Isaiah_13-15

Isaiah 13-15

The chapters of Isaiah 13-23 contain “burdens” (oracles of judgment) imposed on nine surrounding nations.   In these, the Assyrians are no longer the oppresses whereas Babylon takes center stage.

A burden is something that you bear, and these burdens are judgments of God upon these nine nations.

This passage is a remarkable because most of the prophetic judgments have already been fulfilled.

Each of these nations had some contact with Israel, and most of them were adjoining their borders or close. These represent nation that caused Israel to suffer at their hands and is suffering today—and will suffer again in the future.

The most of these have been fulfilled and stand as evidence of fulfilled prophecy.

Babylon is the subject of the first burden.

The literal city of Babylon is the primary consideration and remarkable as Babylon, in Isaiah’s day, was an insignificant power at this time. It was not until a century later that Babylon became a world power. God pronounced judgment upon Babylon before it became a nation!

This section does not end with the “burdens” on the nine surrounding nations, but extends through six woes in chapters 28–33 and concludes with the calm and blessing after the storm in chapters 34 and 35. These last two chapters again give us a millennial picture.

In chapter 13 we will see the punishment of Babylon in the Day of the Lord. Some believe that this looks forward to the Great Tribulation period for its final fulfillment.

The 1^st great world power is recognized in Daniel’s prophecy where Nebuchadnezzar was the ‘head of gold” of Babylon.  Babylon is the symbol of united rebellion against God, which began at the Tower of Babel and will end in Revelation 17 and 18 where we will see religious Babylon and political Babylon ruling the world. During the Great Tribulation period Babylon will go down by a great judgment from God.   Note Isa. 13:3 where 1^st mentioned in the scripture:
Isaiah 13:1-10 (ESV)
¹  The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.
²  On a bare hill raise a signal; cry aloud to them; wave the hand for them to enter the gates of the nobles.
³  I myself have commanded my consecrated ones, and have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger, my proudly exulting ones.
⁴  The sound of a tumult is on the mountains as of a great multitude! The sound of an uproar of kingdoms, of nations gathering together! The LORD of hosts is mustering a host for battle.
⁵  They come from a distant land, from the end of the heavens, the LORD and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.
⁶  Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come!
⁷  Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt.
⁸  They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame.
⁹  Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.
¹⁰  For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.
 

I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness [Isa. 13:3].

“sanctified ones” = God raised up Babylon for a specific purpose.

God used Assyrian as a rod of his anger and then judged them.  He will use Babylon for his rod of punishment toward Judah.

Isa. 13:4 – Assyria and Babylon were set aside to punish Israel.

V.5 – explaining the ‘sanctified ones’ as they will come against the southern kingdom of Judah as Assyria did against the ten northern tribes of Israel.

V.6 – The Babylonians will be the “weapons of his indignation”.

V.7-9– The prophecy looks beyond their destruction to the Great Tribulation.

V.10 – identifies the “Great Tribulation”
¹⁰  For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.
Matthew 24:29 (ESV)
²⁹  “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Revelation 8:12 (ESV)
¹²  The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night.

Isaiah 13:11-16
V.11-12 provides the reason for the judgement.  V.13-16 – tells us that the Tribulation will be a time of worldwide destruction when no ‘flesh would survive’ except for the fact that God will preserve a remnant for Himself. 

Isaiah 13:11-16 (ESV)
¹¹  I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant, and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless.
¹²  I will make people more rare than fine gold, and mankind than the gold of Ophir.
¹³  Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the LORD of hosts in the day of his fierce anger.
¹⁴  And like a hunted gazelle, or like sheep with none to gather them, each will turn to his own people, and each will flee to his own land.
¹⁵  Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.
¹⁶  Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.

When Christ died on the cross it added value to us.

V.17-19 – identifies those that will be the ‘rod’ against Babylon, the Medes

V.20-22 – note the extent of their destruction….

Isaiah 13:17-22 (ESV)  – Destruction of Babylon….
¹⁷  Behold, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold.
¹⁸  Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children.
¹⁹  And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.
²⁰  It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there; no shepherds will make their flocks lie down there.
²¹  But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats will dance.
²²  Hyenas will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close at hand and its days will not be prolonged.

Vernon McGee states it so well:

“This prophecy has been fulfilled. Babylon was the greatest kingdom that has ever existed upon this earth. The Macedonian Empire was great; the Egyptian Empire was great, as was the Roman Empire. At one time Great Britain could have been named a great nation, but I don’t think anything can compare to the glory of Babylon. God’s Word calls it “the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency,” and that excellency God overthrew as He did Sodom and Gomorrah. All you have to do is to look at the ruins of ancient Babylon to recognize that that has happened.

It was a great city that was never rebuilt. Other great cities have been rebuilt. This is especially true of Jerusalem. Rome was destroyed and rebuilt. Cities in Germany were bombed out—absolutely obliterated—and were rebuilt. Frankfurt, Germany, was leveled, and it arose out of the ashes a great city. But Babylon did not arise. God said that it would never again be inhabited. It is true that Babylon will be rebuilt in the future, but not on the ancient site of Babylon. It will be built in a different place.

     Babylon represents confusion, and the future Babylon will be a great commercial center, a great religious center, a great political center, a power center, and the educational center of the world again.
     The future Babylon will become a great center on earth. The Man of Sin, the willful king, called the Antichrist, will reign in that place. It will be destroyed just as the ancient Babylon was destroyed. Babylon is a memorial to the fact of the accuracy of fulfilled prophecy and a testimony to the fact that God will also judge the future Babylon.”

A taunt song – a case against king of Babylon in 4 scenes.

V.1-2 – The Lord’s mercy toward his people (the house of Jacob) and they are bound to a policy of welcoming the stranger.
V.2 shows the reluctance of his people to take up that calling.

Issue:  What the Lord will do and what the people will do.  The Lord keeps returning to a work of mercy.

Isaiah 14:1-8 (ESV)  –  Israel’s Remnant Taunts Babylon
¹  For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land, and sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
²  And the peoples will take them and bring them to their place, and the house of Israel will possess them in the LORD’s land as male and female slaves. They will take captive those who were their captors, and rule over those who oppressed them.
³  When the LORD has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve,
⁴  you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: “How the oppressor has ceased, the insolent fury ceased!
⁵  The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers,
⁶  that struck the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows, that ruled the nations in anger with unrelenting persecution.
⁷  The whole earth is at rest and quiet; they break forth into singing.
⁸  The cypresses rejoice at you, the cedars of Lebanon, saying, ‘Since you were laid low, no woodcutter comes up against us.’

Isaiah 14:9-11 (ESV)
⁹  Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations.
¹⁰  All of them will answer and say to you: ‘You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!’
¹¹  Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps; maggots are laid as a bed beneath you, and worms are your covers.

Isaiah 14:12-17 (ESV)  –  A tyrant has an obligation to respect the earth and its citizens, even if they are his captives.
¹²  “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!
¹³  You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north;
¹⁴  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’
¹⁵  But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit.
¹⁶  Those who see you will stare at you and ponder over you: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms,
¹⁷  who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who did not let his prisoners go home?’

Isaiah 14:18-23 (ESV)  The extent of the King of Babylon’s fall.
¹⁸  All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb;
¹⁹  but you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch, clothed with the slain, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a dead body trampled underfoot.
²⁰  You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have slain your people. “May the offspring of evildoers nevermore be named!
²¹  Prepare slaughter for his sons because of the guilt of their fathers, lest they rise and possess the earth, and fill the face of the world with cities.”
²²  “I will rise up against them,” declares the LORD of hosts, “and will cut off from Babylon name and remnant, descendants and posterity,” declares the LORD.
²³  “And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” declares the LORD of hosts.

Isaiah: 14: 24-27  – “An Oracle Concerning Assyria”
²⁴  The LORD of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand,
²⁵  that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains trample him underfoot; and his yoke shall depart from them, and his burden from their shoulder.”
²⁶  This is the purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations.
²⁷  For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?

Assyria was the forerunner of Babylon.  The Two brought together as God will punish them both.  They are ‘broken by the Lord’.

The real focus of this section rests on the Lord’s plan.  The Lord has a plan of what He will do with all the nations of the earth.    Assyria was 1^st the Lord’s agent and then they became the Lord’s adversary.

Several times in the Bible God has frustrated the evil plans of others.

V.26 – The purpose if for the entire earth…  His sphere of activity lies among the nations and His people.  Also,   his decisions will be done!

Isaiah 14:28-32 (ESV) – An Oracle Concerning Philistia  –  The Outcry Concerning Philistia
²⁸  In the year that King Ahaz died came this oracle:
²⁹  Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of you, that the rod that struck you is broken, for from the serpent’s root will come forth an adder, and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent.
³⁰  And the firstborn of the poor will graze, and the needy lie down in safety; but I will kill your root with famine, and your remnant it will slay.
³¹  Wail, O gate; cry out, O city; melt in fear, O Philistia, all of you! For smoke comes out of the north, and there is no straggler in his ranks.
³²  What will one answer the messengers of the nation? “The LORD has founded Zion, and in her the afflicted of his people find refuge.”

V.29 – Rejoice NOT  –  These demands are a warning not to be consoled by the apparent death of the  present leader.

Zion’s security does not lie in alliances or rebellion or military force. Zion’s security rests on trust in the Lord.

Quote:  Believers Church Bible Commentary:

The evidence of Scripture portrays God as working from a plan rather than acting capriciously. God acts in his own people’s best interest even when acting in judgment. Although God’s plan cannot be defeated, yet the details of God’s plan remain part of the discernment of God’s people. This, however, does not leave out the larger community of nations. They too are part of God’s plan for humankind and are called to the mountain of the Lord, to be taught his ways (Isa 2:1–5).
The motive of pride lies in the exaltation of the self above the reality of God. The human inclination to act the part of God, or to place oneself above God, or to be self-sufficient so that one no longer needs God—yielding to such an inclination constitutes pride.
Self-esteem is a good thing, and the loss of self-esteem is always to be lamented. But like many good things, self-esteem moves easily into arrogance, haughtiness, superiority, and condescension. The spiritual defense against pride rests on true humility. … True humility frees a person from servitude to reputation, he says. Such freedom leads to the discovery that real joy arises only when self recedes into the background. It is “only when we pay no more attention to our own life and our own reputation and our own excellence that we are at last completely free to serve God in perfection for His own sake alone” (37–38).

Isaiah 15:1-9 &  16:1-14    An Oracle Concerning Moab

Isaiah 15:1-9 (ESV)
¹  An oracle concerning Moab. Because Ar of Moab is laid waste in a night, Moab is undone; because Kir of Moab is laid waste in a night, Moab is undone.
²  He has gone up to the temple, and to Dibon, to the high places to weep; over Nebo and over Medeba Moab wails. On every head is baldness; every beard is shorn;
³  in the streets they wear sackcloth; on the housetops and in the squares everyone wails and melts in tears.
⁴  Heshbon and Elealeh cry out; their voice is heard as far as Jahaz; therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud; his soul trembles.
⁵  My heart cries out for Moab; her fugitives flee to Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah. For at the ascent of Luhith they go up weeping; on the road to Horonaim they raise a cry of destruction;
⁶  the waters of Nimrim are a desolation; the grass is withered, the vegetation fails, the greenery is no more.
⁷  Therefore the abundance they have gained and what they have laid up they carry away over the Brook of the Willows.
⁸  For a cry has gone around the land of Moab; her wailing reaches to Eglaim; her wailing reaches to Beer-elim.
⁹  For the waters of Dibon are full of blood; for I will bring upon Dibon even more, a lion for those of Moab who escape, for the remnant of the land.

All of these cities and places belonged to Moab during Isaiah’s day. They were going to be destroyed because, although the Moabites professed to know God, they spent their time in heathen temples dedicated to pagan gods, saying that they were worshiping the living and true God.

Although Moab was the enemy of Israel, Isaiah’s heart goes out to them in sympathy because of the terror that has come upon them. This reveals the heart of God. In spite of people’s sin today, God still loves them and will extend His mercy to them if they will but turn to Him.

Verse 9 gives details of the ravaging of the land.  It has been literally fulfilled.