Music plays a central role in any successful civilization/city. Whether at weddings or funerals, at cultural festivities or civil parades, music is part and parcel of the pulse of life, as every great civilization has experienced over the centuries. Silence, in contrast, provides the feel of a cemetery, of lifelessness, of defeat. Fallen Babylon is to be “thrown” away so radically that even the sound of funeral music (see Matthew 11:16–17) will not be heard, ever.
22 and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more, and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more, and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more,