Isaiah 14: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter opens with a promise that the LORD will again choose Israel, settle them in their own land, and reverse their place with their captors. Israel is then told to take up a taunt song against the king of Babylon: the oppressor is dead, the earth is quiet, and the dead kings below rise to greet him as a man now as weak as they are, unburied and cut off along with his children. The chapter closes with the LORD's sworn plan to break Assyria in his own land, and with a message dated to the year King Ahaz died, warning the Philistines not to celebrate the broken rod that struck them.

Claim by Claim

1. 14:1
   • The LORD will have compassion on Jacob.
   • The LORD will again choose Israel.
   • The LORD will settle them on their own land.
   • The sojourner will join himself to them.
   • They will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
2. 14:2
   • Peoples will take them and bring them to their own place.
   • The house of Israel will take possession of those peoples on the LORD's land as male and female servants.
   • They will take captive those who had taken them captive.
   • They will rule over their oppressors.
3. 14:3
   • A day is coming when the LORD will give you rest from your pain.
   • On that day the LORD will give you rest from your turmoil.
   • On that day the LORD will give you rest from the hard labor that was imposed on you.
4. 14:4
   • On that day you will take up this taunt-song against the king of Babylon.
   • The taunt says the oppressor has ceased.
   • The taunt says a second thing has ceased, and the word is uncertain: it may mean the golden city or the raging fury.
5. 14:5
   • The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked.
   • The LORD has broken the scepter of rulers.
6. 14:6
   • The oppressor struck peoples in fury.
   • The blows he struck were unceasing.
   • He ruled nations in anger.
   • The final clause is ambiguous: it says either that he persecuted without restraint or that he is now pursued with none to hinder.
7. 14:7
   • The whole earth is at rest.
   • The whole earth is quiet.
   • They break out into singing.
8. 14:8
   • Even the cypress trees rejoice over you.
   • The cedars of Lebanon rejoice over you.
   • They say that since you were laid low, no woodcutter comes up against them.
9. 14:9
   • Sheol below is stirred up to meet you at your coming.
   • Sheol rouses the shades of the dead for you.
   • Those roused are all the leaders of the earth.
   • Sheol raises up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
10. 14:10
    • All of them will answer and speak to you.
    • They say you too have been made weak as they are.
    • They say you have become like them.
11. 14:11
    • Your pomp is brought down to Sheol.
    • The sound of your harps is brought down with it.
    • Maggots are spread out beneath you.
    • Worms are your covering.
12. 14:12
    • You have fallen from heaven, shining one, son of the dawn.
    • You have been cut down to the ground.
    • You laid the nations low.
13. 14:13
    • You said in your heart that you would ascend to heaven.
    • You said you would raise your throne above the stars of God.
    • You said you would sit on the mountain of assembly.
    • You said that mountain is in the far reaches of the north.
14. 14:14
    • You said you would ascend above the heights of the clouds.
    • You said you would make yourself like the Most High.
15. 14:15
    • Instead you will be brought down to Sheol.
    • You will be brought down to the far recesses of the pit.
16. 14:16
    • Those who see you will stare at you.
    • They will ponder you.
    • They ask whether this is the man who made the earth tremble.
    • They ask whether this is the man who shook kingdoms.
17. 14:17
    • They ask whether this is the one who made the world like a wilderness.
    • They ask whether this is the one who tore down its cities.
    • They ask whether this is the one who did not let his prisoners go home.
18. 14:18
    • All the kings of the nations, every one of them, lie in honor.
    • Each lies in his own house.
19. 14:19
    • You are cast out away from your grave.
    • You are cast out like a detested shoot.
    • You are covered by the slain, those pierced with the sword.
    • Those slain go down to the stones of the pit.
    • You are like a corpse trampled underfoot.
20. 14:20
    • You will not be joined with them in burial.
    • The reason is that you destroyed your land.
    • The reason is that you killed your people.
    • The offspring of evildoers will never be named.
21. 14:21
    • Prepare a slaughter for his sons.
    • The slaughter is for the iniquity of their fathers.
    • The purpose is that they not rise up and possess the earth.
    • The purpose is that they not fill the face of the world with cities.
22. 14:22
    • The LORD of hosts declares that he will rise up against them.
    • The LORD says he will cut off from Babylon her name.
    • The LORD says he will cut off from Babylon her remnant.
    • The LORD says he will cut off from Babylon her offspring and her posterity.
    • This is declared by the LORD.
23. 14:23
    • The LORD will make Babylon a possession for the hedgehog or bittern, an animal the word does not identify with certainty.
    • The LORD will make Babylon pools of water.
    • The LORD will sweep her with the broom of destruction.
    • This is declared by the LORD of hosts.
24. 14:24
    • The LORD of hosts has sworn an oath.
    • He swore that as he has planned, so it will be.
    • He swore that as he has purposed, so it will stand.
25. 14:25
    • The LORD will break Assyria in his own land.
    • The LORD will trample Assyria on his mountains.
    • Assyria's yoke will depart from them.
    • Assyria's burden will depart from their shoulder.
26. 14:26
    • This is the purpose purposed against the whole earth.
    • This is the hand stretched out over all the nations.
27. 14:27
    • The LORD of hosts has purposed it.
    • No one can annul what the LORD of hosts has purposed.
    • His hand is stretched out.
    • No one can turn his hand back.
28. 14:28
    • This oracle came in the year that king Ahaz died.
29. 14:29
    • Philistia, all of you, is told not to rejoice.
    • The reason given for the rejoicing is that the rod that struck her is broken.
    • From the root of the snake a viper will come out.
    • Its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent.
30. 14:30
    • The firstborn of the poor will feed.
    • The needy will lie down in safety.
    • The LORD will kill your root with famine.
    • Your remnant will be slain.
31. 14:31
    • The gate is commanded to howl.
    • The city is commanded to cry out.
    • All Philistia is melted away.
    • Smoke is coming from the north.
    • There is no straggler in his ranks.
32. 14:32
    • A question is asked about what answer will be given to the messengers of the nation.
    • The answer is that the LORD has founded Zion.
    • The answer is that the afflicted of his people take refuge in her.

Words Worth Explaining

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

14:1

"Jacob" and "Israel" are two names for the same ancestor (Jacob was renamed Israel) and both are used here as names for the whole nation descended from him. "LORD" in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, which Hebrew scribes wrote but did not pronounce aloud. The "foreigners" are non-Israelites living among them, who attach themselves permanently to the nation.

14:2

When an army won a war, it marched the losers far away. Those people had to work for the winners. Israel had been taken away like that.

14:3

Israel's people had been carried far from home and forced to work for the ones who conquered them. This promise says that will end.

14:4

"Taunt" translates a Hebrew word (mashal) covering proverbs, comparisons and set poems; here it is a mocking victory song chanted over a fallen enemy, a recognized form with its own conventions. The word behind "golden city" is obscure and occurs nowhere else in the Bible; ancient and modern translators have guessed variously at "golden," "insolence" and "fury," and the sense is genuinely unsettled. Babylon was the imperial capital in southern Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq.

14:5

A ruler's staff was both a symbol of office and a real instrument of beating; the poem uses the same object for the emblem of kingship and the weapon of oppression.

14:6

The Hebrew of this verse is difficult, and it is unclear whether the tyrant is the one doing the persecuting without anyone restraining him, or is now himself being hounded without anyone restraining his attackers. Translations divide.

14:8

The cedar forests of Lebanon supplied the ancient world's most prized building timber, and conquering kings routinely logged them for palaces and temples, recording the fact in their inscriptions. The trees celebrating the tyrant's death is a joke about the logging stopping.

14:9

"The world of the dead" is Sheol, the underground realm where Hebrew writers pictured all the dead going, kings and commoners alike, a place of shadowy weakness, not of reward or punishment. The King James Version renders it "hell," which now suggests something quite different.

14:11

"The grave" here is the same Sheol named in verse 9. Harps and lyres were the music of a royal banquet; maggots and worms replacing the king's bedding is the poem's reversal of that luxury.

14:12

The Hebrew here is helel ben shachar, "shining one, son of dawn", the morning star, the planet Venus, which climbs high in the pre-dawn sky and is then swallowed by the sunrise. The Latin Bible translated it lucifer, "light-bringer," and the King James Version kept that word as a name, which is how "Lucifer" later came to be used for the devil. In its own context the poem is addressing the king of Babylon.

14:13

"The mountain where the assembly gathers, in the farthest parts of the north" draws on imagery known from Canaanite texts, where the gods met in council on Mount Zaphon, a peak north of Israel. To claim a throne there was to claim a seat among the gods.

14:14

"Most High" (Hebrew Elyon) is a title for God, ancient and widely used, emphasizing supremacy over all other powers.

14:15

"The pit" is another name for the grave. It is a deep hole in the ground.

14:17

Conquering empires deported captured populations and held them far from home; letting prisoners go back was a mark of a generous king, and refusing to was a standing charge against a cruel one.

14:18

Burial in one's own family tomb, with the body treated honorably, mattered enormously in this culture. Royal tombs were monuments, and "his own house" is a way of saying the tomb built for him.

14:19

To be left unburied, thrown among the battle dead and tipped into a stone pit, was the worst disgrace an ancient Near Eastern king could suffer, a fate deliberately inflicted on defeated enemies to deny them any dignity after death.

14:20

In those days a man's name lived on through his children and grandchildren. Wiping out the family meant the name was gone for good.

14:21

Killing a defeated king's sons was standard practice for conquerors: it destroyed the dynasty so no heir could ever reclaim the throne. "For the guilt of their fathers" reflects the ancient assumption that a royal house stood or fell as a single unit.

14:22

"The LORD of Armies" (traditionally "LORD of hosts") is a title picturing God at the head of massed armies, variously understood as Israel's forces, the heavenly powers, or the stars. "Its children and its grandchildren" translates a Hebrew word-pair meaning offspring and descendants generally; the King James "son and nephew" uses "nephew" in its older sense of grandson.

14:23

The creature named here is uncertain (guesses include owls, hedgehogs, porcupines and bitterns) but the point is a wild animal that inhabits abandoned ruins. Sweeping a place with a broom is an image of total clearance, leaving nothing behind.

14:25

Assyria was the empire dominating the region in Isaiah's lifetime, based in what is now northern Iraq. A yoke was the wooden beam strapped across the necks of plow animals; laid on people, it was the standard image for the forced labor and tribute an empire imposed on a subject nation.

14:28

Ahaz was king of Judah; he died around 715 BC. "Message" translates a word (massa) meaning both a burden carried and a weighty pronouncement, prophets used it to head an oracle, usually one announcing doom against a nation.

14:29

The Philistines occupied the coastal plain southwest of Judah, with five main cities; they had been Israel's rivals for centuries. "The rod that struck you is broken" means the ruler who had been beating them has died, the poem then warns that what replaces him will be worse, escalating from snake to viper to a flying serpent (Hebrew saraph, a darting or burning serpent of the kind pictured in desert folklore and Egyptian art).

14:30

"The firstborn of the poor" is an idiom of intensification, the poorest of the poor. "Your root" and "the rest of you" continue the plant image from verse 29: the stock is killed off and no shoot survives.

14:31

The city gate was the public square of an ancient town (where markets, courts and civic business took place), so calling on the gate to wail is calling on the whole community. Smoke from the north signals an approaching army, since invaders reached Philistia and Judah by the northern coastal road; the dust and smoke of a marching column was visible before the troops were.

14:32

Zion was the fortified hill of Jerusalem, and by extension the city itself. The "messengers" are diplomatic envoys, most likely Philistine ambassadors sounding out Judah about joining a revolt against Assyria, and the verse gives the answer they are to be sent home with.