Wednesday Bible Study: Drive-By Isaiah part 3

 

I was "told by God"- at least the impression I got- to limit it this week to what my paper Bible labels the burdens against Babylon, Assyria, Phillistia, and Moab- in other words, Chapters 13-16. Our time frame has changed; we are most likely in the mid-720s BC, and Sargon is king in Assyria.  The fall of Samaria, the overthrow of Sennacherib, and the usurpation of Sargon all fall hard on each other's heels, and it is in this time period that this set of prophecies come out.  The burdens basically have three stories to tell- prophecies against current and near-future nations, the casting of Satan into hell at the end of time, and one little time frame verse at the end.

The prophecies contained seem to go from far-out to about-to-happen, so we'll look at Chapter 16 first, and that little bitty time fix we get from the prophecy about Moab:

Isa 16:14  But now the LORD has spoken, saying, "In three years, like the years of a hired worker, the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt, in spite of all his great multitude, and those who remain will be very few and feeble." 

 

Best guess is that the 'three years' came in about 720 BC, which would put this prophecy near or during the fall of Israel.  Moab was subjected because of its pride (16:6-7) and because God asked of them one thing, which they would not do-

Isa 16:3  Take counsel; do judgment; make your shadow as the night in midday; hide the outcasts; do not uncover the fugitive!
Isa 16:4  Let My outcasts stay with you, Moab. Be a hiding place to them from the face of the destroyer. For the exacter has ceased, destruction has failed; the trampler is ended out of the land.

But Moab thought the fall of Israel was sweet revenge;  and they also thought they were strong enough to stand against the new Assyrian ruler, and joined a coalition that rebelled, and failed.  By the time the Medes and Persians took down Babylon, Moab had been erased from history.  That Phillistia was part of the rebellion is shown in 15:28-32, but it throws our timeline into a bit of a quandary, as it is begun with phrase "the year king Ahaz died," which is supposedly 716 BC.  However, another estimate puts Ahaz's death at 728 BC, so I'm going to assume that a) the best way to date it all is by where ever you fit the Assyrian chronology, and b) that we don't actually know which campaign took out the Phillistines and Moabites.

However, we do know that Babylon was being projected as a world power, which it was not at the time- it was re-conquered by Sargon after a rebellion by the Chaldean Merodech-Baladin ( the same Babylonian king whom Hezekiah showed his treasury to in 2 Kings 20), and was a hundred years from independence, and almost another century from the fall to the Medes Isaiah predicts in 13:17.

But importance really comes in the second phase- the descriptions of Satan as "king of Babylon":

Isa 14:3  When the LORD has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve,
Isa 14:4  you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: "How the oppressor has ceased, the insolent fury ceased!

And even the prisoners of Hell take up the taunt:

Isa 14:9  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.
Isa 14:10  All of them will answer and say to you: 'You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!'

You ask, how do we know this is about Satan and not some Babylonian king?  Observe:

Isa 14:12  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
Isa 14:13  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
Isa 14:14  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Isa 14:15  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. 

Much of this is echoed in Ezekiel 28, where the Devil is equated with the Prince of Tyre:

Eze 28:11  Moreover, the word of the LORD came to me:
Eze 28:12  "Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord GOD: "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
Eze 28:13  You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared.
Eze 28:14  You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
Eze 28:15  You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you.

In between all this, Isaiah predicts something that had to seem just as impossible at the time as the rise and fall of Babylon- the Fall of Assyria:

Isa 14:24  The LORD of hosts has sworn: "As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand,
Isa 14:25  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."

It would be a long, running battle starting in 623 and ending in 609 that destroyed Assyria- in fact, it was the Pharaoh Necho who killed Josiah in battle on his way to join the last remnants of the Assyrian Army, which were defeated with him at Carchemish in 605 BC, ending Assyria forever.  In other words, even if we date all of the burdens to that same date of 716 BC, Isaiah in these chapters gives us events that happened 111- 175 years in the future- and beyond!