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No.2.
"Israel My Glory"
(46:).
pp. 26 - 32
Chapter 45: in its closing section, gives us a glimpse of the Day of Christ when
`every knee shall bow' (Isa. 45: 23), and the reader may remember that in the epistle to
the Philippians where this passage is quoted `things under the earth' are included--so
universal is the homage that shall at length be paid. What these `things under the earth'
may include we do not know, but it is at least significant that the opening words of
Isaiah 46: are "Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth" (Isa. 46: 1).
There have been many exposures of the utter futility and folly, to say nothing more, of
the worship of idols in the chapters of Isaiah we have already studied, but till now, no
specific god or idol has been mentioned by name. We are about to consider the great
prophecy of Babylon's doom (Isa. 47:), and it is therefore fitting that the two great gods
of Babylon should be mentioned in the passage before us. Bel was the national god of
Babylon, and the word signifies confusion. Jeremiah appears to play upon this meaning
of the word when he says "Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded" (Jer. 50: 2), or as we
might say "The confounder is confounded". Babylon stands for all the Satanic opposition
to God and His Word which constitutes the conflict of the ages. It is Babylon that at
length falls accompanied by the alleluias of the redeemed in the book of the Revelation,
and with the fall of Babylon comes the glorious restoration and the millennial reign of
Christ (Rev. 19: and 20:).
Bel, the great god of Babylon bows down before the mighty God of Jacob. Nebo, as
the word suggests, is the prophet or interpreter of the gods, and his symbol was the planet
Mercury, known to the ancients as Hermes, and giving us hermeneutics or the science of
interpretation. That Nebo was greatly revered by the Babylonians can be seen by the way
the name of the god entered into the names of the people. Thus we have such names as
Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, etc. The worship of Baal or Bel was very closely allied
to the productiveness of nature and the reader will realize that anyone intimately
acquainted with the significance of these gods Bel and Nebo, would find allusions to
them in Isa. 45: where God is revealed as the Creator Who created "not in vain" (18),
and Who moreover "declared from ancient time" (21) things that came to pass:
"That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad" (Isa. 44: 25).
The God of Israel in all His ways is set in glorious contrast to the miserable
deceptions, Bel and Nebo.
"Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth."
Looking at the opening verse of Isa. 46: the reader cannot help agreeing that the
heading adopted by Geo. Adam Smith for this chapter is very apt. He entitles it "Bearing
or Borne".