NOTES for Isa 47:1-15
The image of perishing Babylon at the end of the exile was very relevant. Indeed, the fall of Babylonia and its capital was unexpected and very impressive. It was all the more unexpected because Babylon was a first-class fortress prepared for a long siege. Historians still debate the reasons for so rapid an end to this city, suggesting betrayal among its defenders. But in the postexilic period Babylon became a symbol of opposition to God, and it appears in precisely this sense both in the prophecies of Babylonian Isaiah and in the New Testament books, in particular in the Book of Revelation.
Of course, the Babylonian captivity contributed greatly to this reinterpretation of the image of Babylon. But the matter is not only that. It is also the imperial spirit that permeated the life of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom. And it is the spirit of modern civilization as such. Of course, Babylonian civilization is hard for us today to consider modern; for us it is antiquity. But it already bore within itself that spirit of self-assertion that is equally characteristic of all civilizations, ancient and modern. The point here is not even awareness of technical power or a sense of security, but the feeling of self-sufficiency. A person saturated with the spirit of civilization is convinced that he is protected from surprises and has the situation under control.
Of course, any technologies in any age can fail, but such a failure is perceived as an anomaly, as an emergency that can and must be eliminated, removed, and, as far as possible, prevented in the future. A person of civilization usually has no experience of his own dependence on higher powers. And if such an experience appears, it means the person has ceased to be a bearer of its spirit. This is why, and not because of any depravity or maliciousness of technologies in themselves, all great civilizations are doomed. God does not abandon the person, and sooner or later a moment inevitably comes when that person grows weary of civilization.
Historians have long noticed the phenomenon of a kind of fatigue of civilizations, psychological and social fatigue that accumulates in them over time, in much the same way that fatigue can accumulate in metal structures over time. But almost none of them has considered the spiritual causes of this fatigue of civilizations. Yet spiritual fatigue turns out to be the main cause of their fall: resistance to God, attempts to wall oneself off from Him, never end in anything good. This is always a road to nowhere. To historical nonbeing.