Bonita Bible Mission

Foreword: Isaiah 21
Isaiah envisions final fall of Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar.
Though Assyria was centred in Nineveh it used Babylon to house its captured prisoners. It took the captive Jews from Samaria to Babylon when General Tiglath-Pileser captured Israel and placed Judah under tribute. This was in the time of Judah’s wicked King Ahaz.

One hundred and twenty years later the Chaldean King, Nebuchadnezzar would destroy all trace of the southern Kingdom of Judah, sacking Jerusalem in the process and taking captives to Babylon too, the jewel of the East.

He would abduct its citizenry in stages, Daniel being among those of the first captivity, whilst Jerusalem still stood. About a decade later the prophet Ezekiel would be in another batch of captives sent to Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah, who succeeded Isaiah, would remain in Jerusalem to the end, and was treated favourably by Nebuchadnezzar’s General and allowed to stay in the devastated ruins of the city. Both these prophets predicted the fall of Babylon:-
1. to the Assyrians at first;
2. to the Chaldean Empire later;
3. to the Medo-Persian army led by Darius for Cyrus the Great;
4. and finally to Alexander the Great, of the rising Greek Empire who would leave Babylon in ruins fifty miles south of current day Baghdad, where it can still be viewed today.

Of interest also are Isaiah’s allusions and predictions of the First Advent of Christ when Jerusalem was under the reign of the Roman Empire that succeeded the Greek Empire’s control of Palestine.

It is important that the reader acquaints himself with the historical sequence of four empires to understand the eighteen Books of the Prophets:
1. Syria,
2. Assyria,
3. Chaldea,
4. Medo-Persian.
It is also helpful to remember the two empires that succeeded these four:
5. The Greek Empire under Alexander the Great (favourable to Jews)
6. The Roman Empire under the Caesars.

7. In grasping these six historic eras and their protagonists one can appreciate more the prophets’ predictions of Christ’s First Advent during Roman times and better fathom the rather indirect poetic references and allusions to different regions and countries under the merciless:-
a. attack upon the two Jewish kingdoms;
b. attack upon one or another anti-Semitic hostile nation chosen by God to humble the Jews into repentance;
c. attack upon Syria by Assyria;
d. attacks upon Israel of Samaria by Assyria;
e. attacks upon Jerusalem (Judah) by one or other of the empires, including other nearby neighbouring peoples:
i. Moab
ii. Egypt,
iii. Ethiopia,
iv. Idumea (Mt. Seir/Seir)-Esau’s descendants;
v. Samaria;
Yet there are two more dimensions to be necessarily understood within the writings of the Prophets:-
8. The prophesied return to the Land of scattered Jews (Diaspora):
a. led by Nehemiah and Ezra by permission of Persian Kings;
b. encouraged by the Greeks who also ordered preservation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint (LXX) by appointment of 72 Hebrew translators of the literati;
c. led by a trickle of European Jews to migrate to Palestine early in the 19th C;
d. encouraged by the British between 1917 and 1944 after General Allenby took Jerusalem and Palestine away from Turkish Muslim control;
e. encouraged by the USA (5/1948 onwards) who arranged massive global air armadas of returning Jewish refugees from anti-Semitic states after the 1948 State of Israel’s Independence;
(* a considerable number settled in New York)
f. to be drawn back to the Land after the great apocalyptic battle of the northern alliance (Gog and Magog) for control of Jerusalem, when Christ will descend to the Mount of Olives to rule and reign over the nations at the end of the end times in which we live.

All of the above is paramount to understand the messages of the sixteen Prophets in relation to the rise and fall of the Israelite divided kingdoms after the death of Solomon.

Judah in the south had its capital Jerusalem, and Israel to the north had Samaria, but merely a place where the royal seat was situated. Jeroboam in the past had at first rejected Shechem as unfortified chose Tirzah instead.

Later King Omri built a fortress in Samaria, and Ahab had his palace there. Though only forty miles square Samaria was occupied by all ten rebel tribes of Israel. Jeroboam had set up Dan in the north and Bethel in the south as the two religious centres for the worship of his golden calf. Bethel, however, was only twelve miles north of Jerusalem.

Ancient Babylon successively came under the control of Assyria, Chaldea, Persia, and Greece before being razed to the ground by the latter. Awareness of the above information on the one hand; and on the other hand grasping the timeline of both Israel and Judah’s demise, the reader will then be able to comprehend the gist of the three Major Prophets, and the thirteen Minor Prophets.

The fall of Babylon in Isaiah can either mean the defeat of the Assyrians, or the Chaldeans depending upon the context. In Isaiah the context usually points to Israel’s nemesis: Assyria.

This twenty first chapter offers certain geographic clues that point to the imminent defeat of the Assyrians whose capital was Nineveh, but they used a puppet king to rule Babylon where captives from many nations were held

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 21

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 15.
Isaiah’s enigmatic diatribe against Moab.
Moab was the arch enemy of Israel and a constant thorn in her side wherever possible. Its territory was situated on the east of Jordan River and south of Gilead which can often be found in a modern Atlas. Midia and Moab conspired together to curse Israel using the soothsayer Balaam on its last stop before entering the Promised Land after its forty years wandering in the wilderness.

Though the false prophet Balaam refused to curse Israel, Moab then entrapped it at Baal-Peor, enticing the Hebrew men to fornicate with the prostitutes of the Baal’s idolatrous and sensuously erotic worship of devils. (See St. Paul’s comment in his letter to the Church of Corinth). The reader will remember that Moses’ father-in-law came from Midia and that Gideon with his 300 men in the Book of Judges fought a battle with the Midianites.

As Joshua forded the Jordan River it banked up and ceased to flow until all of the Israelites had finished walking over the dry river bed. It then returned to its normal flow, brimming over its banks.

This chapter has a plethora of literary devices in the prophet’s poetic, but sometimes enigmatic description. A host of geographic names within Moab, but forgotten mostly in time, can daunt the reader, as can the typical obliqueness of his indirect syntax, but it is well worth persisting with the attempt of grasping Isaiah’s message in its rich historical beauty.

Describing the coming attack on Moab by Assyria’s armies from Nineveh, the prophet goes into great detail over the devastation and destruction of cities and landscape. Even after Moab’s successful demoralization of the children of Israel with the treachery of Baal-Peor, Moab continued to be a hostile thorn in Israel’s side. God’s wrath moves slowly at times, but He never forgets to rewards Israel’s enemy nations with his wrath.

You will remember that the last stop of Moses before crossing Jordan was in Moab where he went to Pisgah’s Peak on Mt. Nebo to view the Land before he died. Remember also that Moab had enlisted Midia and its soothsayer Balaam to curse Israel and stop Moses in his tracks.

However, when this plan did not work Balaam and Balak conspired to lure Moses’ people into immoral actions that would prevent Jehovah from letting them into the Land of milk and honey (the Promised Land) for which they had marched some forty years. Geographic reference points: Kir, Dibon, Nebo, Medeba, Heshbon, Elealeh, Jahaz, Zoar, Luhith, Horonaim, Nimrim, and Dimon all relate to Moab’s towns and topography within or adjacent to Moab like Zoar, next to, but now under, the Dead Sea.

ISAIAH 15: FOREWORD.

BRIEF PROLOGUE TO BOOK OF OBADIAH.
Obadiah the prophet to Edom, where the inhabitant descendants of Esau had settled in and around Mt. Seir, decries the wicked past of Edom’s enmity towards Israel. From earliest times the animosity had grown from year to year.

We think of the initial wilderness wanderers journeying at last to their long promised Land of milk and honey after forty long years wherein a generation had died in the wilderness. When merely seeking permission to walk through the adjacent region en route to Pisgah’s Peak and Mt. Nebo before crossing the Jordan River, Israel was treated with open hostility instead of hospitably allowing their brethren, the children of Jacob, to drink from their wells of water.

That hostility had become endemic and now the prophet warns that judgment by the wrath of God, according to the curse of Genesis 12:3, was imminent. Ironically God used hostile neighbour nations to chastise and discipline wayward Jerusalem, he then as a sequel poured out his vengeance upon the same instruments that had brought so much tribulation to the Jews. This is a mystery wherein Jehovah God never forgets to repay those who have cursed his people Israel.

FOREWORD TO OBADIAH 1.

The Prophet Obadiah’s Vision of the descendants of Esau within the Palestinian territory of Mount Seir. They were commonly called Edomites as the region they occupied was named Edom. Confusing to the reader is the interchangeable use of Esau, Edom and Seir to poetically describe the Edomites. Under poetic licence Obadiah alternates between each of the three names when indicting Esau’s descendants. In the same way he calls Mount Seir the ‘Mount of Esau.

The prophet takes Edom to task for its long standing hatred of their brethren the Israelites, called: “brother Jacob” because he was the patriarch of Israel once the angel had changed his name from Jacob to Israel when he prevailed in prayer wrestling with the angel to protect him from Esau’s murderous intent on Mt. Peniel.

God had told Abram in Genesis 12.3 that all those who will bless his descendants will be blessed, but all those who oppose (curse) them will be cursed. The children of Esau, who became Bedouin Arabs in league with Ishmael’s children, had joined with other nations and tribes hostile to Jerusalem’s people during the past.

As things went from bad to worse in the tribe of Judah after King Manasseh’s abhorrently wicked reign Edom and others had gone to Jerusalem to pillage and add to the already existing mayhem from Assyrians, and later the Chaldeans. Sadly, the ten rebel tribes of the now divided kingdom of Israel had also attacked, kidnapped, and killed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Jews in Judah and Jerusalem to the south.

As a result of these atrocities and their idolatrous worship of the golden calf in Dan and Bethel, they had been all (but a handful of the poor) taken away captive by Tiglath Pileser to Assyria’s city of Babylon about 600 miles to the North West
.
Yet whether it was the Jews in Samaria or the Jewish cousins in Edom (Idumea) the vengeance of God was severe for their treasonous acts against the tribe of Judah and its eternal city of Jerusalem.

The rebel ten northern tribes were massively depopulated and deported while a Stalin-like forced immigration of Assyrians replaced the wayward children of Israel. Thus the wrath of God upon Esau’s children was unrelenting without any measure of mercy offered to others at enmity with Jerusalem.

UNDERSTANDING 16 PROPHETS: Obadiah.