Isaiah 46:1

Ver. 1 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth,.... These are names of the idols of Babylon.

Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast.

ISAIAH CHAPTER 46 The ruin of Babylon and her idols, ,2. God’ s love and faithfulness to the Jews, ,4. Idols not to be compared with God, , for power, knowledge, and sure salvation, . Bel; the chief idol of the Babylonians, 51:44, called by profane historians Jupiter Belus. Boweth down; as the Babylonians used to bow down to him to worship him, so now he boweth down and submits himself to the victorious Persians. Nebo; another of the famous idols, which used to deliver oracles, as his name signifies. Their idols were upon the beasts; were taken and broken, and the materials of them, which were gold, and silver, and brass, as both Scripture and other authors witness, were carried upon beasts into Persia. Your carriages, O ye Persians; to whom he suddenly turneth his speech, as is usual; were heavy laden; they lie upon the backs of your cattle like dull, and unprofitable, and heavy burdens to the beasts, as they had been to men before.

Isaiah 46:1 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages [were] heavy loaden; [they are] a burden to the weary [beast].Ver. 1. Bel is bowed down.] Jupiter Belus (as Pliny calleth him), Babel’ s chief God, is now become a prey to the Persians, and might be to them of as great worth as was Nebuchadnezzar’ s solid gold image dedicated in Dura. This great golden image some think to be the same that is here called Nebo or Nebuchadnezzar. Others think it to be Apollo Deus vaticinus. Tremellius rendereth it, the prophesying or oracular God. Jeremiah seemeth to call him Merodach. Dagon the Septuagint render him, but not well. Your carriages were heavy laden.] Tam estis dii graves. Lib. vi. cap. 26.

XLVI. (1) Bel boweth down, Nebo Stoopeth.—Bel or Belus (“Lord “), is perhaps identical with Marduk or Merôdach, but see Note on Jeremiah 1:2. Nabu (“ the Revealer”) was a kind of Assyrian Hermes. Isaiah sees the idols carried off as spoil, at the command of Cyrus, a heavy burden for the beasts that drag them. An inscription recently deciphered by Sir H. Rawlinson (Journal of Asiatic Society, Jan. 1880, quoted by Cheyne) presents the conduct of the conqueror under a somewhat different aspect. In that inscription he describes himself as a worshipper of Bel and Nebo, and prays to them for length of days. The king would seem from this to have been as wide in his syncretic liberalism as Alexander the Great was afterwards. How are we to reconcile the two? May we say that the prophet idealises the policy and character of the king, or that the monotheistic element which appears in his treatment of the Jews (2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-2) was, after all, dominant in his action, in spite of episodes like that indicated in the inscription. It is possible that the recognition of the Babylonian deities may have followed on the submission of the people, and been preceded by some rougher treatment. Anyhow the contrast makes it probable that the prophecy was not written after the inscription. Your carriages.—Here, as elsewhere (1 Samuel 17:22; Acts 21:15) in the sense of things carried; i.e., in this case, the images of the gods, which used to be carried in solemn procession, but are now represented as packed into a load for transport. So Herod. (1:183) states that Xerxes carried off from Babylon the golden image of Zeus (sc. Bel), the grandson thus fulfilling the prediction which his grandfather apparently had left unfulfilled.

CHAPTER XLVI The idols of Babylon represented as so far from being able to bear the burden of their votaries, that they themselves are borne by beasts of burden into captivity, 1, 2. This beautifully contrasted with the tender care of God, in bearing his people from first to last in his arms, and delivering them from their distress, 3, 4. The prophet, then, with his usual force and elegance, goes on to show the folly of idolatry, and the utter inability of idols, 5-7. From which he passes with great ease to the contemplation of the attributes and perfections of the true God, 8-10. Particularly that prescience which foretold the deliverance of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, with all its leading circumstances; and also that very remote event of which it is the type in the days of the Messiah, 11-13. NOTES ON CHAP. XLVI Verse 1. Their carriages were heavy loaden - "Their burdens are heavy"] For נשאתיכם nesuotheychem, your burdens, the Septuagint had in their copy נשאתיהם nesuotheyhem, their burdens.

1, 2. The ignominious flight of the gods of Babylon.—Bel and Nebo are the Jupiter and Mercury of the Babylonian pantheon (they are represented by these planets), and were the supreme deities in Babylon at this time. Bel (Bîlu) is the Babylonian form of the Hebrew Ba‘al (= lord), and like that word is a generic name applicable to any deity. When used as a proper name it usually denotes Merodach (Marduk), the tutelary divinity of the city of Babylon (so Jeremiah 50:2; Jeremiah 51:44); although there was an older Bel, who is spoken of as his father. The elevation of Bel-Merodach to the chief place among the older gods, as recorded in the mythical Chaldæan account of the Creation (Tablet IV., 1 ff.), is the legendary counterpart of the ascendency acquired by Babylon over the more ancient cities of the Euphrates Valley. Nebo (Nabu) was the son of Merodach; the chief seat of his worship being Borsippa, in the vicinity of Babylon. His name, which is supposed to be from the same root as the Hebrew nâbî’, “prophet,” seems to mark him out as the “speaker” of the gods (another point of contact with Mercury, “the chief speaker,” Acts 14:12). He was also regarded as the inventor of writing. The frequency with which the Chaldæan kings are named after him (Nabo-polassar, Nebu-chadnezzar, Nabo-nidus) has been thought to shew that he was the patron deity of the dynasty. boweth down … stoopeth (better croucheth)] The second verb to be pointed, like the first, as perfect (prophetic pf.). their idols (ch. Isaiah 10:11) are (R.V.) upon the beasts, and upon the cattle] The allusion is hardly to the custom of carrying away the idols of a conquered nation (Jeremiah 48:7; Jeremiah 49:3; Hosea 10:5 f.), but rather to an attempt of the Babylonians to carry off their images on the approach of the Persians (see Isaiah 46:2). Similarly, Merodach-Baladan packed his idols on ships and carried them off, at the approach of Sennacherib (Schrader, Cuneiform Inscr., Vol. ii. p. 36.) Beasts and cattle usually mean respectively “wild beasts” and “domestic animals”; here, however, they both denote beasts of burden simply. your carriages were heavy loaden] Rather as R.V. the things that ye carried about, i.e. in religious processions (ch. Isaiah 45:20), are made a load. “At the New Year’s festival the images of Merodach and his son Nebo were carried through Babylon in solemn procession on sacred barques of great magnificence, and along a promenade prepared for this purpose since Nabopolassar” (Fried. Delitzsch, quoted by Delitzsch, Comm. p. 403). Such scenes must have been familiar to the prophet and his readers, and gave additional point to the contrasted picture here imagined.

Bel boweth down - Bel or Belus (בל bēl, from בעל be‛ēl, the same as בעל ba‛al was the chief domestic god of the Babylonians, and was worshipped in the celebrated tower of Babylon (compare Jeremiah 50:2; Jeremiah 51:44).

1, 2. Bel — The same as Baal (lord or master) of the Phoenicians, and Jupiter of the Greeks.