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Isaiah, Prophet of Salvation, Book 4, part 1

Isaiah 21:1 begins a prophecy against Babylon, as the prophet foresees the rise of the next empire even while Assyria was currently rising. The prophet was taken by the spirit in a vision to the wilderness, or plain, between Babylon and Persia to witness the fall of Babylon.

¹ The oracle concerning the wilderness of the sea [yam]. As windstorms in the Negev [or “southland”] sweep on, it comes from the wilderness, from a terrifying land.

This the oracle that took place in “the wilderness of the sea.” In this case the “sea” is the Euphrates, as we see also in Jeremiah 51:36, 37 in another prophecy about the fall of Babylon.

³⁶ Therefore thus says the Lord, “Behold, I am going to plead your case and exact full vengeance for you; and I will dry up her sea [yam] and make her fountain dry. ³⁷ Babylon will become a heap of ruins…”

The Hebrew word yam refers to a large body of water, not necessarily a “sea” or “ocean” in the modern sense. So also we read that the great harlot of Mystery Babylon sits on “many waters” (Revelation 17:1), a reference to the city’s location on both banks of the Euphrates River. Again, the “Sea of Egypt” in Isaiah 11:15 is not the Mediterranean but the Nile River.

The “Negev” in verse 1, relative to Babylon, was the desert of Arabia that lay to its south, from whence came the hot, parching wind. Negev comes from a root word meaning “to be parched.”

The Harsh Vision

The prophet was not transported physically, as were Ezekiel (in Ezekiel 3:14) and Philip (in Acts 8:39, 40). Isaiah’s experience is described as a vision in Isaiah 21:2,

² A harsh vision has been shown to me; the treacherous one still deals treacherously, and the destroyer still destroys. "Go up, Elam, lay siege, Media; I have made an end of all the groaning she has caused."

The Hebrew word for “harsh” is qasheh, which means “hard, obstinate, cruel, firm, or fixed.” No doubt Isaiah used the word to denote its double meaning and application. The harsh cruelty of the Babylonians was matched by the fixed and firm message of the prophetic vision of the fall of Babylon.

So the prophet calls to Elam and Media to bring judgment upon Babylon. In Isaiah’s time, the name Persia was not yet in use, as it was a century later in the time of Ezekiel and Daniel. The territory of Elam was originally settled by Elam, son of Shem (Genesis 10:22). Persia was a name that was used much later. In fact, Persia annexed Elam before conquering Babylon, at which time they became the same country.

So Isaiah speaks to “Elam,” which was essentially Persia by the time the prophecy was fulfilled. Likewise, Media was given the same divine mandate, and so we find that the Medes and Persians were allies in the overthrow of Babylon (Daniel 5:28).

The Harsh Captivity

In the last part of Isaiah 21:2 God says through the prophet, “I have made an end of all the groaning she has caused.” Life in captivity to Babylon was grim. Isaiah saw this in his vision and knew that Judah would be taken to Babylon in the future.

Isaiah’s vision is not dated, so we do not know if he saw this before or after the incident in Isaiah 39:1, 2, where Hezekiah showed the envoys of Babylon all of his riches. Isaiah told the king that he had done foolishly, saying in Isaiah 39:6,

⁶ “Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have laid up in store to this day will be carried away, and they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.”

It is clear that Isaiah knew that Judah would be exiled to Babylon in the future, even though God had saved Judah from the Assyrians. He knew that the captivity would be “harsh,” and that the people would groan and sigh during those years.

Isaiah 21:3, 4 continues,

³ For this reason my loins are full of anguish; pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in labor. I am so bewildered [avah, “twisted, bowed down, bent over”] I cannot hear; so terrified [bahal, “alarmed, disturbed, agitated”] I cannot see. ⁴ My mind reels, horror overwhelms me; the twilight I longed for has been turned for me into trembling.

Seeing the people in captivity horrified the prophet. The pain that he felt was as if he himself had become one of the captives. He described the pain as though he were giving birth: “my loins are full of anguish; pains have seized me like the pains of a woman in labor.” Hence, the prophet was bent over in pain and perhaps in fear, as a woman in labor might be.

The prophet again conveys the surface situation while suggesting a deeper meaning at the same time. The word avah, “twisted,” is also the root word of avon, “iniquity, perverseness,” picturing those whose hearts are twisted and perverse. Hence, Isaiah seems to suggest the cause of Judah’s captivity to Babylon. God was to judge Judah’s iniquity and perverseness by putting them under a perverse nation that would cause their captives to be twisted, bowed down, or bent over.

Judgment on Babylon

Visions are often sketchy, and events often appear abruptly with no time separating them. So Isaiah 21:5-7 moves quickly from the scene of captivity to the scene of Babylon’s fall.

⁵ They set the table, they spread out the cloth, they eat, they drink; “Rise up, captains, oil the shields,” ⁶ for thus the Lord says to me, “Go, station the lookout, let him report what he sees. ⁷ When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs, a train of donkeys, a train of camels, let him pay close attention, very close attention.”

Verse 5 was fulfilled in Daniel 5:1, the night that Babylon fell,

¹ Belshazzar the king held a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and he was drinking wine in the presence of the thousands.

King Belshazzar was holding a banquet for his nobles when the Medes and Persians broke into the city and captured it. Isaiah saw this in a vision nearly two centuries before Babylon fell. It is as if he had been transported to the great hall of Babylon to witness the event personally. Then, just as abruptly, the prophet was taken back in time and heard God’s orders to the captains: “Go, station the lookout.” God was acting as the army general, giving orders on the defense of the city.

Secondly, the prophet hears, “oil the shields.” Many shields in those days were made of leather, which, if not oiled, would crack and weaken. An order to “oil the shields,” then, meant to prepare their defenses or prepare for war.

Verse 7 tells us what the watchmen were to look for—“riders, horsemen in pairs.” Cyrus was the first to train the Persians in horsemanship. The watchmen on the walls were instructed to watch for horsemen riding in pairs, perhaps pulling chariots (as the KJV says). According to The Commentary on the Whole Bible, page 453,

“The Persians used asses and camels for war. [Maurer.] Horsley translates, ‘one drawn in a car with a pair of riders, drawn by an ass, drawn by a camel;’ Cyrus is the man; the car is drawn by a camel and ass yoked together and driven by two postillions, one on each, is the joint army of Medes and Persians under their respective leaders.”

It appears that the pair of horsemen were meant to picture the alliance between Cyrus the Persian and Darius the Mede as they came to make war on Babylon. In this prophetic picture, the “camel” was Cyrus, who was dominant, and the “ass” was Darius, the Mede. It reminds us of the law in Deuteronomy 22:10,

¹⁰ You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

While this law is stated in terms of farming, the underlying principle is about making alliances between unequal partners. Paul applies this law to marriage alliances in 2 Corinthians 6:14 KJV, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.”

So Isaiah 21:7 seems to imply that Cyrus and Darius were “unequally yoked,” in that Cyrus was dominant in this political “marriage.” Darius was, in fact, Cyrus’ uncle and later also was his father-in-law, and the two were allied by Cyrus’ marriage to Darius’ daughter. The full story of Cyrus is written in Daniel, Prophet of the Ages, chapter 9.

The law in Deuteronomy 22:10 was mostly concerned with the fact that an ass was an unclean creature, while an ox was a clean creature. In New Testament terms, it was applied to believers being yoked to unbelievers. But in the case of Persia and Media, both the camel and the ass were unclean. They were unequal only in the sense of strength or power.

In another prophecy (Daniel 7), where the coming empires were pictured as beasts, the Medo-Persian empire was pictured as a lopsided bear, “raised up on one side” (Daniel 7:5). This was just another way of portraying the unequal “marriage” relationship between Persia and Media.