Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Isaiah 13:6-16
The Apocalyptic Destruction of Babylon (Isaiah 13:6).
The forces having been gathered by Yahweh on the remoteness of the bare mountain, they are to be unleashed in ‘the Day of Yahweh', and it will seem as though the whole earth is involved.
Analysis of Isaiah 13:6.
a Howl, for the day of Yahweh is at hand. As the destruction from the Almighty (Shaddai) will it come. Therefore will all hands be feeble, and every heart of man will melt, and they will be dismayed.
b Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them. They will be in pain like a woman in labour. They will be amazed at one another. Their faces will be faces of flame
c Behold, the day of Yahweh comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its sinners out of it (Isaiah 13:9).
d For the stars of heaven and its constellations will not give their light, the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause her light to shine (Isaiah 13:10).
d And I will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. I will make a man more rare ('oqir) than fine gold, even a man than the pure gold of Ophir ('ophir) (Isaiah 13:11).
c Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of her place, in the wrath of Yahweh of hosts, and in the day of His fierce anger (Isaiah 13:13).
b And it will come about that as the hunted roe, and as the sheep that no man gathers, they will turn every man to his own people, and will flee every man to his own (Isaiah 13:14).
a Every man who is found will be thrust through, and everyone who is taken will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes, their houses will be spoiled, and their wives ravished (Isaiah 13:15).
In ‘a' the Day of Yahweh is at hand (compare Isaiah 13:9), coming as destruction from the Almighty, so that all hands will be feeble and ‘every heart of man' melt, and in the parallel ‘every man' will be thrust through, infants will be dashed in pieces, houses will be despoiled, wives will be ravished. In ‘b' pangs and sorrows will take hold of them, they will be in pain like a woman in labour, they will be amazed at one another and their faces will be faces of flame, and in the parallel they will turn and flee to their own countries and their own kindred like hunted animals. In ‘c' the day of Yahweh comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its sinners out of it, and in the parallel He will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of her place, in the wrath of Yahweh of hosts, and in the day of His fierce anger. In ‘d' the stars of heaven and its constellations will not give their light, the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause her light to shine, and in the parallel he will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. He will make a man more rare than fine gold, even a man than the pure gold of Ophir.
‘Howl, for the day of Yahweh is at hand.
As the destruction from the Almighty (Shaddai) will it come.
Therefore will all hands be feeble,
And every heart of man will melt.
And they will be dismayed.
Pangs and sorrows will take hold of them.
They will be in pain like a woman in labour.
They will be amazed at one another.
Their faces will be faces of flame.'
The day that is coming and is in view will be Yahweh's day. ‘The day of Yahweh' means that period in which He reveals His power in judgment, whenever it is, as He carries forward His purposes, so that through history there are different ‘days of Yahweh'. (Thus various such days are to be seen in Daniel's description of the four empires, as one follows another into destruction, although there not mentioned as such). But it would eventually, as a result of such writings as this, come to signify a great final day when God and His opponents would, as it were, come face to face in one last great war, before the everlasting kingdom was established. That is how John in Revelation saw it, a city that represented what Babylon symbolised, although it was not necessarily the literal Babylon. That had been destroyed long before (Revelation 14:8; Revelation 17-18).
‘At hand.' This refers to space rather than time. It is near in the sense that it was within striking distance. All would inevitably be caught up in it, first their neighbours and then themselves. It would be unavoidable.
The command is to ‘howl' (plural). Compare Amos 5:16. All are to howl for it will inevitably be a day of destruction. Both the Almighty and the world are here exacting vengeance on Babylon and what it stands for, and this series of events will inevitably concern Jerusalem/Judah, or what remains of them. The destruction will be like the descriptions of the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah, but on a vaster scale. The whole world will be shaking. The descriptions are of people in panic and terror, in fear and perplexity, their faces burning with horror and dismay. No one knows when, but Babylon is doomed. Such things would in fact happen time and again as Babylon was on its way to its destruction. Through Babylon great suffering would come on men.
‘Destruction from the Almighty' (sod mi ssadday). Note the assonance. Isaiah constantly uses assonance to emphasise his meaning and make it memorable. In all that would happen men were to recognise that this came from Yahweh as judgment on men's sins.
‘Behold, the day of Yahweh comes,
Cruel with wrath and fierce anger,
To make the land a desolation,
And to destroy its sinners out of it.'
The moral purpose behind what is happening is here described. It is the day of Yahweh when He steps in to put right particular situations. Note the stress on His ‘anger', His revulsion against their sin. Babylon has sinned against Judah and Jerusalem, it has sinned against the nations, it has sinned against God. It had once proudly asserted itself against God (Genesis 11). It would do so again and again (Isaiah 14:13). Thus His anger towards it, and thus the reason why His day will come on it. As it desolated the land of others, so its own land will be desolated. Its sinners would be destroyed.
‘For the stars of heaven and its constellations,
Will not give their light,
The sun will be darkened in its going forth,
And the moon will not cause her light to shine,
And I will punish the world for evil,
And the wicked for their iniquity,
And I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease,
And will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.'
In a world where the heavenly bodies were seen as gods and goddesses, and natural phenomenon were interpreted astrologically, it was inevitable that the destruction of such a nation would be seen in heavenly terms, especially in the case of a city so imbued with the occult as Babylon (chapter 47). What was happening to Babylon was happening to its gods. Bel was bowing down, Nebo was stooping (Isaiah 46:1). Furthermore, as the smoke welled up from burning fields and cities, and the skies became distorted, and blood and smoke filled men's eyes, natural phenomena would take on an eerie look. The stars would become hidden, the sun dark, the moon unshining. Astrologers would search the heavens and find in them portents of what was happening. Thus the very heavens themselves would be seen as involved.
Isaiah had earlier described God's judgment on Israel in terms of darkness and distress (Isaiah 5:30), how much more so the judgment on Babylon. We can compare here how when God was punishing Egypt one of the plagues was a plague of thick darkness which resulted when Moses stretched his hand towards heaven (Exodus 10:21) when exactly this situation would have been true. All of heaven would have been invisible.
And inevitably so, for Yahweh the Creator would be punishing the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. Men had put light for darkness, and darkness for light (Isaiah 5:20). God would do so too. The lights would go out for Babylon. He was humbling the proud, and bringing low the haughty, especially the ‘haughtiness of the terrible'. (Note that the literal events are those happening on earth). Something of this haughtiness comes out in Isaiah 14:12. Kings of Babylon, terrible in the eyes of the world, and especially of a small nation like Judah, saw themselves as exalted above the stars of God. Thus the very stars themselves must be blotted out (compare Daniel 8:10; Daniel 11:36).
‘I will make a man more rare ('oqir) than fine gold,
Even a man than the pure gold of Ophir.'
In the day of Babylon's doom in its continual occurrences the land would appear deserted as populations melted away from before the invading forces. They would seemingly disappear, until the enemy had moved on. The armies would search and find no one. All would have fled, in some cases leaving their gold behind. That could still be found. Note the play on words in 'oqir and 'ophir, they would be ‘more oqir than ophir'. Ophir has not been identified (Arabia, East Africa and India have all been suggested) but was famous for its gold (1 Kings 9:28; 1Ch 29:4; 2 Chronicles 8:18; Job 22:24; Job 28:16; Psalms 45:9).
‘Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,
And the earth will be shaken out of her place,
In the wrath of Yahweh of hosts,
And in the day of his fierce anger.'
Note how this is paralleled with Isaiah 13:9. It is the Day of Yahweh, the day of His fierce anger, the time for dealing with sin. The continuing destruction of Babylon is to be an earthshaking event. Even the heavens will tremble. For it is Yahweh revealing His wrath against the pride of rebellious man from the beginning. Similar language was used by great kings as they described their progress in warfare. In their arrogance they saw the world shaking before them. But in Yahweh's case it would regularly be true, and it would be true for Babylon.
Here the term ‘Yahweh of hosts' is particularly poignant, for His anger is revealed in ‘the hosts' He has gathered together against Babylon whose continual activity will bring Babylon down (again and again).
‘And it will come about that as the hunted roe,
And as the sheep that no man gathers,
They will turn every man to his own people,
And will flee every man to his own land.
Every man who is found will be thrust through,
And everyone who is taken will fall by the sword.
Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes,
Their houses will be spoiled, and their wives ravished.'
Here are described man's experiences during that Day. The hunted roe and the wild sheep are unprotected and vulnerable. They are on their own. And so it will be with the people who gather to Babylon, drawn by the magnet of the pomp and glory that draws all men. Now they are to be left without a protector, and will have to flee to their homelands. And those who are caught will be summarily slain, for to be involved with the sinful is to be sinful and to be punished with them. The consequences in infant deaths, houses ravaged, and women raped are the normal consequences of war, when men lose control of themselves. The vivid language has become very realistic. This is war as it was known. What happened in detail was not God's purpose, it was the consequence of the kind of instruments He had to use.