Wednesday Bible Study: Drive-by Isaiah part 5

 

These chapters were a bit more difficult to come up with, especially when you start with this line:

Isa 21:1  The oracle concerning the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the Negeb sweep on, it comes from the wilderness, from a terrible land.

Other places called the 'desert of the sea', our western minds would consider this more on the lines, 'the sea of desert'- it is referring to the forces that will gather against Babylon when it falls.  As our last time fix was around 708 BC, this puts this to the far ahead day when Babylon- which is who is being referred to- revolts against Assyria.  How do I know that, and not that it was the final fall of Babylon?  Observe:

Isa 21:2  A stern vision is told to me; the traitor betrays, and the destroyer destroys. Go up, O Elam; lay siege, O Media; all the sighing she has caused I bring to an end. 

And from Wiki:

Shamash-shun-ukin was Ashurpanipal's brother and was appointed puppet king in Babylon by daddy Esarhaddon  on his death in 669.  In about 652, he revolted, dragging a coalition of Chaldeans, Medes, Arabs, and Elam.  The Elamite forces were crushed west of Babylon and never rose again- thus you see, it can't be a later-on Elam- and Shamash- the traitor- was killed in 648.

But of course, everything Isaiah is near-prospect and far-prospect, and this passage finishes:

Isa 21:6  For thus the Lord said to me: "Go, set a watchman; let him announce what he sees.
Isa 21:7  When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs, riders on donkeys, riders on camels, let him listen diligently, very diligently."
Isa 21:8  Then he who saw cried out: "Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord, continually by day, and at my post I am stationed whole nights.
Isa 21:9  And behold, here come riders, horsemen in pairs!" And he answered, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground."
Isa 21:10  O my threshed and winnowed one, what I have heard from the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, I announce to you.

The curious thing that the commentators point out here is the fact that Isaiah, rather than being a watchman, was told to 'set a watchman'.  The key here is the double 'fallen'; this always stands for the fall of the political and religious system of the end days version of Babylon, the false church the AntiChrist destroys when he no longer needs it:

 

 Rev 17:3  And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.
Rev 17:4  The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.
Rev 17:5  And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: "Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations."
Rev 17:6  And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled greatly...

Rev 17:16  And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire,
Rev 17:17  for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.
Rev 17:18  And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth." 

 

From this perspective, you can see why Isaiah has to set a watchman- this watchman is his prophecy, which will make sense in the end days when this all begins to occur.

Next, Isaiah comes back to the close perspective, with a word against Edom:

Isa 21:11  The oracle concerning Dumah. One is calling to me from Seir, "Watchman, what time of the night? Watchman, what time of the night?"
Isa 21:12  The watchman says: "Morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire; come back again."

One of the more interesting turns of phrase- though the morning may come, night is falling for the kingdom of Edom.  'Come back again' is also curious;  Edom had been destroyed and subdued in the days of Jehoshaphat (870-845 BC), and again by Amaziah (around 795), possibly again in the revolt against Sargon II (720), and in the future they would be controlled by Babylon, Persia, the Greeks, and in 125BC, John Hyrcannus of the Maccabees would conquer "Idumaea" and forcibly convert them to Judaism... Like the command in v12, they would 'come back again' many times before the night descended for good.

Isaiah finishes Chapter 21 with a burden that within a year's time, an Arab kingdom, which he calls Kedar, would be utterly destroyed.  This year was Ashurbanipal's campaigns against the Qedarites in 649-648 BC- campaigns that led to their defeat and the capture in chains of the Arab king Ammuladdin.

Much of Chapter 22 revolves around the Assyrian attack on Hezekiah's Judah in the 680's (and thus a near future thing) and how Shebna, who was essentially Hezekiah's finance minister, would be replaced for his cowardice and 'eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die' attitude (21:13) by the "strong man", Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.

Next time, as this was a bit less drive-by than I intended, I'll start on a very significant part- the prophesy against Tyre.