1The portent about Babylon that Isaiah son of Amoz saw in a vision.
2On a bald mountain raise a banner.
Lift up your voice to them, wave a hand,
that they enter the gates of the princes.
3I have charged the ones I have summoned,
even called forth My warriors for My wrath,
who exult in My pride.
4The sound of a crowd on the mountains,
the likeness of a vast people,
the sound of the din of kingdoms,
nations assembling.
The LORD of Armies is mustering
an army for war.
5They come from a faraway land,
from the end of the heavens—
the LORD with His anger’s weapons,
to destroy all the earth.
6Howl, for the LORD’s day is near,
as shattering from Shaddai it shall come.
7Therefore all hands shall go slack,
every human heart shall quail.
8They shall panic, and birth pangs shall seize them,
like a woman in labor they shall shudder.
They shall gaze aghast at each other,
their faces in flames.
9Look, the LORD’s day comes, ruthlessly,
anger and smoldering wrath,
to turn the earth into desolation
and expunge its offenses from it.
10For the stars in the heavens and their constellations
shall not shine with their light.
The sun shall go dark when it rises,
and the moon shall not send forth its light.
11And I will single out the world for its evil,
against the wicked for their crime,
and put an end to the pride of the arrogant,
bring low the overweening of tyrants.
12I will make man scarcer than gold,
human beings, than the gold of Ophir.
13Therefore will I shake the heavens,
and the earth shall quake from its base
in the anger of the LORD of Armies,
on the day of His smoldering wrath.
14And they shall be like a deer driven off,
like sheep that are not gathered in.
Each man shall turn to his people,
and each man shall flee to his land.
15All who are found shall be stabbed,
and all who are caught shall fall by the sword.
16Their babes shall be smashed as they look,
their homes shall be looted and their wives ravished.
17I am about to rouse the Medes against them,
who take no account of silver
and have no desire of gold.
18And with bows young men shall be pierced,
and they shall not pity infants.
Children they shall not spare.
19And Babylon, splendor of kingdoms,
the glorious pride of Chaldeans,
shall be as God’s overthrowing
of Sodom and Gomorrah.
20She shall remain without settlers forever,
have no dwellers for time without end.
And the Arab shall not pitch his tent there,
nor shepherds bed their flocks there.
21But wildcats shall lie down there,
and their homes shall be filled with owls.
And ostriches shall dwell there,
22And hyenas shall shriek in her palaces
and jackals in her mansions of pleasure.
And it is close to come now.
Her days shall not draw on.
CHAPTER 13 NOTES
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1. The portent about Babylon. The word translated as “portent,” masaʾ, has the literal sense of “burden,” which is to say, a burden of prophetic pronouncement. Some render this as “oracle,” though oracles tend to be murkier and also more strictly predictive. Babylon becomes an imperial power in the region that threatens, then destroys, the kingdom of Judah a century after Isaiah. Prophetic and other biblical books were conceived as open-ended affairs into which later materials could be introduced. Presumably, the editor felt that the portent about the doom of Babylon was in keeping with the outlook of Isaiah’s prophecies concerning Assyria. The psalm placed as chapter 12 editorially marks the end of the first large unit of the book. The present chapter begins a series of prophecies about sundry foreign nations. Most of this material is later, although it is difficult to sort out the chronology of the various units.
2. that they enter the gates of the princes. “They” are the troops of the army invading Babylon.
3. the ones I have summoned, / . . . My warriors for My wrath. The political reference is unclear, though in verse 17 the Medes are mentioned as the ruthless invading army, and it was in fact the Persians—conflated with Media—who toppled the Babylonian empire in the fifth century B.C.E. These warriors enacting God’s wrath sound rather like an apocalyptic, or at least supernatural, army.
4. The sound. The Hebrew word could also be read as an interjection, “hark,” although “sound” makes at least as good sense in context.
5. They come from a faraway land, / from the end of the heavens. This may be merely a hyperbolic representation of an army coming from beyond the immediate region, but it again gives the invaders an apocalyptic look.
6. shattering from Shaddai. The more literal sense is “havoc” or “despoiling,” but the translation emulates the sound-play of the Hebrew, shod mishaddai.
10. the stars in the heavens . . . / shall not shine with their light. This is still another striking instance in which poetic hyperbole becomes incipient apocalypse: the catastrophe about to overtake Babylon is cosmic, with the stars and the moon in the sky going dark and the sun rising without light.
12. the gold of Ophir. Ophir, in the Red Sea region, was famous for its fine gold. In the Hebrew, a different word is used in this verset for “gold”; biblical Hebrew has several poetic synonyms for gold, but English has none.
14. like a deer driven off, / like sheep. These gentle and defenseless animals are the antithesis of the warriors that Babylonians once were, and by whom they are now overwhelmed.
15. caught. The meaning of the Hebrew verb is uncertain, and thus the translation is dictated by context. Elsewhere, this word means “swept away.”
16. babes . . . homes . . . wives. The sheeplike men of Babylon are impotent to protect their most precious human and material possessions.
as they look. Literally, “before their eyes.”
18. And with bows young men shall be pierced. The Hebrew verb means “to smash,” but that is not an action performed with a bow.
20. pitch his tent. The Masoretic Text has yahel, “shine,” but two manuscripts, followed by most scholars, show instead yeʾehal, “pitch a tent.”
21. wildcats. The beasts in question have not been confidently identified; it is clear only that they are savage desert predators and probably emit a menacing sound.
satyrs. The blurring of lines between the zoological and the mythological is characteristic of biblical poetry. These creatures may be something like goat-gods.
22. in her palaces. The Masoretic Text, patently defective here, reads beʾalmenotav, “in his widows,” but three ancient versions reflect a text that showed beʾarmenoteyha, “in her palaces.”