Babylon was the great Mesopotamian empire that conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and carried Israel into a seventy-year exile. By the rivers of Babylon the captives wept when they remembered Zion. It was a place of grief and displacement — but also, in the lives of Daniel and his friends, a place where faith could stand firm in a hostile land.
Because of its pride and idolatry — remember the tower of Babel, its ancient root — Babylon became Scripture's symbol of a whole world system set against God. Revelation calls the doomed anti-God culture Babylon the great, and announces its fall. For God's people in every age, Babylon names the exile of living faithfully in a world that is not their true home.
Babylon in Scripture
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.