Isaiah 13:13

Isaiah 13 opens with “the burden of Babylon” (Isaiah 13:1), the first of the oracles against the nations that run through Isaiah 13–23. The word for burden, maśśāʼ, is a solemn message laid on the prophet by God. Before our verses the LORD of hosts musters an army from a far country (Isaiah 13:2–5). After them he names the Medes as the nation he will stir up against the city (Isaiah 13:17) and describes Babylon left as an uninhabited ruin (Isaiah 13:19–22). Our verses stand between the army and the ruin and tell what the day itself will be like. The whole chapter can be read at once in Isaiah 13.

Isaiah prophesied in the eighth century BC, when Assyria was the great power and Babylon was a rising city under Assyria’s rule. Babylon later became the empire that conquered Judah and carried its people into exile, and in 539 BC it fell to Cyrus the Great of Persia, whose forces included the Medes. Its last night is told in Daniel 5, and Jeremiah gives a long prophecy of its fall in Jeremiah 50–51. God announced Babylon’s end long before it reached its height, because he knows the future and rules it: “he removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21). He uses one nation to judge another, as he called Assyria the rod of his anger (Isaiah 10:5–7), and then holds that nation to account in its turn.

Babylon was proud, given to idols and cruel to the peoples it conquered, God’s own people among them, and in Scripture it becomes the great example of human pride set against God. The taunt over its fallen king follows in Isaiah 14. God speaks against other proud powers in the same way, against Egypt in Ezekiel 29 and against Nineveh in Nahum 3, and Revelation takes up Babylon’s name for the corrupt world system whose fall it announces in Revelation 18.

“Howl ye” is a command. The verb yâlal means to howl or wail, and the word sounds like the high cry it names. Isaiah tells the people who will face this day to begin their lament now, “for the day of the LORD is at hand.” The word for day, yôwm, can mean a single day or a span of time, and “the day of the LORD”, yôwm Yᵉhôvâh, is the time when God steps into history to judge his enemies and deliver his people. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s personal, covenant name, so the day is his, and what happens on it shows who he is. Joel uses almost the same words: “Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come” (Joel 1:15).

“It shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.” The noun shôd means violence, ravaging and ruin, the spoiling of a land by an enemy. Shadday is the title “Almighty”, which may mean “the All-Sufficient One”, though its exact meaning is uncertain. Babylon’s fall will come through human armies, and Isaiah says plainly that it comes first from God, whose purposes stand.

Verse 9 takes up the cry again: “Behold, the day of the LORD cometh.” “Behold”, hinnēh, calls for attention, and the verb bôwʼ is the ordinary word for coming or going, so the day is already on its way. It is “cruel”, ʼakzârîy, terrible and unsparing for those it falls on. It comes “with wrath”, ʻebrâh, an outburst of anger, “and fierce anger”, chârôwn ʼaph. Chârôwn is a burning of anger, anger kindled like a fire, and ʼaph is the nose or nostril, used for anger from the hard breathing of someone in a rage. God will “lay the land desolate”: sûwm means to put or set, so God sets Babylon’s land, ʼerets, as a shammâh, a desolation. “And he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.” The word for sinners, chaṭṭâʼ, names people, “a criminal, or one accounted guilty”, and shâmad means to destroy. God’s anger falls on the guilty.

Verse 13 gives God a further title, “the LORD of hosts”, Yᵉhôvâh Sabaoth. The hosts are armies, and the title makes God the commander of every army on earth and in heaven, the angels and the heavenly bodies included. It is one of Isaiah’s favourite names for God, and in this chapter the LORD of hosts has already gathered the army that will take Babylon.

“Therefore shall all hands be faint.” The hand, yâd, is a man’s power to work and fight, and râphâh means to slacken, sink down and grow weak. The soldiers who should defend Babylon will be unable to lift their weapons. “And every man’s heart shall melt.” The heart, lêbâb, is the seat of courage and will, and mâçaç means to melt or dissolve, and so to faint from fear. Scripture uses the same picture when Rahab tells the spies that the hearts of Canaan melted at the news of what the LORD had done for Israel (Joshua 2:11), when the fearful and fainthearted were sent home from Israel’s army (Deuteronomy 20:8), and when Jeremiah says that the king of Babylon “hath heard the report of them, and his hands waxed feeble” (Jeremiah 50:43). The psalmist calls a great army and a strong horse vain things to trust for safety (Psalm 33:16–17).

Verse 8 piles up the signs of terror. “Pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them”: the pangs, tsîyr, and the sorrows, chebel, are both pains of childbirth, and chebel also means a rope or cord, so the pain grips and binds them. “They shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth”: chûwl means to twist or writhe, the movement of a woman in labour. Birth pains come suddenly, grow stronger, and run their course whatever the woman does, and that is the point of the picture. The prophets use it again for Jerusalem’s anguish (Jeremiah 4:31), for Ephraim (Hosea 13:13) and for the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:6–7), and Paul uses it of the last day, when sudden destruction comes “as travail upon a woman with child” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

“They shall be amazed one at another.” Tâmahh means to be astonished or stunned. Each person looks at the next, and the faces they turn to are as helpless as their own. “Their faces shall be as flames.” Lahab is a flame, a flash or gleam. The faces may be flushed and burning with terror, or red with shame, or lit by the glow of a burning city, and the verse leaves the picture open.

“For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light.” The word for constellations, Kᵉçîyl, is the name of Orion, and Strong’s explains it “as if a burly one”, from the same root as the word for fool. Even the most familiar lights of the night sky fail. “The sun shall be darkened in his going forth”: châshak means to be or grow dark, and “his going forth” is sunrise, the very moment light should come. “And the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” The word for light, ʼôwr, is illumination of every kind, and in this verse every light in the sky is put out. Babylon looked to the heavens, treating its stars as gods and omens, and Isaiah later mocks its “astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators”. Here the lights they consulted go dark at the word of the God of Israel.

Verse 13 goes further. “Therefore I will shake the heavens”: râgaz means to quiver or tremble, as a man shakes with anger or fear. “And the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.” The two words for anger from verse 9, ʻebrâh and chârôwn, return here, and so does yôwm: this is the day of verse 6. The prophets use this language of heaven and earth shaken for the fall of great powers. Ezekiel speaks it over Egypt (Ezekiel 32:7–8), Joel over the army of the LORD’s day (Joel 2:10), and Isaiah elsewhere says that “all the host of heaven shall be dissolved”. Haggai hears God say that he will shake the heavens and the earth once more (Haggai 2:6), and Hebrews explains that word: God shakes what is made so that what cannot be shaken may remain, and his people receive “a kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:26–28).

Verse 11 is the heart of the passage, because here God tells us why. “And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.” The verb pâqad means to visit, attend to, inspect, muster or punish, and here God visits in judgment. The word for world, têbêl, is the inhabited earth, so in an oracle against one city God states a rule for every nation. Raʻ, evil, covers both wickedness and the trouble it brings. The wicked, râshâʻ, are those who do wrong, and their iniquity, ʻâvôn, is perversity together with the guilt it carries.

“And I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.” Arrogancy, gâʼôwn, is a word for majesty or exaltation, and in a bad sense it means insolent pride. The proud, zêd, are the arrogant and presumptuous. Haughtiness, gaʼăvâh, belongs to the same family as gâʼôwn, and the two stand side by side to press the point home. The terrible, ʻârîyts, are the tyrants, the powerful who make others afraid. God will shâphêl them, bring them low. Pride is the root of Babylon’s sin, and the pride God names here is the kind that terrorizes others.

The rest of Scripture says the same. “Pride goeth before destruction” (Proverbs 16:18), and “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished” (Proverbs 16:5). “God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:6–7). Isaiah describes a day of the LORD on everything proud and lofty (Isaiah 2:11–17), and later says that God brings princes to nothing (Isaiah 40:23). Babylon’s own king learned this when God humbled him (Daniel 4), and he ended by praising “the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase” (Daniel 4:37). The same God “giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6). He judges the rebellion of his own people by the same standard, as the opening of Isaiah shows (Isaiah 1:2–4), and “he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth” (Psalm 96:13).

“I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.” The first word for man, ʼĕnôwsh, simply means a man, a mortal, and the second is ʼâdâm, man. Precious, yâqar, means at root to be heavy, and so costly, rare and valued. Fine gold, pâz, is pure gold, and the golden wedge, kethem, is gold of the best quality, perhaps a bar or mass of it. Ophir was famous for its gold, and Solomon’s ships brought gold from there (1 Kings 9:28). It probably lay in Arabia or East Africa.

God’s judgment will take so many lives that a living man will be harder to find than the finest gold in the world. The value here is born of scarcity and loss, and it measures the size of the slaughter. The rider on the pale horse in Revelation brings the same kind of death on a great part of the earth (Revelation 6:7–8).

The verse also says something true in every age, that a human life outweighs all the gold there is. The psalmist says that the redemption of a soul is precious (Psalm 49:8), and Jesus asks, “what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26). God set that value on people when he redeemed them: “ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold... But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19). “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16), and Christ came that his sheep “might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

“And it shall be as the chased roe.” The roe is a gazelle, and nâdach means to push off, thrust out or drive away. The gazelle is driven before the hunters and runs in fear with only escape in mind. “And as a sheep that no man taketh up”: a stray sheep left where it fell, with nobody to carry it home. It is the opposite of the people who can say, “The LORD is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1).

“They shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.” Babylon held people of many nations, foreign residents, subject peoples and hired soldiers among them. When the city falls, each goes back to his own people, ʻam, a word for a people gathered as one, and flees, nûwç, to his own land. The empire comes apart along the lines of the nations it had gathered into itself. Jeremiah says the same of Babylon’s fall, that for fear of the oppressing sword “they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land” (Jeremiah 50:16). Revelation turns the flight into a call to God’s people to leave the city before it falls: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).

“Every one that is found shall be thrust through.” To be found, mâtsâʼ, is to be come upon, and dâqar means to pierce or stab, as with a spear or sword. Anyone caught in the city when it falls will die there. “And every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.” The word behind “joined”, çâphâh, means to scrape together or sweep away, and the KJV takes it of those who have gathered themselves to Babylon, its allies and all who are bound up with it. Those who share in Babylon’s power share in its ruin. God says through Jeremiah, “recompense her according to her work” (Jeremiah 50:29).

“Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes.” The children, ʻôwlêl, are infants and little ones, and râṭâsh means to dash down or dash in pieces, while the parents look on. “Their houses shall be spoiled”: bayith is a house and also the household and family within it, and to spoil, shâçaç, is to plunder. “And their wives ravished.” The verb shâgal refers to sexual intercourse, here the rape of the women, and it is tied to shâkab, the ordinary verb “to lie down”, which is also used of lying with someone. Conquering armies in that day did all these things to fallen cities, and Babylon in its own day would do them to others. A psalm of the exile speaks of Babylon’s little ones in the same terrible terms (Psalm 137:8–9), and Revelation says of the last Babylon, “Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double” (Revelation 18:6).

The day of the LORD comes to its fullness in Jesus Christ. The Father “hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). When the Son of man comes in his glory, all nations will be gathered before him (Matthew 25:31–46), and Revelation shows him riding out to judge and make war in righteousness, with “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” written on him (Revelation 19:11–16). Every knee will bow to him (Philippians 2:10–11). The Christ who will bring down all pride is the one who “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8).

Before that last day, God has given a day of salvation: “behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). At the cross Jesus, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), took on himself the wrath that sin deserves. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:4–6). God set him forth as a propitiation (Romans 3:25), “and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2), and made him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). On the cross he also spoiled the powers of evil and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15).

So the people who belong to him face the day of the LORD from a different place. Being justified by faith, they “have peace with God” (Romans 5:1). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), and they wait for “Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13–14), and “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The pictures of these verses turn around in him. Babylon’s people scatter like sheep that no man takes up, and Jesus is the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11) and died to gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad (John 11:52). He has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). Babylon’s sun goes dark, and Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12). The city of God has its light from him, “for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23).

These verses are hard to read, and their weight is part of their message. They show a God who sees the pride and cruelty of the strongest power on earth and brings it to an end, so that the oppressed have a judge and the proud have a warning. His day is sure. Babylon looked as if it would stand for ever, and it fell at his word, and every power that sets itself against him will fall in the same way.

They also show that his judgment is righteous, aimed at evil and at the guilty, and that his wrath and his love belong to the same holy God. The God who shakes the heavens has given his people “a kingdom which cannot be moved”, and the Lord who will come as judge first came as the Lamb who bore the wrath of this day. In Christ the terror of the day of the LORD and the mercy of the cross meet, and those who are his wait for that day in peace.