This chapter covers three areas of prophecy. Despite the Latinized English syntax, and Isaiah’s poetic and geographic allusions this chapter is crucial to understand the sequence of consecutive empires in the Middle East and Far East of Isaiah’s past, present, and future nations hostile to the Jews of the land under the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah in Isaiah’s ministry. Extra biblical history declares he died a martyr at the hands of Manasseh, the successor to Hezekiah. Living under four different kings the enemy activity against Jerusalem was both constant and varied in its source. This background may assist the readers difficulty in fathoming a difficult book.
Though sometimes obscure and puzzling the three areas in his prophecies covered are:
1. The Diaspora’s promised return to the ‘Land of Israel.
2. Isaiah predicts Cyrus the Great releasing Babylon’s captives.
3. Isaiah’s proverb of future judgment and God’s coming vengeance against the new future king of Babylon after Nineveh was sacked and the Assyrian puppet king of Babylon fell to the Chaldeans.
When Isaiah uses the word ‘return’ he speaks of the future regathering of the Jews scattered through the nations. This would occur on five historic occasions:
1. When Cyrus the Great took away control of Babylon by defeating the Chaldeans released the captive Jews, after 70 years of bondage;
2. When Alexander the Great of the Greek empire defeated the Persians, and totally destroyed Babylon, never again to be inhabited as prophesied by Isaiah in the previous chapter. This was accompanied by the benevolence of the Greek ruler Ptolemy II, who translated the Old Testament into Greek;
3. When in modern times at the beginning of the 19th C he Diaspora of Europe slowly began to return to Palestine, then occupied by the Turks for Islam;
4. When in 1917 the WW1 British General Allenby took Jerusalem away from the Turks and made it a UN Protectorate of Great Britain, increasing the Jewish flow of the Diaspora from a trickle to a stream that increased until 1944, and from 1948 to the present;
5. When finally in the future at the end of the age, following the apocalypse and the Battle of Armageddon, Christ’s Second Coming to Jerusalem will occur.
It is clear that God had already judged both the kingdom of Israel and Judah for their grievous apostasy in their adopting the pagan religions from other nations. Despite God’s merciful pleas through his prophets to repent, they had resorted to the worship of sun, moon, stars and idols of the cult of Baal. The despicable decadence of Jews infuriated the Lord.
Though his judgments were harsh he promised never to totally abandon the Jews even in their respective bondage and captivity. Jerusalem would be destroyed, the cities would become ghost towns, and the once fruitful land would become barren and unproductive. The captivity of Judah’s populace was progressive. Not all were taken to Babylon. Assyria had taken Manasseh and others to Babylon before he repented and was released. Hundreds of other captives were abducted by several surrounding enemies of the Jews. However, the bulk of those deported went to the city of Babylon and the final purge of Jerusalem’s population came under Nebuchadnezzar, whose forces completely destroyed the city.
Yet, in God’s afflicting chastisement he would not, and could not, forget either his covenant with David over the kingdom of Judah, or his irrevocable promise to Solomon over Jerusalem. There are many difficulties for the reader herein. What do we think of when we hear the term Babylon? Though this city is the subject of the prophet’s diatribe of doom a historical perspective may prevent puzzlement or misunderstanding.
The rulers of the city and its territory of Babylonia reach back into antiquity. Babel was mentioned early in the book of Genesis and archaeologists and the literati propound that Babel and its tower was an early part of the Babylon to which Isaiah refers. Over the millennia the city was destroyed and rebuilt many times as invaders and new empires extended their reach into Mesopotamia, where it was located at the time of Isaiah, the rejected prophet of Judah.
It had long been under Assyrian control as a vassal state that played tribute to Nineveh. The Assyrian kings had sacked the city on two separate occasions: 689 BC, and 651 BC. Amazingly, over time on each occasion it was razed to the ground it was rebuilt more splendidly than before. Eventually, by the time of the Chaldean Regime, under Nebuchadnezzar, it became the jewel of the East with its wondrous hanging gardens, built for the King of the Medes’ daughter, Nebuchadnezzar’s wife.
The prophet was making his predictions and prophecies under the reign of Ahaz, the second most evil King of Judah, except Manasseh, the son of Josiah, the last good king of the kingdom’s existence. The fact that Isaiah was cut in half by Manasseh’s saw has been substantiated by extra-biblical documents.
The main problem understanding this and other chapters of the book is the time gap between Isaiah’s adjacent visions of the future. They often follow one another so quickly that the sequencing is a mystery, to say the least. Imminent future, near future; distant future; the First Advent of Immanuel; the last days of the present modern era; the final apocalyptic judgment of the anti-Semitic nations’ armies surrounding Jerusalem; and, finally the Second Coming of Christ to the Mount of Olives to rule and reign from Jerusalem.
Amid the vast time panoply covered by Isaiah, the reader is given glimpses of the historical present on the one hand, and concomitantly, if not simultaneously, intermittent glimpses of near and future time slots that seem to be unrelated.
God used foreign powers to end the northern kingdom of Israel 120 years before the final ruin of Jerusalem. Afterwards, in his wrath and vengeance against Judah he would judge and destroy each hostile invader, with no exception. This may give further insight into the books of the three Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, each repeating these themes.
HOLY WRIT OF SCRIPTURE.
Isaiah: Chapter 14.
1 For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.
2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.
3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve,
4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
5 The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.
6 He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.
7 The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.
8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.
9 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
10 All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?
11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;
17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?
18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.
19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.
20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.
21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.
22 For I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord.
23 I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts.
24 The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:
25 That I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders.
26 This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations.
27 For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?
28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden.
29 Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.
30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will kill thy root with famine, and he shall slay thy remnant.
31 Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.
32 What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation? That the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it.
FOOTNOTES.
Isaiah 14:12 In this proverb against Babylon personifies it as Satan incarnate. ‘O Lucifer, son of the morning! ‘ To say otherwise is to be blind to the text and commit popular bibliolatry for doctrines of extra-biblical demonology. The future Babylonian king will: ‘weaken the nations’, exalt himself into a deity to ‘ascend into heaven’. He will ‘exalt (his) throne’..’above the stars of God’, and before Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego try to be ‘ like the most High’. (Cp. Book of the Prophet Daniel.)
Isaiah 14:25 Babylon in central Mesopotamia 50 miles south of modern Baghdad was controlled by successive powers of Assyria, and Persia. The Babylonian empire under Persian rule would be one of the seven great empires of the time. Babylon had attacked and pillaged Assyrian, Syrian, Israeli, and Egyptian cities. It was almost thought to be omnipotent. This may explain the vague poetic reference: ‘I will break the Assyrian’. God, on the one hand used foreign powers to discipline Judah (& Israel), but on the other hand Jehovah later punished such hostile anti-Semitic nations.
(King James Version 1611-Public Domain)
