True, Jehovah used Babylon’s emperor, Nebuchadnezzar, as his “servant” to discipline the kingdom of Judah, yet Babylon acted treacherously toward Jehovah’s covenant people. She never loosed the Jewish exiles to return to their God-given homeland, even though the time was going onto 70 years. (Isa. 14:3-17) It took the conqueror of the Babylonian Empire to open the way homeward for those “prisoners” in the year 537 B.C.E. Justly, then, the “vision” that was told to the watchman Isaiah was “hard” upon Babylon, the despoiler of nations, particularly the despoiler of the people of Isaiah’s God.

4. In Isaiah 21:2 who are the ones called to attack Babylon, and why are the Persians not there mentioned?

⁴ Isaiah lays the basis for the answer when he goes on to say: “Go up, O Elam! Lay siege, O Media! All sighing due to her I have caused to cease.” (Isa. 21:2) Elam lay to the east of the Tigris River and became part of what was called Persia, whereas today Iran holds that territory.a Media was the larger area to the east of the Mesopotamian valley. About 200 years after Isaiah’s prophecy Cyrus (II) the Great conquered the Medes to give the kingdom of Persia the ascendancy over Media. However, his mother was a Mede, and most of the soldiers in his army proved to be Medes. This Cyrus is the Cyrus, or Kohresh, foretold by Isaiah under divine inspiration. (Isa. 44:28 through 45:7) At the time of Isaiah’s prophecy the Medo-Persian Empire had not yet emerged, and so the Persians were not to the fore. So just Elam and Media were the ones whom Jehovah called by name to attack Babylon.

5. How did Jehovah cause “all sighing due to her” to cease, and was the “prisoner” set free to go home?

⁵ Were those attackers to succeed and change matters in southwest Asia and the Middle East? Yes! This was indicated by Isaiah’s next words: “All sighing due to her I have caused to cease.” These are really the words of “Jehovah of armies,” the Sovereign Lord of the universe. By his use of Elam and Media as his agencies he caused “all sighing” due to oppressive Babylon to cease. In an appeal to Jehovah God for deliverance from captors who cared little if the Israelites rotted away in their prison state, the inspired psalmist said: “May the sighing of the prisoner come in even before you. According to the greatness of your arm preserve those appointed to death.” (Ps. 79:11-13; Isa. 14:17) This prayer was answered in the 70th year of the exile of the Jews in Babylon by royal decree of Cyrus the Great.​—Isa. 35:8-10.

9. The state setting unveiled to Isaiah suddenly changes in view of what command from Jehovah?

⁹ Suddenly the stage setting unveiled to the prophet Isaiah changes like in a change of acts in a theater. He hears the command from Jehovah: “Let there be a setting of the table in order, an arranging of the location of seats, an eating, a drinking! Get up, you princes, anoint the shield. For this is what Jehovah has said to me.”​—Isa. 21:5, 6.

10. What did the divine command portray, and when did the matter portrayed reach the height of contempt for Jehovah God?

¹⁰ This briefly portrays the scene at the palace in Babylon on the last night of her world domination. Graphically it sets forth the feast of Belshazzar, the son of the absent emperor Nabonidus. Then, indeed, there was an arranging of seats for the thousand grandees of Babylon. There was lighthearted eating and drinking. But this came to be with the height of contempt for Jehovah God, when they started eating and drinking with the use of the tableware that had belonged to his temple until the Babylonians took possession of Jerusalem and destroyed its temple.

11. What did Jehovah now miraculously do at this impious feast of Belshazzar, and how did Daniel serve as the interpreter for the occasion?

¹¹ Belshazzar’s feast now becomes impious, for it brought Jehovah into the situation. He miraculously sent a hand to write upon the wall of the banquet hall, where the king could see it, the words: “Mene, mene, tekel and parsin.” To decipher those code words the exiled Jewish prophet Daniel had to be brought in. The final word of the handwriting, parsin, is the plural number of the Chaldaic word peres and means “divisions.” So, in his inspired interpretation, Daniel said: “PERES, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.”​—Dan. 5:28.

12. What was the “shield” that was to be anointed by the princes, and what did the command to anoint such a “shield” indicate?

¹² In reward Daniel was favored with royal apparel and was made “the third ruler” in the empire. But this was not the fulfillment of Jehovah’s command meant for the nobility of Babylon: “Get up, you princes, anoint the shield.” (Isa. 21:5) Neither was it a command for the princes to grease their military shields for doing battle with the besiegers of Babylon. Rather, the expression “the shield” applied to the royal head of the nation. (Compare Psalm 89:18.) What, then, does the command to “anoint the shield” mean? This: that King Belshazzar was about to be killed, this creating the need for another to assume the position of ‘second ruler’ in the Babylonian Empire. But this induction of a new symbolic “shield” by an anointing never did take place. Belshazzar’s violent death did not actually make room for a successor from the royal family.

13. So had the command given in Isaiah 21:2 been given in vain, and did Daniel’s newly bestowed position carry over into the new regime?

¹³ Daniel 5:30, 31 says: “In that very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed and Darius the Mede himself received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.” What a lightning change in world politics that was! Not in vain had Jehovah given his command: “Go up, O Elam! Lay siege, O Media!” (Isa. 21:2) At Babylon’s fall to the Medes and the Persians, Darius the Mede took the place of a ‘second ruler’ in Babylon. Daniel’s newly bestowed position of the “third ruler” in Babylonia did not carry over into the Medo-Persian regime. Yet Daniel was not killed with Belshazzar.

17. What did the posted “lookout” see, and what did this represent?

¹⁷ Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the “lookout” goes on to say: “And he saw a war chariot with a span of steeds, a war chariot of asses, a war chariot of camels. And he paid strict attention, with much attentiveness.” (Isa. 21:7) Those chariots are evidently approaching with the speed of fast Persian post horses or steeds and are coming from “the [conquered] wilderness of the sea.” There are likely columns of war chariots. The column of chariots drawn by asses represents the Median forces under Darius the Mede. The column of chariots drawn by the larger animals, camels able to outrun horses, represents the Persian forces under Cyrus the Great.b This Persian was in fact in command of the combined forces of the Medes and the Persians. Not Darius the Mede, but Cyrus the Persian was the conqueror of whom Jehovah by means of Isaiah said that He would call him by his personal name. Before this Cyrus, Jehovah God would open the metallic gates and doors of Babylon for him to ascend up from the bed of the Euphrates River and break into the heavily walled city of Babylon.​—Isa. 44:27 through 45:4; compare Daniel 8:1-4, 20.

18. According to Isaiah 21:8, 9, what kind of watchman would the posted “lookout” be, and has it been so?

¹⁸ How faithful and dependable would the posted lookout be as a watchman? Isaiah 21:8, 9 indicates by saying: “And he proceeded to call out like a lion: ‘Upon the watchtower, O Jehovah, I am standing constantly by day, and at my guardpost I am stationed all the nights. And here, now, there is coming a war chariot of men, with a span of steeds!’” Wide awake, he stuck to his post until his piercing eyes saw the meaningful sight for which he had been tirelessly watching.

19. What shows whether the watchman grasped correctly the meaning of the approaching war chariots?

¹⁹ The watchman grasped the import of the war chariots that he saw coming within eyeshot of the watchtower on which he stood. According to the time set by Jehovah​—70 years of desolation for the land of Judah—​and according to the prophecies given by the exiled Daniel before Belshazzar’s impious feast in 539 B.C.E., the watchman could interpret correctly what the unhindered oncoming of the non-Babylonian chariots meant. “And,” says Isaiah 21:9b, “he began to speak up and say: ‘She has fallen! Babylon has fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he has broken to the earth!’”

20. Why was it not the exiled Jews in Babylon that broke down the graven images of her gods, and who was the image breaker?

²⁰ The image breaker here spoken of is Jehovah, the one living and true God, the jealous God or “God exacting exclusive devotion.” (Ex. 20:5) By letting the Medes and the Persians who did not worship the gods of Babylon conquer her, Jehovah showed up the falsity of the idolatrous gods of the Third World Power, their nonexistence. It was not the exiled Jews in Babylon who rose up in some revolt and overthrew the Third World Power; Jehovah their God did not authorize or command them to do so. Instead, he used Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Persian to bring about the downfall of idolatrous Babylon as a world power. (Dan. 2:32, 36-38) So it was not the “watchman” that caused the fall of “the treacherous dealer,” Babylon. He merely bore witness to its downfall, to the vindication of Jehovah as the God of prophecy and as Sovereign Lord.