Isaiah 13: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah receives a message of judgment against Babylon. An army is summoned from far away as the LORD's own weapon, and the chapter describes the terror of that day: hands going limp, the sun and moon and stars going dark, the earth shaken, and no pity shown to anyone caught. The LORD says he is stirring up the Medes, who cannot be bought off with silver or gold, and that Babylon, the finest of kingdoms, will be overthrown as Sodom and Gomorrah were, left empty of people and filled with desert animals.

Claim by Claim

1. 13:1
   • This is an oracle of doom concerning Babylon.
   • Isaiah son of Amoz saw this oracle.
2. 13:2
   • A banner is to be raised on a bare hilltop.
   • The voice is to be lifted up to them.
   • The hand is to be waved.
   • The purpose is that they may enter the gates of the nobles.
3. 13:3
   • The LORD says he has commanded those he has consecrated.
   • The LORD says he has summoned his warriors to carry out his anger.
   • The LORD calls these warriors those who exult in his majesty.
4. 13:4
   • There is the sound of a multitude in the mountains.
   • That sound is like the sound of a great people.
   • There is an uproar of kingdoms and nations gathered together.
   • The LORD of hosts is mustering an army for war.
5. 13:5
   • They come from a distant land.
   • They come from the end of the heavens.
   • The LORD comes, along with the weapons of his indignation.
   • Their purpose is to destroy the whole land.
6. 13:6
   • The command is given to wail.
   • The reason is that the day of the LORD is near.
   • It will come as destruction from the Almighty.
7. 13:7
   • Therefore all hands will go limp.
   • Every man's heart will melt.
8. 13:8
   • They will be terrified.
   • Pangs and pains will seize them.
   • They will writhe like a woman giving birth.
   • They will look at one another in astonishment.
   • Their faces will be faces of flame.
9. 13:9
   • The day of the LORD is coming.
   • That day is cruel.
   • That day comes with wrath and burning anger.
   • That day will make the land a desolation.
   • He will destroy the land's sinners out of it.
10. 13:10
    • The stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light.
    • The sun will be dark when it rises.
    • The moon will not shed its light.
11. 13:11
    • The LORD will punish the world for its evil.
    • The LORD will punish the wicked for their iniquity.
    • The LORD will put an end to the pride of the arrogant.
    • The LORD will lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless.
12. 13:12
    • The LORD will make man more rare and precious than fine gold.
    • The LORD will make mankind more rare and precious than the gold of Ophir.
13. 13:13
    • Therefore the LORD will make the heavens tremble.
    • The earth will be shaken out of its place.
    • This happens at the wrath of the LORD of hosts.
    • This happens in the day of his burning anger.
14. 13:14
    • It will be like a hunted gazelle.
    • It will be like sheep with no one to gather them.
    • Each man will turn to his own people.
    • Each man will flee to his own land.
15. 13:15
    • Everyone who is found will be run through.
    • Everyone who is swept up: the word means either captured or joined to them, will fall by the sword.
16. 13:16
    • Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes.
    • Their houses will be plundered.
    • Their wives will be ravished.
17. 13:17
    • The LORD is stirring up the Medes against them.
    • The Medes place no value on silver.
    • The Medes take no delight in gold.
18. 13:18
    • Their bows will shatter the young men.
    • They will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb.
    • Their eye will not spare children.
19. 13:19
    • Babylon is the glory of kingdoms.
    • Babylon is the splendor of the pride of the Chaldeans.
    • Babylon will be like God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.
20. 13:20
    • Babylon will never be inhabited.
    • Babylon will not be dwelt in from generation to generation.
    • No Arab will pitch a tent there.
    • Shepherds will not make their flocks lie down there.
21. 13:21
    • Desert creatures will lie down there.
    • Her houses will be full of howling creatures.
    • Ostriches will dwell there.
    • Hairy goat-creatures will dance there.
22. 13:22
    • Howling creatures will cry in her citadels.
    • Jackals will cry in her pleasant palaces.
    • Her time is near to come.
    • Her days will not be prolonged.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1

"Burden" translates a Hebrew word (massa) used as a technical label for a prophetic pronouncement, usually one announcing disaster; it heads several chapters here. "Saw" is not loose language: prophets were said to see their messages, so a spoken oracle could be described as a vision. Babylon was a great city on the Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. In Isaiah's own time it was a subject city under Assyrian control; it became the dominant imperial power over a century later, and fell to Cyrus in 539 BC.

13:2

The banner is a military signal flag, raised on a bare, treeless height so troops assembling from a distance can see it; the shout and the hand signal are the other two ways of mustering an army in open country. "The gates where the important people live" renders a phrase whose sense is disputed: it may mean the gates of the nobles' city (Babylon), or simply the gates of the great ones, i.e. the entrances of a proud capital.

13:3

"Set apart" (older translations: "sanctified") is ritual language. In the ancient world war was a religious undertaking, and soldiers were formally consecrated before a campaign, as at a festival. Here the consecrated troops are foreigners, unaware of who has enlisted them.

13:4

Where LORD appears in capitals it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written Yahweh, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud. "LORD of hosts", here "the LORD who commands armies", is a stock title; "hosts" means armed forces, and the phrase pictures God as a commander mustering troops.

13:5

"The far edge of the sky" is the horizon: the invaders come from the limit of the known world. The word translated "land" also means "earth" in Hebrew, and the chapter moves back and forth between the destruction of one country and a judgment on the whole world without ever settling the ambiguity.

13:6

"The day of the LORD" was already a familiar phrase to Isaiah's hearers, a fixed expression for a decisive day when God acts in judgment, which people apparently expected to bring victory over their enemies; the prophets repeatedly turn it against their own audience. "Almighty" translates Shaddai, an old title of God whose original meaning is uncertain; the Hebrew here makes a pun, since the word for "destruction" (shod) sounds like Shaddai.

13:7

"Every man's heart shall melt" is not about the body. In the King James, the heart stands for courage. A melting heart means courage draining away.

13:8

The Hebrew says literally that their faces are "faces of flame", flushed dark red with terror, not lit up.

13:10

The Hebrew word for "groupings" is the plural of Kesil, the name of a particular constellation, probably Orion; it came to mean the bright star-groups in general. The point is a sky that goes dark at the moment it should be brightest.

13:11

Wicked means choosing to be very bad. Sin means doing what is wrong.

13:12

Ophir was a distant place famous for exporting gold of exceptional quality; its location was already unclear in antiquity, and has been guessed at in southern Arabia, East Africa, and India. "Gold of Ophir" worked as a byword for the finest gold obtainable, the way one might say Swiss watch.

13:13

Shaking the sky and the earth is picture language. It means trouble so big that nothing feels safe.

13:14

The people running home are the foreigners resident in Babylon (traders, mercenaries, subject peoples brought there) who scatter to their own countries when the city falls. A hunted gazelle and a scattered flock were standard images for a crowd breaking apart in panic.

13:16

This is what conquering armies of that time really did to a captured city. Isaiah's listeners had seen it or heard of it.

13:17

The Medes were an Iranian people from the highlands east and north of Mesopotamia; they joined the Babylonians in destroying Assyria, and were later absorbed into the Persian empire that took Babylon in 539 BC. Saying they have no interest in silver or gold does not mean they are honest: it means they cannot be bought off with tribute, and will not stop killing to collect plunder.

13:19

The Chaldeans were a people of southern Mesopotamia whose dynasty ruled the Babylonian empire, so "Chaldean" and "Babylonian" are often used interchangeably. Sodom and Gomorrah were the cities destroyed by fire in Genesis 19; by Isaiah's day they functioned as a byword for annihilation so complete that the site is never resettled, which is the specific point being made here.

13:20

The King James "Arabian" means a tent-dwelling nomad of the desert margins, not a nationality in the modern sense. The image is of a place so ruined that even people who camp anywhere will not stop there overnight, and even a shepherd looking for a night's shelter passes it by.

13:21

The Hebrew names for these creatures are uncertain, and translations differ widely. The King James "satyrs" renders a word meaning "hairy ones," used elsewhere both for wild goats and for goat-shaped spirits thought to haunt ruins; "owls" renders a term that may instead mean ostriches. The overall picture is clear even where the zoology is not: the site is given over to whatever howls and haunts a wasteland.

13:22

"Hyenas" and "jackals" again render disputed animal names, the King James guessed "wild beasts of the islands" and "dragons." The closing line uses an idiom of appointed time: the date set for the city has nearly arrived, and it will not be postponed.