Notes for Bible 101 January 8, 2007—Isaiah 13-23
Review: Isaiah, whom God called to prophesy in Judah at the time when Israel was being defeated by Assyria, speaks a message of judgment to his own nation as well as to the nations who are Israel and Judah’s enemies. God uses the heathen kings and their armies to punish his people; we saw in Isaiah 36-37, Sennacharib threatened Jerusalem in 701 B.C., and only God’s hand of mercy protected the city from destruction. Why judgment? Why punishment?
God a covenant God: the first covenant in the Bible
is the one God made with Adam: “You are free to eat from any tree in the
garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:16). God gave Adam freedom
to find and eat food in the garden, where food was abundant. God said “obey me
and you’ll live; disobey and you’ll die.” That was the covenant, and we know
Adam and Eve broke it. In succeeding chapters of Genesis, it becomes clear that
man, left to himself, descends deeper into sin (Gen 6:5: “God saw that all the
thoughts of all the people were wicked all the time.”) Unless God intervened
and provided a means of redemption, no fellowship between God and man would be
possible because a holy God cannot have a relationship with sinful people. But
Paul tells us that God’s plan from the beginning was to send his
Son as a redeemer. It began when God made a covenant with Abraham (Gen.
12:2-3) that through him all the world would be blessed, and further, anyone
who blessed Abraham and his descendants would be blessed, but those who cursed
him and his people would be cursed. This pattern of blessings and curses was
given weight after the Law was given. In the law, God defined a standard of behavior
toward him and toward other human beings. He also gave them the Tabernacle and
sacrifices, a means of atonement for sin that would establish and maintain
Israel’s individual and collective fellowship with God. In Deut. 28, we read
the whole story: if Israel were obedient and relied on God, worshiped him,
followed the law, their lives would be healthy, prosperous and peaceful.
Indeed, they’d be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” (Ex. 19:6); God
design for them to be different, separate, “holy,” would also make them
attractive to other nations who’d then come to know God, too. However, if
Israel were disobedient, all the good things would be reversed, and they’d be
punished with bad crops, disease, drought, enslavement and exile. God was serious;
his people should have been.
II Kings 17:7-23: God has allowed the Assyrians to defeat and deport all his people, taking them from Israel to other parts of the Assyrian world. This occurred in 722 B.C. This passage in II Kings tells us why: “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their god, who had brought them up out of Egypt. . . . They worshiped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them.” And the passage continues to enumerate their sins. For 200 years the prophets had warned the kings and people of Israel: “Repent or you’ll be punished.” For 200 years, the nation ignored God and his prophets.
Judah: Now Isaiah is a prophet who begins to minister just at the time of the fall of Israel, and who sees visions of what will happen to Judah if they continue on a similar, unfaithful path. And we know, from Isaiah 6, that God told Isaiah that no one would listen to him. Their destruction is also inevitable, and it comes in its finality in 586 B.C. when Jerusalem falls and the last of three groups of people is exiled to Babylon.
Other nations: God then turns his attention to punishing the ones who punished Israel and Judah. Most of these prophecies were fulfilled within 200-300 years of Isaiah’s lifetime; others have yet to come to complete fulfillment. The message of the OT prophets was three-fold: (1) You have sinned by breaking the covenant. Repent imemdiately! (2) No repentance? Then judgment and exile! (3) But yet there is hope beyond the judgment for a glorious future restoration. Now the punishment of the punishers is a fourth prophetic category. God uses pagan nations as instruments of pain and destruction, but then he promises that they, too, will feel pain and destruction. We see this clearly in Isaiah 13-23. In this section, God speaks against Babylon, Assyria, the Philistines, Moab, Aram (Syria), Cush, Egypt, Edom and Arabia. These are the nations surrounding Israel and Judah. Each has at one time and another been a threat to the peace of God’s people. And at times, the kings of Israel and Judah made alliances with these nations. God had told them he was their king, their defender, and the “hosts of heaven” would rescue and protect them; clearly, an alliance with Egypt or Assyria was a sign of distrust of God. Nevertheless, each of these foreign nations becomes God’s means of punishing his people—for their faithlessness, their idolatry, their lack of trust in him.
Babylon: Recall that in Isaiah 39, we read that Hezekiah, whose life was extended 15 years after God healed him of a serious illness, took a group of envoys from Babylon on a tour of all his wealth: he showed them his treasuries in the palace and temple, his weapons, his stables of horses. And Isaiah rebuked Hezekiah, saying “You’ve done a foolish thing and someday, all that you showed them will be carried off to Babylon.” But since that “someday” would be years in the future, Hezekiah relaxed. Assyria defeated Israel in 722 B.C, threatened Jerusalem in 701 B.C., and then Assyria itself was defeated by Babylon in 612 B.C. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, then, would be the ones to attack and defeat Judah (final destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.). It’s worth noting that the Persians then defeat the Babylonians and under Cyrus the Great, the first of the exiles is allowed to return to Jersualem (539 B.C.). When one nation was growing in power, another was declining. God’s plan was always at work.
Isaiah 13: This chapter and ch. 21 prophesy the decline of Babylon. In Isa. 13, we see images of war mixed with the pain of those who will be threatened and then defeated. The threat is a “noise on the mountains, an uproar among the kingdoms” (v. 4), the “day of the Lord” (repeated for emphasis) will bring terror and “every man’s heart will melt” (v. 7). God’s anger and wrath will destroy sinners, and God says, “I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless.” (v. 11). God’s wrath is always against those who deny his authority, and who reject him trusting instead in their own strength. Details of such wrath include the death of all ages and the overthrow of Babylon along with its abandonment: “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians pride will be overthrown by god, like Sodom and gomorrah. She will never be inhabited . . . But desert creatures will lie there” (13:19-20). This prophecy is fulfilled: Babylon was a beautiful city; Nebuchadnezzar’s “hanging gardens” are legendary for their beauty and the engineering skill it took to build them. It had temples and great art. But God saw their pride much as he did at the time of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11)—the faith of mankind was in mankind, and not in God. The Babylonian empire, which rose from 626 B.C. to fall in 539 B.C., was defeated by Cyrus the Great of Persia, and Babylon almost completely destroyed in 478 B.C. by Xerxes I. Later Alexander finished the destruction of Babylon in 330 B.C., and it has remained a ruin ever since.
Isaiah 14: The first two-thirds of this chapter describes Babylon’s fall as a comfort to Israel: yes, God has punished his people at the hand of the Babylonians, but God’s love for his people will restore them and preserve them. Isaiah 14:12-17 has a double meaning. Many scholars believe that it describes Lucifer or Satan’s fall from heaven. But it also describes the pride of the Babylonian kings who were then brought down. In a sense, it is Satan, “the prince of this world,” as Jesus calls him (John 12:31, John 14:30, John 16:11), who is behind the world’s evil dictators and their violent acts against other nations. It was pride that caused Lucifer’s fall and it is pride that causes this Babylonian king to fall.
Isaiah 14:24-27: God declares judgment against Assyria: “I will crush the Assyrian in my land; on my mounains I will trample him down. His yoke will be taken from my people and his burden removed from their shoulders.” It’s inevitable: Assyria will be defeated because it is God’s plan to do so. Assyria which defeated Israel and threatened Judah, is defeated by Babylon.
Isaiah 14:28-32: Israel and Judah’s perpetual enemy Philistia will be defeated. Samson was to defeat the Philistines; Saul was at war with them during his entire 40-year reign (the Philistines killed Saul and three of his sons); David fought them and put them under submission, but they rose again to raid and harrass Israel and Judah. God says they will be destroyed by famine and war—the Egyptian and Assyrian armies eventually conquer this enemy of God’s people.
Isaiah 15 and 16: Moab is next in line for God’s punishment. Why is Moab to be defeated? “Her overweening pride and conceit, her pride and insolence” (16:6) are an abomination in God’s sight. Moab, a neighbor of Israel, had a mixed history with Judah especially. David put the Moabites under tribute; his great grandmother Ruth was a Moabitess, and recall that David asked the king of Moab to protect his own mother and father while he was running from Saul. But on the way to the Promised Land in 1406 B.C., the Moabites had led Israel astray with Baal and Astoreth worship (Numbers 25) and God remembered. This land and its people will also be destroyed.
Isaiah 17: The “oracle against Damascus” involves the Syrians as Damascus is its capital city. As a symbol of the country, Damascus will become a “heap of ruins.” Aram or Syria had been an enemy and had threatened the northern kingdom of Israel before Aram itself was defeated by Assyria. This chapter also speaks of Israel and its decline, and since it had been defeated by Assyria in 722 B.C., it’s used here as a warning to Judah—continue to follow the present path, and you, too, will end as Aram and Israel.
Isaiah 18 and 19: Here Cush and Egypt are in the spotlight; Cush is ancient Ethiopia, perhaps then a region of Egypt, and a threat to God’s people. And we know Egypt is symbolic of slavery and like Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt experienced God’s punishment in the past. At times both Israel and Judah had made alliances with kings of Cush and Egypt, hoping to fend off their northern enemies of Aram and Assyria. But recall the Assyrian commander Rabshakah’s description of Egypt as a “splintered reed” a weak ally. And God condemns both Judah and Israel for trusting other nations instead of putting their trust in God. Isaiah 19 echoes the time of Exodus when God’s plagues challenged many of Egypt’s gods. Another round of plagues will come to Egypt in the future.
Isaiah 20: Isaiah is asked to strip off his mourning clothes and sandals as symbolic acts. Just as he gives his sons symbolic names, here he acts in a way that is meant to call attention to God’s voice and his warnings. Isaiah’s nakedness, God says, is an illustration of the nakedness of Egypt and Cush following Assyria’s attacks on them—attacks ordained by God. These very likely occurred in 712 B.C.
Isaiah 21: A little more about Babylon, then an oracle concerning Edom, and finally, one against Arabia. The latter is more a warning that desert nomads will be caught up in war’s fall out when troops are marching from one place to another. It does not appear to be a judgment against them. In a way, God is saying that war involves more than kings and armies; it often sucks in the innocent, the bystanders whose way of life is upset even though it’s not their fight. Kedar, a desert area, is brought low in the Babylonian wars against Judah and the whole region.
Isaiah 22: We read this earlier, the oracle against the “Valley of Vision” which was Jerusalem. It appears in this sequence of God’s judgment against Judah and Israel’s neighbors because it, too, will be judged. Isaiah is saying “just because you haven’t been mentioned for a while doesn’t mean God has forgotten about your sins.”
Isaiah 23: Tyre, the coastal nation whose king Hiram was a friend of David and Solomon, is condemned for its wickedness. Recall that Jesus traveled to this area and spoke to a Phoenician woman who begged him to heal her daughter. Jesus answered her request with what appears to be an insult, but the woman perseveres and Jesus heals her daughter. And then he returns to Galilee. God’s concern for all people is manifested in Jesus’ trip to this Gentile area. But at the time of Isaiah, Tyre, Sidon and Phoenicia were in for punishment. Why? See v. 9: “The Lord Almighty planned it, to bring low the pride of all glory and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.” Once again, it is the pride of human beings in their own strength, intelligence and abilities that God punishes. And the destruction of Babylon and Assyria are offered to Tyre as proof of God’s power.
Isaiah 24: This is an end times prophecy, but it’s worth looking at in the context of God’s judgment against these enemy nations we’ve seen condemned in earlier chapters. In this chapter, the universality of judgment and punishment of sin is declared.
Next week: We’ll delve into the Messianic prophecies which look at Jesus from infancy to his resurrection.
Homework for those who want to go deeper:
1. Read Isaiah 24. Why does God promise judgment and on whom will it fall?
2. Note Isaiah 25 and 26. These two chapters are songs of praise. Consider the descriptions of God in them and the way he blesses his people. What effect do these two chapters have on a reader coming after all the chapters of judgment?