Babylon Is Fallen — Isaiah 13, 21, and 23

The burdens open on an empire and close on a market. Babylon is power, Tyre is money, and John saw them fused into one city. The Lord tells us to leave it — and then tells us not to run.

Why a Dead Empire Is in the Doctrine and Covenants

Most readers skim the “burdens” of Isaiah 13–23 as ancient politics. What could Tyre have to do with me? The Lord answers in the preface to the Doctrine and Covenants, speaking of people who walk after a god “whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall” (D&C 1:16). And He defines the word: “the midst of wickedness, which is spiritual Babylon” (D&C 133:14). Babylon never left. It is the world.

Isaiah is the king of double reference, and double meaning, as we saw with Lucifer in Isaiah 14, and the manual says so here: “when Isaiah speaks of Babylon he refers to both the empire of that name and spiritual Babylon” (OT Student Manual, 14-2). Where do the burdens begin and end? They open on Babylon, the empire (13:1), and they close on Tyre, the market (23:1), with Babylon’s fall announced between (21:9).

A Banner on the High Mountain

The burden opens with a flag: “Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain” (Isaiah 13:2–5), the same ensign Isaiah raised in chapters 5 and 11. Who answers it? “I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones.” The manual reads the latter-day side plainly: the call is for “the Saints of the latter days, to gather together and join with God in overthrowing wickedness (Babylon) from the world” (14-2).

Now compare verse 3 with the copy Nephi carried out of Jerusalem. The King James: “my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.” Nephi: “my mighty ones, for mine anger is not upon them that rejoice in my highness” (2 Nephi 23:3). In one text the sanctified carry out the wrath; in the other they are spared it. Verse 15 changes too, from “every one that is found” to “every one that is proud,” and the last verse runs on after the King James stops. Set the ends of Nephi’s chapter side by side:

2 Nephi 23 — our arrangement

A  (v. 3) “for mine anger is not upon them that rejoice in my highness”

B  (v. 15) “every one that is proud shall be thrust through”

B′  (v. 22) “but the wicked shall perish”

A′  (v. 22) “for I will be merciful unto my people”

None of these four readings is in the King James. Nephi’s chapter of doom opens and closes with the Lord sparing His own.

Why does it matter? Because a reader who meets Isaiah 13 cold comes away afraid, and Nephi’s text tells him who is safe: “For I will destroy her speedily; yea, for I will be merciful unto my people, but the wicked shall perish” (2 Nephi 23:22). More on Nephi’s Isaiah is in The Book of Mormon and Isaiah.

Sun, Moon, and Stars Go Dark

Isaiah 13:10 — synonymous parallelism

For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light:

the sun shall be darkened in his going forth,

and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

Three lights, one thought, said three times.

Was this only about Babylon? The rest of scripture will not let it stay there. Joel saw the same darkness (Joel 2:31), Christ placed it “immediately after the tribulation of those days” (Matthew 24:29), and the Lord repeated it in our dispensation (D&C 45:42). Isaiah’s night is still AHEAD of us.

In the middle of the darkness comes one line of light: “I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir” (13:12). The manual reads it both ways at once — the righteous become as rare as gold, and each one is worth more than all of it (14-7).

And what does God send against the richest city on earth? “I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it” (13:17). You cannot buy them off. God values a man above gold, Babylon values gold above a man, and Babylon loses.

Then the verdict on the city: “It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation” (13:19–22). It was NOT a safe guess. When Isaiah wrote, Babylon was only a province under Assyria, and cities are hard to kill — Jerusalem, Damascus, and Jericho still stand. Babylon did not die in a night, either. After Cyrus took it, the manual says, “Babylon steadily declined,” and “by the first century after Christ it lay deserted and in ruins, and so it has remained” (14-10). Spiritual Babylon gets the same end on a faster clock — in John’s words, “in one hour.”

Watchman, What of the Night?

Chapter 21, “the burden of the desert of the sea,” is Babylon again (21:9). Most readers pass this by: Isaiah sees his enemy fall, and it hurts him. “Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth… My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me” (21:3–4). Where have we heard that simile? In 13:8, where the King James gives the same birth pangs to Babylon: “they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth” (Nephi’s copy lacks that line). The pangs promised to the enemy come upon the prophet. Did Babylon deserve it? Yes. Did Isaiah enjoy it? NO. The Lord who has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11) gave His prophet a heart like His own. So a watchman is set on the tower, and when the chariots come he cries out:

Isaiah 21:9 — the cry John repeated

Isaiah: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken”

John: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city” (Rev. 14:8)

John: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen” (Rev. 18:2)

The doubled word is Isaiah’s; John takes it whole. And her gods fall with her — where D&C 1:16 said the idol would perish.

Next comes the shortest burden in Isaiah: “The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come” (21:11–12). Seir is Edom, and Dumah means “silence,” a play on Edom’s name (commentaries at Bible Hub). A voice out of the silence asks, twice, how long the dark will last.

An honest answer: morning for some, night for others. And it ends in an invitation. A watchman never predicts the hour; he warns and calls people home: “thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me” (Ezekiel 33:7). We still have watchmen on the tower, and we sustain them as prophets, seers, and revelators.

Tyre, Whose Merchants Are Princes

Isaiah’s last burden goes to a harbor. “Howl, ye ships of Tarshish” (23:1). Tyre is “a mart of nations,” “the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth” (23:3, 8). The manual explains why the burdens end here: “Even though Babylon would have possession of the world’s imperial power in the near future, Tyre had control of, and was the commercial center of, that contemporary world” (14-41). Babylon is the sword. Tyre is the purse. Now read Revelation 17–18 with Isaiah open beside it. John’s Babylon has merchants and sailors and a harlot who sleeps with kings — Tyre’s features, not Babylon’s. The words show it:

Our student manual draws the same lines (14-43, 14-44). The world is a throne that crushes and a market that flatters, and in the last days John saw them as ONE city. Most of us will never be tempted to bow to a tyrant, but nearly all of us are tempted to shop.

Holiness to the Lord, Written on the Profits

Tyre is forgotten “seventy years” and then goes back to her trade (23:15–17); what the seventy years stand for is not certain. The last verse of the burdens, though, is plain.

Isaiah 23:18

“And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.”

Where else is “holiness to the Lord” written? On the plate of pure gold on the high priest’s forehead (Exodus 28:36). Isaiah writes it over the ledger of the most commercial city on earth. The Lord does NOT tell Tyre to stop trading. He tells her where the profit goes: not hoarded, but given to the Lord’s people so they can “eat sufficiently.” That is the law of consecration, where each steward keeps “as much as is sufficient for himself and family” so “that every man who has need may be amply supplied” (D&C 42:30–33; see Consecration).

And the ships? In chapter 23 they howl. By chapter 60 “the ships of Tarshish first” are sailing to Zion “to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God” (Isaiah 60:9). Same fleet, new cargo. Babylon’s fall is final; Tyre’s wealth is redeemed, “put to proper use in building the kingdom of Jehovah” (manual, 14-44).

Key References — Isaiah 13, 21, and 23

• 2 Nephi 23 — Isaiah 13 as Nephi copied it; compare verses 3, 15, and 22.
• Revelation 18 — the merchants and shipmasters weep for the fallen city.
• D&C 133:4–15 — how to go.

Leaving Babylon Without Leaving Town

“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins” (Revelation 18:4). “Go ye out from Babylon. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord” (D&C 133:5), echoing Isaiah 52:11. So where do we go? Babylon is in EVERY city now, and in every pocket, and no Saint can buy a ticket out of it. The same section also says “let not your flight be in haste” (133:15). The Savior prayed for exactly this: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15–16). We leave Babylon the way Tyre was redeemed — by changing what our work is FOR.

Elder D. Todd Christofferson said it plainly: “Recalling Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s phrase, let us once and for all establish our residence in Zion and give up the summer cottage in Babylon” (“Come to Zion,” October 2008). Few of us move to Babylon. We just keep a place there.

The empire of chapter 13 says a person is worth what he can take, and God says a man is worth more than the gold of Ophir. The market of chapter 23 says lay it up, and God says let it feed someone. Every idol waxes old and will perish in Babylon, while the watchman is still calling out of the night that the morning cometh. Return. Come.

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