Zion Will Replace Babylon - Second Book of Nephi, Chapter Twenty-Four (2 Nephi 24 and Isaiah 14)

You can read the entire chapter at the following links: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/24?lang=eng and https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/isa/14?lang=eng.

Isaiah continues the basic theme from the previous chapter: Babylon the oppressor will have the tables turned on it, and the people of Israel and the strangers (or Gentiles) who join them and help their cause will return to Israel’s lands of promise (verses 1-2). Isaiah describes the ultimate hollowness of earthly power by referring to the king of Babylon (probably Nebuchadnezzar) as yet another petty tyrant whose “pomp is brought down to the grave” (verse 11). What is even more shameful for Nebuchadnezzar, because of the eventual desolation of Babylon discussed from the previous chapter, he can’t even fall back on the glory of a royal tomb, as most other kings can (verses 18-19).

Isaiah then makes the parallel between Babylon and more general worldly wickedness explicit by providing the only specific reference found in the Book of Mormon (or Bible, for that matter) to Lucifer—though Lucifer is referred to as the devil or by other names in other places. The reference seems to explore the common features shared by Lucifer and Babylon’s king. Both had promise that was grievously wasted. Lucifer fell from heaven and Babylon lost its worldly dominions because they both are guilty of the sin of pride (verses 12-15). They—very wrongly—think they can somehow outdo God, and in their vain attempts to do this their selfishness tramples on other people’s lives and salvation.

As the chapter continues, Isaiah shows that Babylon is a symbol for all the kingdoms who have scourged the people of Israel. He mentions Assyria (verse 25) and the Philistines (verses 29-31) in particular because of the struggles the kingdom of Judah (Isaiah’s people) had with these two adversaries.

In the later years of Isaiah’s service as a prophet, around 701 B.C., King Hezekiah and Jerusalem seem to face certain destruction at the hand of Sennacherib, king of Assyria. Sennacherib amasses great numbers of men to besiege the people of Judah. But the famous quote from Hezekiah, “there be more with us than with him,” (2 Chronicles 32:7) is proven true when, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy here (and his more detailed prophecies closer in to the event), an angel of the Lord kills in one night 185,000 Assyrians camped out around Jerusalem (the account is told in 2 Kings 19 and 2 Chronicles 32). Sennacherib retreats to Nineveh, and is then killed by two of his sons. (An excavated portion of the city wall that existed at this time can be seen today in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.)

(The Defeat of Sennacherib, Peter Paul Rubens, 1612)

The Philistines (famous from the story of David and Goliath) are local people who have been living in the coastal plain near the tribes of Israel for centuries. Through peculiarities of translation, they are referred to in this chapter as “Palestina.” Isaiah and the kings who rule during his time as a prophet experience a number of struggles with the Philistines, and an Assyrian king before Sennacherib brings the Philistines under captivity around 730-720 B.C.

In the final verse (32), Isaiah makes a statement that tidily connects the different events he has presented: “What shall then answer the messengers of the nations? That the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it.” So because the Lord is the guiding hand behind Zion, those who are poor (in this case humbly acknowledging the Lord’s preeminence in their lives) can trust that they have a solid foundation. How? Well, eventually the people of Israel will gain back their lands, which are associated with the term Zion. But history has shown that this is a very complicated process and perhaps not the main point of the prophecy. 

The deeper significance could be that there is a type of Zion identity that transcends physical place and time and lifts men and women above their ordinary views of themselves to a state of being that is much closer in approaching the Lord’s. So just as Babylon (meaning the wicked world) will fall, Zion (those who lift themselves out of the world as God’s) will rise.

Battling Babylon - Second Book of Nephi, Chapter Twenty-Three (2 Nephi 23 and Isaiah 13)

You can read the entire chapter at the following links: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/23?lang=eng and https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/isa/13?lang=eng.

In this chapter, Isaiah employs great and terrible poetic imagery in the service of a single, immutable truth. The unrepentant who reject the Lord out of their own pride and selfish desire will not be able to abide His presence. Period. It can sound very harsh. But the higher purpose is to help these people understand that they have a way to redemption by turning away from their sins through the Lord—and more specifically faith on the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

The scenario Isaiah uses here is the total destruction of Babylon and its inhabitants. To the people of Israel, and especially the kingdom of Judah, Babylon, as the conqueror of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., represents the means by which the Lord has rebuked them, as the capturer of Jerusalem. Isaiah apparently sees this almost 100 years in advance. Nephi transcribes this chapter for his people, who know of Babylon’s sacking of Jerusalem as something that has already taken place, and which they narrowly avoided in their divinely inspired flight from the original land of promise to another one in the New World.

Isaiah’s objective is to show that no one escapes justice, even and especially the nation that played a role in chastening the Lord’s covenant people. And history bears out his prophecy that “Babylon, the glory of kingdoms…shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited….But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there” (verses 19-21). After having showcased itself to the world as a center of culture and sophisticated learning, Babylon is overrun and subjugated by Persians and Medes (around 539 B.C.) and various other civilizations over the course of centuries. It steadily dwindles in importance and population, until by the year 500 A.D., it is completely abandoned to ruin and desolation.

But this is only one meaning of the Babylon Isaiah is referring to. The meaning that has greater relevance both for Nephi’s people in the Americas and for us today is Babylon as a symbol or metaphor for that part of the world that tries to behave as if God does not exist, and actively tries to destroy faith and righteousness in the world—recruiting others to join in their hollow, self-absorbed misery.

When we think of this larger meaning for Babylon, Isaiah’s passages begin to make better sense. He describes “the kingdoms of nations gathered together” from “the end of heaven” to “destroy the whole land” (verses 4-5) But this is not an extermination of people living in guiltless solitude. This is at the heart of the existential struggle between good and evil, and after God in His mercy has delayed the day of reckoning to give as many as possible a chance to come down on the right side, there will be resolution. As verse 11 reads, “And I will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay down the haughtiness of the terrible.”

Although we know that the Lord’s ways are right, we can’t help but cover or avert our virtual eyes as we take in the brutality of the scene Isaiah depicts for us. Every man’s heart shall melt (verse 7). Their faces shall be as flames (8). “Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished” (16). Those who represent the Lord will not be justified in meting out punishment that victimizes the innocent, but in some cases it appears as though the wicked of the world will get similar treatment from others that they had dispensed mercilessly at an earlier time.

On one level, the battle will take place as described. Many prophecies speak of climactic earthly battles as one of the precursors to Christ’s Second Coming and reign on earth. We see parallels between Isaiah’s words and the Apostle John’s account from the Book of Revelation (Revelation 6:13) of stars and sun and moon being darkened.

But on another level, the battle is within our own hearts and souls. If through faith and repentance we can cleanse ourselves from all desire to associate with Babylon, and turn ourselves fully over to the Lord, we join in His victory over sin. But to do so, we must be unsparing. No aspect of our conduct or introspection can escape scrutiny or be excused as “insignificant.” A latter-day apostle from our Church named Neal A. Maxwell once insightfully remarked that many of us claim our primary residence in Zion, but insist on keeping a summer home in Babylon.

My opinion is that this internal battle within our souls against Babylon is actually more real than any physical battle, because its outcome will be more lasting. And when we read in verse 4 that “the Lord of Hosts mustereth the hosts of the battle,” I believe it is possible that one reference is to the hosts of heaven, or in other words, angels who seek to influence us to choose good over the evil that Satan and his hosts would have us do.