A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 47: Visions of Babylon

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 47: Visions of Babylon

In our last presentation in Isaiah, we had explained that from the message of comfort for Jerusalem which is found in chapter 40, the overall context in the remaining chapters of Isaiah is a series of prophecies concerning the fate of the children of Israel in captivity, as well as the means of their reconciliation in the promises of a coming Savior and Redeemer of Israel, or, to use a word which Isaiah had not used in that context, the coming Messiah. However a more immediate context here in these chapters of Isaiah, from chapter 44, is the prophecy of Cyrus, the then-future Persian king who conquered Babylon about a hundred and sixty years after Isaiah had written these chapters.

Here Babylon has not been mentioned since Isaiah chapter 43, where the Word of Yahweh had stated that “14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships.” There we asserted that those words have more significance as a far-vision prophecy, comparing language concerning shipping and merchants in the prophecy of the fall of Mystery Babylon in Revelation chapter 18. But of course, there is also a near-vision fulfillment, although that could not have been fulfilled until some time in Isaiah’s future, since Babylon was not a threat to the kingdom of Judah in Isaiah’s lifetime. The act of the Babylonians having sent an embassy to Jerusalem to meet with Hezekiah is indicative of Babylonian intentions to break from the Assyrian empire, which is also evident in other historical records, however that did not occur for at least another seventy years.

Continued references to Babylon are clear in the context of Isaiah chapters 44 and 45, where Cyrus was prophesied to be a figure who would be instrumental in the release of the captives of Judah and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. There is a reference to Babylon where the Word of Yahweh attested in the opening verse of chapter 45, speaking of Cyrus, that He would “open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut”. Then, where we had discussed The Failure of Idols in regard to Isaiah chapter 46, it was chiefly the idols of the Babylonians, Bel and Nebo, which would fail to protect the city, and which would themselves go into captivity which had been the subjects of that prophecy.

Now, here in Isaiah chapter 47, Babylon is once again the subject of Isaiah’s prophecy, and as we had explained throughout this portion of Isaiah, it now it becomes explicitly manifest that it was describing the gates of Babylon which would be opened to Cyrus, as we had seen in the opening verse of chapter 45. However there had also been prophecies concerning Babylon and its fall in Isaiah chapters 13 and 14, and when we had discussed those chapters, we found many parallels with Revelation chapter 18 and the prophesied fall of Mystery Babylon, an event which seems to be looming on the horizon of our own future. Likewise, there are parallels with Revelation chapter 18 in this prophecy of Babylon here in Isaiah chapter 47.

Of course, the language of the Revelation is not merely incidental, and having been distinguished from all of the other ancient empires, a few of which were even larger, and most of which had endured for much longer than the Babylonian empire, Babylon was purposely chosen as a type for an otherwise unnamed future world empire. Aside from the meaning of its name, which in Hebrew is babel, a word which may also mean confusion, the reasons for the association may only be conjectured. However in the Revelation, it is apparent that the formation of all world empires has followed a similar pattern, and similar entities were behind them all. Although this assessment may be considered superficial, it seems that all the merchants need to do in order to build up an empire, is to find a greedy king, and then make investments in military and industrial assets in his kingdom so that he may subject his neighbors.

This pattern is described, to some degree, in the allegorical language of certain passages in Revelation chapters 13 and 17. In the first of these passages, there is a vision of two beasts, which are described as having attributes very much like the beasts of Daniel chapter 7, and there are other ways to connect this passage and the first beast of Revelation chapter 13, to the series of empires which had been prophesied by Daniel in that chapter whereby it becomes evident that the use of certain symbols is purposeful. So we read in Revelation chapter 13:

2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. 4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?

The point to note here are in the statements that “the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority” and the people “worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast”, so there is an entity, which is collectively labelled as a dragon, which gives its power to a beast, or world empire. While the description of this beast in Revelation chapter 13 is an apparent prophecy of the Roman empire, or more accurately, the series of empires which had concluded with Rome, in Revelation chapter 17 there is another passage which has a much wider context, where we read, in part:

9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. 10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. 11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.

From a historical viewpoint, these empires must be the empires which had ruled over some significant portion of the children of Israel throughout their history as a people, and in that manner the five which had fallen are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and the Greek empire of Alexander and his successors. Then the Roman empire is that one which is, as it had still ruled in John’s time, and another short-lived empire would appear after that. Since we must reckon the later Holy Roman Empire as an extension of the Roman Church, the head of the Roman empire having been wounded and healed, the next empire which ruled over a significant portion of the children of Israel is that of Napoleon, which was short lived, however it was significant for other historical reasons.

One of those reasons, as we had explained in our commentary for Revelation chapter 17, was the emancipation of Jewry in all of the nations of Christendom, a result of Napoleon’s policies, and another was the enrichment of the House of Rothschild and the other Jewish banking families in London as a result of Napoleon’s wars. So after Napoleon, there would be an eighth beast which would arise, and it would be “of the seven”, as we can only identify that as the international banking system and the international corporations which are controlled by a relatively small circle of dragons. In Revelation chapter 12, we read in part “4 … the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.” This can only be a reference to the Edomite king Herod, since only he had attempted to kill the Christ child as soon as He had been born. The allegory of the dragon is related to the serpent of Genesis, Satan, the Devil, and the fallen angels or Nephilim of Revelation chapter 12 and the early chapters of Genesis, and in several other places in Scripture. After having failed to kill the Christ child, we read in that chapter that “ the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed” (Revelation 12:17).

Then reading one verse further of that passage in Revelation chapter 17: “12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. 13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.” Note that these kings do not derive their power from the beast, but rather, they give their power to the beast, so they must be of the dragon which had been described as giving its power to the beast in Revelation chapter 13. These kings may not even have traditional kingdoms, since many of those who rule the world today are the founders or significant shareholders of international banks and corporations. Such men typically use their wealth to control governments and their policies.

It is our opinion, that all of this is important to understand, and to repeat here in relation to this prophecy of the fall of ancient Babylon, because history repeats itself, and therefore the pattern of the development of empires also repeats itself, even if the methods may vary. So as we had said in Part 9 of our Revelation commentary, which was titled The Pattern of Empires:

… history repeats itself, so the pattern of empires repeats itself, and that is because men never fail to ignore the lessons which may be learned from history. At the core of all of the events of history is a repetition of the patterns found in the book of Judges. The children of Israel thrive and grow, and rather than pushing other races aside they attempt to assimilate them, whereafter they are led to sin by them, and the aliens come to rule over the children of Israel. When they repent, the aliens are removed, in one way or another, and the children of Israel are granted peace by Yahweh their God. When they do not repent, aliens appear once again and the children of Israel are destroyed and scattered, and even enslaved.

Because history repeats itself, then significant aspects of the patterns of the formation, growth, decadence, decay and eventual demise of all empires also repeat themselves, even if not every aspect of history in the course of an empire may have been repeated in precisely the same manner, or in any particular empire. History also very often repeats itself because the patterns of sin and punishment repeat themselves. So the prophecies of the fall of ancient Babylon found here and in the earlier chapters of Isaiah, as well as in Jeremiah chapters 50 and 51, are also all prophetic types for the future fall of the entity which is called Mystery Babylon in Revelation chapter 18, which is also described as the eighth beast of chapter 17, in the verses that we have already cited here.

We use the term prophetic type to describe something exemplary in Scripture which has a relationship to something else which had happened or existed in the future, either by its character or nature. So it serves as a model for something which happened or existed later. Among other things, that something else could be an event, or an entity such as a government or an enemy, or even a person. This is evident where it may be explained that various aspects of the lives of the patriarch Joseph, and Joshua the son of Nun, and King David and even Solomon, had all been prophetic types for the earthly life and ministry of Yahshua Christ. In various prophecies which Christ has fulfilled, or will fulfill, He is even called by the name of David, for example in Ezekiel 37:25 or Hosea 3:5, however His earthly given name is the same as that of Joshua the son of Nun. But it is not true, that every aspect of each of their lives were repeated in His life, or will be repeated when He returns.

Because of the nature of such prophetic types, we cannot identify them in Scripture unless both the entity and its types are all in the past. For example, if we did not have the Gospel accounts of the ministry of Christ, we would not be able to look at the records of the lives of Joseph or David in order to see the many similarities which events in the life and the purpose of Christ had shared with each of them. However concerning the fall of the entity called by the label Mystery Babylon, even if it has not yet happened, we can see some of the prophetic types because we can compare the both the prophesies and the history of historical Babylon to the words of Christ where He described the fall of Mystery Babylon in the Revelation. However many of the circumstances are far different, and the purpose of the fall of ancient Babylon is so far different from the purpose of the fall of Mystery Babylon, that we cannot take prophecies of the fall of the old Babylon and project them into the future with an assumption that they may have any degree of accuracy. Rather, we should cleave to the words of Christ, and assume that He already repeated the portions of Old Testament prophecy which are relevant to His ultimate victory over His enemies, an event which is evidently precipitated by the fall of Mystery Babylon.

So here is a caveat: not every aspect of these prophecies of the fall of ancient Babylon will be repeated in the same manner in the future fall of Mystery Babylon. For example, in the prophecy of the fall of Babylon in Isaiah chapter 13 we read in part that “14 … they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.” As we have discussed here in the preceding chapters of Isaiah, this was fulfilled in the decrees of Cyrus, who allowed captive peoples to return to their own lands after he had come to rule Babylon. These peoples were not necessarily his enemies, and he had seen himself as their magnanimous liberator, as we have seen where we had discussed his conquest of Babylon in his own surviving inscriptions. But when Mystery Babylon falls, and Christ returns as He has promised, He shall gather all nations, and send the goats into the “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels”, while gathering the sheep into His Kingdom and eternal life, as He had explained in Matthew chapter 25. That parable of the sheep and the goats, as well as many other statements which were made by Christ, as well as in others of the Old Testament prophets, all preclude a possible far-vision fulfillment of that 14th verse of Isaiah chapter 13 in relation to the future fall of Mystery Babylon. Among other Scriptures, the words of Christ as they are recorded in Matthew chapter 24 also preclude a far-vision fulfillment of the 14th verse of Isaiah chapter 13.

Once we understand that not every aspect of every prophetic type shall manifest itself when the far vision of a particular prophecy is fulfilled, then we must admit that we cannot accurately construct visions of the future from the fulfillment of prophecies past. The circumstances surrounding the fall of ancient Babylon are completely different from what we may perceive of the fall of Mystery Babylon, and in some aspects they are completely contrary to many of the words of Christ describing circumstances which He had made in relation to His return. So not everything prophesied of the former can be relevant to the fall of the later, just as the words found in the Revelation which describe the fall of the later are not all relevant to the historical fall of the former. So while we shall compare certain passages of Isaiah chapter 47 to the coming fall of Mystery Babylon as it is described in Revelation chapter 18, we cannot imagine that every aspect of this prophecy of the fall of Babylon will be relevant to that which still lies in our future. So when we interpret Revelation chapter 18, we can only honestly take those portions from these prophecies of the fall of ancient Babylon from those passages which Christ Himself had explicitly taken.

But if we construct scenarios of the future from prophecies which had been fulfilled in the past, and use them to attempt to predict coming events, if they do not come as we have described them then we have offered false hope, or we have sounded false warnings, and if we have upheld them as doctrines, or even if we merely express confidence in their fulfillment, then we have essentially created our own idols. However we should not want to be found constructing idols, so it is better to take the plain words of Christ and have our hope in Him, and the plain warnings of Christ, those portions of the prophecies of the fall of these ancient empires which He had repeated in His Gospel and in the Revelation, and pray that when their fulfillment approaches, we may read the signs of the times and have the wisdom to respond appropriately. While we may not be perfect, adhering to sound principals of Biblical interpretation and accepting only those things which Christ Himself had told us of the future, in the end we should hope to avoid having been guilty of idolatry.

Now we shall commence with Isaiah chapter 47, and the second time in his ministry that the prophet describes the fall of Babylon, even nearly a hundred years before Babylon had become an empire:

1 Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. 2 Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers. 3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man. 

While it becomes quite clear in verse 6 of this chapter that it is ancient Babylon which is being addressed here, there are also far-vision allusions. When Cyrus had taken ancient Babylon in 539 BC, it had been taken peaceably, as Isaiah also suggested here in the opening verse of chapter 45, so the vengeance mentioned here is not evident in the immediate circumstances of the fall of the Babylonian empire. After Cyrus the king of Persia had fought Nabonidus at the Battle of Opis on the Tigris River, routing the Babylonians and crossing into Mesopotamia north of Babylon, the cities such as Sippar and then Babylon itself had yielded to Cyrus and his generals without further resistance. While the fate of Nabonidus is unclear in the conflicting accounts, apparently only Belshazzar had been killed when Babylon was taken.

The New American Standard Bible has verses 2 and 3 to read: “2 ‘Take the millstones and grind meal. Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, Uncover the leg, cross the rivers. 3 Your nakedness will be uncovered, Your shame also will be exposed; I will take vengeance and will not spare a man.’” This is close to what is seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, where the last clause of verse 3 reads “and no mortal will I spare”, although the word for man here is adam, and it does not mean mortal, as the translators of that edition errantly presume. The ancient Chaldaeans were evidently of the tribe of Aram, who were a race kindred with the ancient Hebrews, and therefore they were of Adam. 

However the King James translation of the final clause of verse 3, where it says “and I will not meet thee as a man”, is not without merit. The Hebrew word translated as meet is פגע or paga (# 6293) and means meet or encounter, either in a friendly or a hostile sense. In other senses it is an occurrence or chance (# 6294). [1] This is according to Brown-Driver-Briggs, where Strong’s defines the terms as to impinge or impact. However the clause may also be translated as “I will not encounter a man”. But Gesenius offers stronger senses of the meaning of the verb, such as to strike, even to strike in the sense of killing someone, or to strike a covenant with someone. [2]

In any event, while many translations of this passage of Isaiah have spare rather than meet or strike, I can find no direct support for translating this verb as spare. But here the Septuagint has “I will no longer deliver thee to men”, as Brenton had translated it, from a form of the Greek verb παραδίδωμι which means to give or hand over something to another. That seems to be a poor translation on the part of the ancient Greek translators of the Septuagint. According to the Hexapla of Origen, the translation of Aquila of Sinope has “and I will not encounter a man” while that of Symmachus has “and a man shall not resist Me.” [3]

While the context is ominous, as Yahweh has said that He would take vengeance, it is plausible that He intends here to convey an understanding that He would not take vengeance in the same manner that a man would take vengeance upon an enemy. So here, having examined the Hebrew, we must favor the translation of the King James Version.

So now there is a statement which in this context, at least, seems almost out-of-place:

4 As for our redeemer, the LORD of hosts is his name, the Holy One of Israel. 

But this is not out-of-place, if Christ is the vehicle by which Yahweh would ultimately have His vengeance upon Babylon, then a far-vision fulfillment is evident. That is especially true since the children of Israel shall not be fully redeemed until after the fall of Mystery Babylon, at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb described by Christ Himself in the Revelation and in various statements in the Gospel.

While ancient Babylon was indeed humbled from the time of Cyrus, and over time it had declined and had never again achieved any status such as that which it had enjoyed in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, that humbling was gradual, and we still live with vestiges of ancient Babylon to this very day.

So for the near-vision, here Babylon had been told that “there is no throne” and was given instructions which represent a humbling of the Chaldaeans, which seems to be corroborated once again in verse 5:

5 Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms. 

While ancient Babel, or Babylon, was the first city listed among those of the empire of Nimrod in Genesis chapter 10, it was apparently not a very significant city, although it did merit mention, in the later years of the Akkadian empire and its successors, such as the empire of the Third Dynasty of Ur which ruled much of Mesopotamia in the centuries preceding the birth of Abraham. Then after the birth of Abraham, the Amorites had established a short-lived empire at Babylon, which lasted for about three centuries from the beginning of the 19th century BC. After that, having been under the rule of Kassites and Elamites at diverse times, in the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Babylon was directly ruled by, or sometimes subject to the Assyrians. But Babylon had also often rebelled against Assyrian rule and vied for independence, to the point of having been reduced to rubble in the later years of Sennacherib, only to be rebuilt by his son and successor, Esarhaddon. When Nineveh fell in 612 BC, Babylon was the most prominent of its adversaries, an endeavor in which it had been allied with the Medes and the Persians as well as the captive Israelites who were then known as either Kimmerians or Scythians, among other labels.

But from the time of the Persian conquest of Babylon, the city was no longer the seat of an empire, and gradually slid into obscurity, a process which took many centuries to complete. So it did “sit thou silent” and “get thee into darkness”, and it was no longer a “lady of kingdoms”. But nearly a thousand years after Cyrus, the Edomite Jews produced the Babylonian Talmud, and there were Jewish centers of learning in ancient Babylon until at least the 6th century, and possibly later. Then much later, in medieval England, the laws of commerce which are found in the Babylonian Shetar, which is a part of the Jewish oral law that is discussed throughout the Talmud, had become the basis for English mercantile law, and ultimately for the commercial laws of the entire world. That opportunity was open to Jews because Christians had no laws of their own regarding usury, the practice of which had been proscribed by the Church until the 16th century. That, we would assert, is one of the aspects at the core of Mystery Babylon.

Now Yahweh explains the motive and the justification for His vengeance upon Babylon:

6 I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke. 7 And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it. 

The ancient here in verse 6 must be the elders of the people. In ancient Babylon, while they were under Babylonian rule, it is difficult to know how the Babylonians had treated the people of Judah, how heavily they were taxed or for how long they were conscripted to fight for the Babylonians in their wars. But many of them evidently had no desire to leave their new homes once the rule of the Babylonians had ended, when they had an opportunity to return to Judah. To the contrary, it seems that relative peace would have been expected in Babylonian captivity, as we read in Jeremiah chapter 29:

4 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; 5 Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; 6 Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. 7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.

Once the decree of Cyrus was issued, it is apparent that not all of Judah had returned, but only a small portion, where we read in Ezra chapter 1: “3 Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem. 4 And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.” Then in Ezra chapter 2, those who returned were accounted, and later in the chapter we read: “64 The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore, 65 Beside their servants and their maids, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven…” So the people not only did well in ancient Babylon, but were themselves able to acquire servants, and only forty-two thousand of them returned, not counting the servants. However if the servants are accounted along with Judah, even if fifty thousand had returned, the number still seems small compared to what may have been expected of the sum total of Judah in captivity.

In any event, it seems that the people of Judah were not severely mistreated in the captivity of ancient Babylon, so once again, this seems to be more relevant to a far-vision fulfillment. It may more accurately be said of a far-vision fulfillment, that the entity which we describe as Mystery Babylon has not at all been merciful upon the children of Israel, who have been slaughtered in its countless wars, and have suffered plagues and death by many other means throughout these centuries of history.

8 Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children: 

Along with the statements in verses 5 and 7, where Babylon is called “the lady of kingdoms” and is attributed with having expressed the sentiment that “I shall be a lady for ever”, this line evokes the text of Revelation chapter 18 where we read of Mystery Babylon:

7 How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

This seems to reflect the arrogance those who would hold entire nations in subjection, and the vengeance of God against His enemies very often takes their arrogance into consideration. In Obadiah, in an oracle against Edom, we read in part: “4 Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.” That in turn evokes the vision of ancient Babel, in Genesis chapter 11 where we read: “ 4 … let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name…” That is also a probable prophetic type of the future Babylon and Mystery Babylon. Here it seems that occupying high places is representative of arrogance and a rejection of God, or a desire to be a god.

Now, in verse 9, in response to this attitude with which Babylon is portrayed as having had:

9 But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments. 

Again, the Revelation makes a very similar analogy where we read in the very next verse of chapter 18, after the declaration that “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow”:

8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

Then later in that chapter we read:

21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.

Then, as a consequence of that, just a little further on we read:

23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.

The end of ancient Babylon did not come in a day. As we had explained discussing recent chapters of Isaiah, Cyrus made professions in his inscriptions which exhibit the fact that he worshipped the same gods which the Babylonians and the Assyrians had also worshipped. Therefore Cyrus did not put an end to the sorceries and enchantments, and ancient Babylon endured for at least another thousand years, even if it was never again a seat of any significant government. So these verses, as well as most of this prophecy of the fall of Babylon, are much more relevant to the far vision than they had been to the near vision, and the time of Cyrus.

Where we continue, Babylon is still being addressed:

10 For thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: thou hast said, None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. 

Not all knowledge and wisdom come from God. In fact, we we read “thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me”, there is an indication of a denial of God. Paul of Tarsus had written warning of the folly of such worldly wisdom, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1:

19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Here Babylon is described as having wisdom, but not knowing God. There Paul had cited Isaiah chapter 29 (29:14) and the 33rd Psalm (33:10). While the Psalm had spoken of the counsel of the heathen, or nations, Isaiah had written concerning the wisdom of the apostates among the children of Israel in Jerusalem in his time. There, in the woe for Ariel, which is an epithet used for Jerusalem, we read in part:

13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: 14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. 15 Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?

Yet the allusions to those works of darkness on the part of the people of Jerusalem at that time must be a reference to their own idolatry and the accompanying sorceries and other sins. So not long before that passage of Isaiah, in chapter 27, we read:

9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.

So Jacob’s sin will be removed when Jacob destroys his idols. The word for groves there is asherah (# 842), and Asherah, or Ashtoreth, was a consort of Baal, the Phoenician and Canaanite equivalent of Ishtar, the Babylonian consort of Bel. So essentially, the people of Israel and Judah were following the same pagan religion as the Babylonians, in their apostasy from Yahweh their God, and it is that wisdom which is prophesied to perish in Isaiah chapter 29, in the passage which Paul had cited in 1 Corinthians.

11 Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth: and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know. 

This could also describe many of the past judgments of Yahweh God, such as the angel of death in the plagues of Egypt, or the fire and brimstone which had rained down upon Sodom and the other cities of the plain. But neither does this describe ancient Babylon, so it is once again evident that the prophecy is more relevant to a far-vision fulfillment. In Revelation chapter 18 we read:

21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.

Yet even in the following lines here in Isaiah, which do accurately describe many practices for which the ancient Chaldeans were famous, we also see much more relevancy to the far vision:

12 Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. 13 Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. 

The last clauses of verse 12 are a challenge, which is somewhat more clear in the New American Standard Bible which has the verse to read: “12 Stand fast now in your spells And in your many sorceries With which you have labored from your youth; Perhaps you will be able to profit, Perhaps you may cause trembling.” However the phrase “cause trembling” may also have been translated as “inspire awe”, by which one may hope to prevail.

We have already seen a reference in verse 9 here to “the multitude of thy sorceries”, where we had read the verse in Revelation chapter 18 which spoke of Mystery Babylon and said “… for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.” But now this also makes a reference to “the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators”, and for those things the Chaldaean priests of ancient Babylon had been renowned. We read in Daniel chapter 2 that Nebuchadnezzar had a vision, and “2 … the king commanded to call the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to shew the king his dreams. So they came and stood before the king.” Even later, in regard to another vision which Nebuchadnezzar had, as it is described in Daniel chapter 4, we read in part: “6 Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream. 7 Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers: and I told the dream before them; but they did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof.”

These are all forms of idolatry of one sort or another which also remain in our society today. While we have astrologers and stargazers, there are all sorts of prognosticators, either in the world of mysticism or in the world of “business”, and the distinctions between those two worlds are often vague. Both businessmen and bankers gamble on commodities markets, where each purchase is a bet or a hedge representing a hope that some commodity will be valued higher or lower at some point in the near future. So-called investments in bonds or stock issues also reflect hopes that some corporate value will go higher, and legions of men make a living trying to predict markets, grain yields, mine production, or some other way in which they or their employers can make money. But none of those men ever made anything with their hands, or planted fruit trees, or cotton or wheat, or dug a hole in the hope of finding iron or silver. So how are they not like the ancient prognosticators of the Chaldean priesthood? Every corporation, and every government, has monthly prognosticators who evaluate the prospects of gains and losses in revenues and expenses, or in commodities and livestock, or even in the souls of men, which are mentioned in Revelation chapter 18 along with the other commodities of Mystery Babylon.

14 Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it. 

There is a seeming contradiction of sorts in the last clause, which better seems to be rectified in the translation of this passage in the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible which has it to read: “See, they are like stubble that burns. They did not deliver themselves from the power of the flame. This is no coal for warming oneself, no hearthfire to sit before.” As it is, this is an ominous statement, which evokes thoughts of some of the punishments that were dispensed by the Chaldaeans themselves, such as when the prophet Daniel and his companions were cast into a furnace. This is found in Daniel chapter 3:

8 Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, and accused the [Judahites]. 9 They spake and said to the king Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live for ever. 10 Thou, O king, hast made a decree, that every man that shall hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, shall fall down and worship the golden image: 11 And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth, that he should be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

Thereby were Dan iel and his companions cast into such a furnace. So it is fitting, that the unrighteous be punished with those same things by which they themselves had intended to destroy the righteous. So Babylon is informed of its end:

15 Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee. 

The reference to the merchants seems to distinguish them, and evokes images of the merchants portrayed at the fall of Mystery Babylon, in Revelation chapter 18 where, after all of the precious merchandise of Babylon was listed, we read: “15 The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing…”

Notice that in the Revelation, there merchants only “stand afar off”, and go to no particular place. Here in Isaiah, this verse from the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible reads: “15 So will those be to you, those with whom you have toiled, those with whom you have trafficked from your youth. They each wander on their far-off way; there is none to save you.” In that translation, the merchants do not “wander every one to his quarter”, but rather, they “wander on their far-off way”, which is more similar to Revelation chapter 18 (18:15) where they “stand afar off”.

Where we see the words “they shall wander every one to his quarter” in the King James Version, the underlying Hebrew is only three words, or really five: אישׁ or aish (# 376), which is a singular noun meaning man, עבר or eber (# 5676) which is a region across or beyond, and תעה or ta’ah, which is to wander (# 8582). The verb is in a form תעו or ta’aw, which is properly identified as a 3rd person plural form. The noun eber is prefixed by a ל or lamed, which signifies to or for, and it has a ו or vav for a suffix, which functions as a pronoun meaning his or of him. The translation of these few words is only resolved where Brown-Driver-Briggs explain that the word אישׁ, or man, is also often used to designate each or every of a group or class distributively giving examples from Scripture. [4] So in this case, it is each of the previously mentioned merchants, for which the verb is plural. 

Therefore the King James translation is appropriate. However we would not interpret this to mean that the merchants would return to their own homes or homelands, and if we had to interpret this in the light of the far-vision of the Revelation, we are not compelled to imagine that the merchants of Babylon would escape judgment for any sins which they themselves may commit. Rather, this only suggests that the merchants who profitted from Babylon will not actually be concerned for Babylon when it falls. 

This concludes our commentary on Isaiah through chapter 47.

Footnotes:

1 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 2021, p. 803.

2 Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, pp. 665-66.

3 Origenis Hexaplorum, Fridericus Field, AA.M., E Typographeo Clarendoniano (The Clarendon Press), 1875, Volume 2, p. 523.

4 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, p. 35-36.