably an allusion to the lofty walls of Babylon; see on Jeremiah 51:58), yet destroyers are to come against it from Jahveh.
*More commentary available at chapter level.