Isaiah 23:13

Every attempt to extract a meaning from the verse as it stands is beset by insuperable difficulties. Perhaps the best suggestion is that the fate of Chaldæa is mentioned as a warning example to Tyre: "Behold the land of the Chaldæans; this people is no more; the Assyrian hath appointed it for the beasts of the wilderness, &c." (so R.V.). This is a fairly good sense; only, "this people is no more" is hardly a possible rendering of the Hebrew. The reference is supposed to be to one (probably the last) of Sennacherib's three conquests of Babylonia, which were certainly carried out with a thoroughness which would justify the terms of the prophecy. But is there any evidence that Babylonia was known as the "land of the Chaldæans" before the rise of the Chaldæan Empire? There is none in the Bible. The text is certainly in disorder, and there is little hope of recovering the original reading. Ewald's attractive emendation of "Canaanites" for "Chaldæans" fails to meet the case, for the exclamation "Behold the land of the Canaanites" surely comes too late after so much has been said of the ruin of this very land. The most acute analysis of the verse is that of Duhm, although, as is usual with this commentator, it involves an extensive manipulation of the text. To the original prophecy he assigns only the first and last clauses, and for "Chaldæans" he substitutes "Chittim": Behold the land of Chittim, he (Jehovah) hath made it a ruin" a continuation of the thought of the preceding verse. The intermediate clauses are regarded as an interpolation and are ingeniously explained as follows: "this is the people that was founded by the sea-farers (cf. Numbers 24:24), they erected its watch-towers, its cities and its palaces." It seems a pity that so good a sentence should be denied to the prophet.