The Sabbath-School by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 35.

The Sabbath-School.

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

LESSON FOR THE PACIFIC COAST—OCT. 3.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream.

LAST week our lesson left us with Daniel about to relate and interpret the dream which had made so wonderful an impression on the mind of Nebuchadnezzar, who could not recall any portion of it. This week we have the dream itself, and a portion of the interpretation. Without the least hesitation, Daniel repeated the dream, which we quote entire.

"THOU, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth." Dan. 2: 31-35.

IN this dream, by these symbols, the Lord had shown Nebuchadnezzar what should be "in the latter days." Verse 28. Beginning with his own time, the history covered by this dream reaches to the end of time. This is shown by the fact that the four divisions of the image, marked by the four different metals, represented four empires, the last of which was to be dashed in pieces by the setting up of the everlasting kingdom of God, represented by the stone which smote the image. Verses 44, 45. Immediately after relating the dream, the prophet addressed the king as follows: "Thou, O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold." Verses 37, 38.

THESE verses are as plain a statement of fact as any in the Bible. Two things are told. First, that Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was represented by the head of gold, and second, that his empire was universal. The second item was of course well known to Nebuchadnezzar; the first must have riveted his attention. We say that the head of gold represented Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, because the prophet immediately adds, "And after thee shall arise another kingdom;" and the Babylonian empire did not give place to another until twenty-three years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar.

THE extent of the empire is indicated in verse 38: "Wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all." This means universal dominion. A few years later, the prophet Jeremiah bore testimony to the same effect. The kings of Tyre, Edom, Moab, etc., with Zedekiah, king of Israel, were contemplating a revolt from Babylonian rule. To show them the folly of such an attempt, the prophet, by the command of the Lord, sent messengers to them, saying, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Thus shall ye say unto your masters: I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him. And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son." Jer. 27: 4-7.

THIS language is not figurative nor hyperbolical. It is plain history, and is substantiated by the writings of profane historians. The "Encyclopedia Britannica," art. "Babylonia," after telling how Nabopolassar, ruler of the province of Babylonia, revolted from Assyrian rule, says:—

"The seat of empire was now transferred to the southern kingdom. Nabopolassar was followed in 604 by his son Nebuchadnezzar, whose long reign of forty-three years made Babylon the mistress of the world. The whole East was overrun by the armies of Chaldea, Egypt was invaded, and the city of the Euphrates left without a rival."

THE city of Babylon is described at great length by Rollin ("Ancient History," Vol. 1, book 3, chap. 1), and by Prideaux ("Connexion," Vol. 1, book 2). Our space, however, will allow us to give only the brief yet very clear description given by Herodotus, as quoted by Lenormant ("Ancient History of the East," Vol. 1, book 4, chap. 5, section 3). It is as follows:—

"The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width, and two hundred in height.

"And here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was wrought. As fast as they dug the moat, the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks, and when a sufficient number were completed, they baked the bricks in kilns. Thus they set to building, and began to brick the borders of the moat; after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber, facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the walls are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side posts. The bitumen used in the work was brought to Babylon from the Is, a small stream which flows into the Euphrates at the point where the city of the same name stands, eight days' journey from Babylon. Lumps of bitumen are found in great abundance in this river.

"The city is divided into two portions by the river, which runs through the midst of it. This river is the Euphrates, a broad, deep, swift stream, which rises in Armenia and empties itself into the Erythraean [Arabian] Sea. [The river does not flow directly into the Arabian Sea, but into the Persian Gulf.] The city wall is brought down on both sides to the edge of the stream; thence from the corners of the wall there is carried along each bank of the river, a fence of burnt bricks. The houses are mostly three and four stories high; the streets all run in straight lines, not only those parallel to the river, but also the cross streets which lead down to the water side. At the river end of these cross streets are low gates in the fence that skirts the stream, which are, like the great gates in the outer wall, of brass, and open on the water.

"The outer wall is the main defense of the city. There is, however, a second, inner wall, of less thickness than the first, but very little inferior to it in strength. The center of each division of the town was occupied by a fortress. In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size; in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus, a square inclosure, two furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass, which was also remaining in my time."

THE royal cubit was twenty-one inches. The reader will therefore see that the outer wall of the city was eighty-seven feet thick, and three hundred and fifty feet high. The city being divided into two parts by the Euphrates, the banks of which were protected by walls, the following means of passage was devised:—

"In each of these walls were twenty-five gates, corresponding to the number of the streets which gave upon the river; and outside each gate was a sloped landing-place, by which you could descend to the water's edge, if you had occasion to cross the river. Boats were kept ready at these landing-places to convey passengers from side to side; while for those who disliked this method of conveyance, a bridge was provided of a somewhat peculiar construction. A number of stone piers were erected in the bed of the stream, firmly clamped together with fastenings of iron and lead; wooden draw-bridges connected pier with pier during the day, and on these, passengers passed over; but at night they were withdrawn, in order that the bridge might not be used in the dark. Diodorus declares that besides this bridge, to which he assigns a length of five stades (about 1,000 yards), and a breadth of thirty feet, the two sides of the river were joined together by a tunnel, which was fifteen feet wide and twelve high to the spring of its arched roof."—Seven Great Monarchies (Rawlinson), Fourth Mon., chap. 4, par. 6.

THE public buildings of the city were on the same magnificent scale. Of one of them we read:—

"The most remarkable edifice in Babylon was the temple of Bel, now marked by the Babil on the northeast, as Professor Rawlinson has shown. It was a pyramid of eight square stages, the basement stage being over 200 yards each way. A winding ascent led to the summit, and the shrine, in which stood a golden image of Bel, forty feet high, two other statues of gold, a golden table forty feet long and fifteen feet broad, and many other colossal objects of the same precious material."—Encyclopedia Britannica, art. Babylon.

"THE great palace was a building of still larger dimensions than the great temple. According to Diodorus, it was situated within a triple inclosure, the innermost wall being twenty stades, the second forty stades, and the outermost sixty stades (nearly seven miles), in circumference. The outer wall was built entirely of plain baked brick. The middle and inner walls were of the same material, fronted with enameled bricks representing hunting scenes. The figures, according to this author, were larger than the life, and consisted chiefly of a great variety of animal forms."—Rawlinson, Fourth Mon., chap. 4, par. 9.

"But the main glory of the palace was its pleasure ground—the 'hanging gardens,' which the Greeks regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. This extraordinary construction, which owed its erection to the whim of a woman, was a square, each side of which measured 400 Greek feet. It was supported upon several tiers of open arches, built one over the other, like the walls of a classic theater, and sustaining at each stage, or story, a solid platform, from which the piers of the next tier of arches rose. The building towered into the air to the height of at least seventy-five feet, and was covered at the top with a

great mass of earth, in which there grew not merely flowers and shrubs, but trees also of the largest size. Water was supplied from the Euphrates through pipes, and was raised (it is said) by a screw working on the principle of Archimedes."—Id., par. 10.

THE city, thus briefly outlined, well deserved the title given to it by the prophet,—"The glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." It was brought to this state of grandeur by Nebuchadnezzar, whose life almost measured the length of the empire, and did fully cover the period of its glory. The empire dates, however, from about the accession of his father as governor of Babylon, in 625 B. c. (Encyc. Brit.), and with whom Nebuchadnezzar was associated in the year 606, the date of the beginning of the seventy years' captivity of the Jews. Three years later, in 603, the prophecy under consideration begins.

TO THE mind of man it would seem that the city so substantially built must stand forever, but God had spoken to the contrary. Said he: It "shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. . . . But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there," etc. See Isa. 13: 19-22. Also Isa. 14: 23: "I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts."

Now learn how completely the "besom of destruction" did its work, and know that no word of the Lord shall ever fail:—

"The traveler who passes through the land is at first inclined to say that there are no ruins, no remains, of the mighty city which once lorded it over the earth. By and by, however, he begins to see that though ruins, in the common acceptation of the term, scarcely exist, though there are no arches, no pillars, but one or two appearances of masonry even, yet the whole country is covered with traces of exactly that kind which it was prophesied Babylon should have. Vast 'heaps' or mounds, shapeless and unsightly, are scattered at intervals over the entire region where it is certain that Babylon anciently stood, and between the 'heaps' the soil is in many places composed of fragments of pottery and bricks, and deeply impregnated with nitre, infallible indications of it having once been covered with buildings."—Rawlinson, Fourth Mon., chap. 4, par. 15.

E. J. W.