Babylon. An ancient Mesopotamian city on the lower Euphrates River. At the time of Abraham's migration to Canaan, Babylon was the capital of the Babylonian empire, of which Hammaurabi, of about that time, was the most outstanding emperor. The area around Babylon is called Shinar in Genesis. Nebuchadnezzar, a Chaldean emperor of the sixth century B.C., rebuilt Babylon and made it his capital. When he captured Jerusalem, the Judeans were taken captive to Babylon and surrounding towns. 2 Kings, chs. 24 and 25; Matt. 1:11. Cyrus took Babylon from the Chaldeans and founded the Persian empire, in which Bablonia was a province. Ezra 7:16. Babylon in 1 Peter 5:13 and Rev. 14:8 is a code word for Rome.

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Babylon (from Akkadian babili, ‘the gate of the god’), the Akkadian name of a Mesopotamian city. In the Hebrew Bible, Babylon (Heb. bavel) refers both to Babylonia and Babylon, the region and its capital. Babylon covered over two thousand acres, making it one of the largest ancient Mesopotamian sites. It is located along the Euphrates River in the area where it most closely approaches the Tigris River, in what is now Iraq. Its location at the northern end of the Euphrates flood plain gave Babylon potential control of major trade routes.

The German archaeologist Robert Koldewey conducted excavations at Babylon between 1899 and 1917. The Iraq Directorate General of Antiquities began further excavation and restoration in 1958.

Babylonia has supported settled life from as early as the sixth millennium b.c. Babylon is first mentioned in a date formula of the Sargonic king Shar-kali-sharri (2217-2193 b.c.). By this time, there were already two temples on the site.

Under Hammurabi: The city achieved little notoriety, however, until the nineteenth century b.c., when the Amorites, under Sumu-abum, founded their dynasty at Babylon. The previously weak political position of Babylon strengthened during the reign of that city’s and dynasty’s most famous king, Hammurabi (1792-1750 b.c.). The influence of Babylon spread to the Palestine region; Hammurabi had ambassadors residing at Hazor. Hammurabi’s political acumen and charismatic personality enabled him to unify Babylonia, which had heretofore been dotted with independent petty states. Several generations later, in 1595 b.c., his successors lost the city when the Hittites, under Murshili I, sacked Babylon.

The social and cultural climate in Babylon at the time of the Amorite dynasty laid the foundation for spectacular cultural developments. The Law Code of Hammurabi, formulated in conditional clauses, contributed the principle of lex talionis, the law of exact retributions. This is expressed in the biblical legal material (Exod. 21:23-25), although its force is qualified by the subsequent formulations that call for the liberation of a slave to compensate for the loss of an eye or tooth (Exod. 21:26-27).

Another legal development in Babylonia at this time was the oral promulgation of acts of justice (Akkadian mesharum), which were designed to alleviate short-term social and economic ills. In the Bible this institution is preserved (Heb. mesharim) in Pss. 9:9; 58:2; 75:3; 96:10; 98:9; and 99:4.

The scribal school flourished during this Old Babylonian period and gave rise to Babylon’s claim to being a literary and scholarly center. Its voluminous output was no less important than the longevity of the school. The latest known cuneiform text, dated to a.d. 79, is from Babylon. Scribes in this city, along with those in Uruk, employed the cumbersome cuneiform writing system long after alphabetic scripts had taken hold throughout the Near East. At the end of the first millennium b.c., the scribal school at Babylon produced almost exclusively astronomical and astrological reports. The biblical tradition was aware of this and Isaiah (47:13) reported on astrological readings there.

Succeeding Dynasties and Kings: During the still poorly understood Kassite dynasty (ca. 1570-1150 b.c.), Babylon conducted extensive trade with Egypt during Egypt’s Amarna Age. Documents treating the relations between these two regions have been recovered at either end of the Fertile Crescent. Dynastic marriages, such as those between Solomon and Egyptian princesses (1 Kings 9:16), occurred between ruling houses of Egypt and Babylonia.

Babylon did not experience another golden age until the reign of Nabonassar (747-734 b.c.). This period was so significant that the Babylonian Chronicle (a contemporary historical record) began its account with it and later Ptolemaic records assign an exact date and time to its beginning. It is a period marked by a curious blend of cultural achievement and political unrest, a time in which the fortunes of the Israelite nation are intertwined with those of Mesopotamia.

Tiglath-pileser III reigned as king of Assyria from 744-727 b.c. and simultaneously as regent of Babylonia from 728-727 b.c. Known in the Hebrew Bible as Pul, he collected tribute from Menahem of Israel (2 Kings 15:19) and carried off captives from the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh (1 Chron. 5:26). Isaiah (66:19) includes Pul among the rulers to whom God will send a sign of his glory.

During the less glorious reign of his successor, Shalmaneser V (726-722 b.c.), events with great ramifications for the biblical world occurred. Shalmaneser V besieged King Hoshea in Samaria after the Israelite king engaged in intrigue with Egypt against the Babylonian king (2 Kings 18:9-10). Shalmaneser died before the siege of Samaria was completed; credit for this task is claimed by his successor, Sargon II (722-705 b.c.). 2 Kings 18:10-11 records the completion of this siege, although it does not mention Sargon. The author’s understanding of the fine points of the chronology seems to have been confused.

Sennacherib, who reigned as king of Assyria (704-681 b.c.) and of Babylon (704-703 b.c.), attempted to take Jerusalem from Hezekiah but failed. He received Temple treasures as tribute but was forced to retreat to Nineveh.

Merodach-Baladan II (721-710 and 703 b.c.) sent envoys to Jerusalem, after which the prophet Isaiah warned that all that was in Hezekiah’s house would be carried to Babylon (2 Kings 20:12). In 2 Kings 20:12 this Babylonian king is rightly called Merodach-Baladan; but in Isa. 39:1, he is called Berodach-Baladan.

The next major contact between Babylon and the biblical kings came during the reign of the Babylonian Nebuchadrezzar II (605-562 b.c.). He carried King Jehoiachin of Judah and his family into exile. Records from the palace in Babylon list the rations the Israelite monarch and his family received. Nebuchadrezzar installed Jehoiachin’s uncle, Zedekiah, as governor of Jerusalem. When Zedekiah rebelled, Nebuchadrezzar laid siege to the city, destroyed the Temple and carried the remnant of the population off to exile in Babylonia (2 Kings 24:10-25:21).

In the Mesopotamian record, Nebuchadrezzar is remembered for his expansion and restoration of Babylon. Three palaces date to this time period. The Southern Palace, Nebuchadrezzar’s principal palace, may have been the site of Belshazzar’s feast (Daniel 5). The inner city was divided by a magnificent processional way. At one end stood the Ishtar Gate, decorated wth glazed bricks. The hanging gardens of Babylon were also the creation of Nebuchadrezzar. After these, the most famous architectural remain in Babylon was the ziggurat to Marduk who was there called Entemenanki, Akkadian ‘the lord of the foundation of heaven and earth.’ Such a stepped tower may have been the prototype for the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:9). In Genesis the city’s name is said to derive from the Hebrew verb balal, ‘to confuse,’ thus connecting the city of Babylon with the story of the confusion of tongues. There is only one additional reference to Babylon in the Pentateuch: in Gen. 10:10, it is included among the cities in the kingdom of Nimrod.

Political intrigue and domestic unrest plagued Babylonia again. The final Babylonian king, Nabonidus (555-539), exhibited personality flaws severe enough to receive mention in Daniel 4, although there they are ascribed to Nebuchadrezzar. Nabonidus absented himself from Babylon at the time of the New Year’s Feast, making its observance impossible, and sequestered himself for ten years in the Arabian caravan city of Teima. A Qumran fragment speaks of this incident.

The weakening of Babylonia left the door open for rule by a new, non-Mesopotamian dynasty. The Persian or Achaemenid dynasty, of which Cyrus (538-530 b.c.) was the first important ruler, restored not only the fortunes of Babylon, but of the cities and regions Babylon had conquered. In 538, Cyrus granted permission for the Jews exiled in Babylonia to return to Jerusalem. Among the Jewish community Cyrus enjoyed a good reputation. Isaiah called him God’s anointed (45:1). Restoration of the Temple was interrupted and not resumed until the reign of the Achaemenid king Darius I (522-486 b.c.).

The Jewish Community in Babylon: In Babylonia, the exilic and postexilic Jewish community developed its own character and left a legacy still felt today. It is clear that the community felt the burden of its position (Ps. 137), but they had the resources to overcome this hardship. Jeremiah strongly encouraged the participation of the Jewish population in the commercial, agricultural, and cultural life of Babylonia. He depicts the well-being of the community (Jer. 29:7).

The prophetic writings in the Bible, heavily concerned with the exilic experience, naturally present several viewpoints about Babylon. In oracles against Babylon, the city is seen as the instrument of divine judgment against Judah. Babylon itself is brought for judgment in Jer. 51:59-64. The mixed feelings toward Babylon and the Exile are seen in the fact that the writings of Ezekiel contain no anti-Babylon strands.

Babylon continued to figure prominently in world and Jewish history. Alexander the Great died there in 323 b.c.

The increasingly powerful and independent Jewish community of Babylonia separated itself from events in Palestine. Following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple (a.d. 70), Babylonian financial support of the Palestinian community stopped. Babylonia’s Jews supported neither the war against Rome (a.d. 66-70), nor the Bar-Kochba revolt of a.d. 132-135. It was in Babylon during the subsequent centuries that many of the legal and religious institutions of Judaism developed. The massive Babylonian Talmud is witness and monument to the legal and biblical issues discussed in the academies, to the theological concerns and formulations of the rabbis, and to the folkways and beliefs of the common people. This major Jewish center thrived for centuries, only to be eclipsed with the fall of the Bagdad Caliphate in the eleventh century.

Parts of the city of Babylon itself lay in ruins sometime in the second century a.d., as evidenced by the reports of the satirist Lucian of Samosata.

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