In Isaiah, chapter twenty-three, verse thirteen, “Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin.” The land of Chaldea was the region of which Babylon was the chief city. Sargon, relates his victory over the “perverse and rebellious Chaldæans,” demolished the Chaldean capital and took ninety thousand captives. Sennacherib took two thousand and eight captives from Babylon and leveled it. The result of these events, the people of Tyre realized that they would not find comfort or rest while Assyria was in control.
Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Chaldea or Babylonia. The names Babylon and Chaldea are often interchanged as denoting the same kingdom and people. The people of Babylonia or Chaldea: unknown and had no government or power; they were a rude, nomadic, barbarous, feeble, and illiterate people. The same phrase occurs in Deuteronomy thirty-two, verse twenty-one, where it also means a people unknown, rude, barbarous, wandering. That this was formerly the character of the Chaldeans is apparent from Job one, verse seventeen, where they are described as a nomadic race, having no established place of abode, and living by plunder.
Till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness; till Nimrod, the head and founder of the Assyrian monarchy, built Babel, Genesis ten, verse ten. Now the head of the Chaldean monarchy, which he built for those people who then lived in tents, and were dispersed here and there in wild and waste places, that he might bring them into order, and under government, and thereby establish and promote his own empire. “They set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof.”