Isaiah 21:1-10

The burden of the desert of the sea

The desert of the sea

This enigmatical name for Babylon was no doubt suggested by the actual character of the country in which the city stood.

It was an endless breadth or succession of undulations “like the sea,” without any cultivation or even any tree: low, level, and full of great marshes; and which used to be overflowed by the Euphrates, till the whole plain became a sea, before the river was banked in by Semiramis, as Herodotus says. But the prophet may allude also to the social and spiritual desert which Babylon was to the nations over which its authority extended, and especially to the captive Israelite; and perhaps, at the same time, to the multitude of the armies which it poured forth like the waters of the sea. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)

The prophecy against Babylon

It is a magnificent specimen of Hebrew poetry in its abrupt energy and passionate intensity. The prophet is, or imagines himself to be, in Babylon. Suddenly he sees a storm of invasion sweeping down through the desert, which fills him with alarm. Out of the rolling whirlwind troops of armed warriors flash into distinctness. A splendid banquet is being held in the great Chaldean city; the tables are set, the carpets are spread; they eat, they drink, the revel is at its height. Suddenly a wild cry is heard, “Arise, ye princes, anoint the shield!”--in other words, the foe is at hand. “Spring up from the banquet, smear with” oil the leathern coverings of your shields that the blows of the enemy may slide off from them in battle. The clang of arms disturbs the Babylonian feast. The prophet sitting, as it were an illuminated spirit, as a watchman upon the tower calls aloud to ask me cause of the terror. What is it that the watchman sees? The watchman, with deep, impatient groan, as of a lion, complains that he sees nothing; that he has been set there, apparently for no purpose, all day and all night long. But even as he speaks there suddenly arises an awful need for his look-out. From the land of storm and desolation, the desert between the Persian Gulf and Babylon, he sees a huge and motley host, some mounted on horses, some on asses, some on camels, plunging forward through the night. It is the host of Cyrus on his march against Babylon. In the advent of that Persian host he sees the downfall of the dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar and the liberation of Judah from her exile. On the instant, as though secure of victory, he cries out, “Babylon is fallen.” And he, that is, Cyrus the Persian king, a monotheist though he be, a worshipper of fire and the sun, has dashed in pieces all the graven images of the city of Nimrod. Then he cries to his fellow exiles in Babylonian captivity, “O my people, crushed and trodden down”--literally, “O my grain, and the son of my threshing floor”--“this is my prophecy for you; it is a prophecy of victory for your champions; it is a prophecy of deliverance for yourselves.” (Dean Farrar, D. D.)

The Persian advance on Babylon

(Isaiah 21:7; Isaiah 21:9):--It is a slight but obvious coincidence of prophecy and history that Xenophon represents the Persians advancing by two and two. (J. A. Alexander.)

The Persian aversion to images

The allusion to idols (Isaiah 21:9) is not intended merely to remind us that the conquest was a triumph of the true God over false ones, but to bring into view the well-known aversion of the Persians to all images. Herodotus says they not only thought it unlawful to use images, but imputed folly to those who did it. Here is another incidental but remarkable coincidence of prophecy even with profane history. (J. A. Alexander.)

“The burden of the desert of the sea”

There is a burden in all vast things; they oppress the soul. The firmament gives it; the mountain gives it; the prairie gives it. But I think nothing gives it like looking on the sea. The sea suggests something which the others do not--a sense of desertness. In the other cases the vastness is broken to the eye. The firmament has its stars; the mountain has its peaks; the prairie has its flowers; but the sea, where it is open sea, has nothing. It seems a strange thing that the prophet, in making the sea a symbol of life’s burden, should have selected its aspect of loneliness. Why not take its storms? Because the heaviest burden of life is not its storms but its solitude. There are no moments so painful as our island moments. One half of our search for pleasure is to avoid self-reflection. The pain of solitary responsibility is too much for us. It drives the middle-aged man into fast living, and the middle-aged woman into gay living. I cannot bear to hear the discord of my own past. It appalls me; it overwhelms me; I fly to the crowd to escape my unaccompanied shadow. (G. Matheson, D. D.)