Isaiah 14:4 That you shall take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How has the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!… The "burdens" are given as a series of prophetic visions; events pass before the prophet's mind as in a moving panorama, and he notes down just the things that more particularly arrested his attention. A prophetical description of an event will differ from an historical account of the same event, by being a irate outline, or else a vigorous word-painting of certain salient features, rather than a circumstantial detail. Prophetical work is akin to poetical work, and its due apprehension depends on spiritual sympathy rather than on logical precision. The passage commencing with ver. 4 is perhaps the most striking passage in this series of burdens. It is an ode of triumph on the fall of the Babylonian monarch. Bishop Lowth says of it that he "knows not a single instance, in the whole compass of Greek and Roman poetry, which in every excellence of composition can be said to equal or even approach it. It may with truth be affirmed that there is no poem of its kind extant in any language, in which the subject is so well laid out, and so happily conducted, with such variety of images, persons, and distinct actions, with such rapidity and case of transition, in so small a compass, as in this ode of Isaiah. For beauty of disposition, strength of coloring, greatness of sentiment, brevity, perspicuity, and force of expression, it stands among all the monuments of antiquity unrivalled." Babylon may be treated as a representative of all the nations surrounding and related to Israel. They are the great nations of the ancient world, but they fringed round the land of Canaan on the north, the east, and the south. The prophet denounces Babylon, and Moab, and Syria, and Egypt, and Tyro, and solemnly warns Edom. I. AS NEIGHBORING NATIONS, THEIR PROPHESIED DESOLATION BECAME A POWER ON THE JEW. At the time that Isaiah wrote his first prophecy the nation of Israel was in a perilous and painful position. The consequences of prolonged national self-will and idolatry were pressing heavily upon it. The great Asiatic nation, which was to be the Divine agent in their punishment, was coming nearer and nearer to them, swallowing up, in its irresistible progress, the intervening kingdoms. The northern portion, that called Israel in distinction from Judah, was about this time subdued by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, and its people were carried away captive. The kings of Judah only secured a temporary respite by paying a heavy tribute, and the one or two good kings of the period, such as Hezekiah and Josiah, did but, as it were, make the dying taper flare up for a while ere it suddenly went out in darkness. It must have been a hard thing for a godly man to live in such a time, and in the midst of such surroundings. We can imagine the pious Jew in such an age saying, "Are we not the covenant people of God? Have we not been, through long years, the special objects of his guidance, defense, and care? Yet it seems now as if God had forgotten us. These surrounding nations are in the height of prosperity. See Babylon the magnificent! See Damascus the wealthy! See Tyre the commercial!" To such as these, in Jerusalem and in Judaea, the prophecies of Isaiah, charged with the "burdens" of these prosperous nations, would come as a Divine consolation, and would say to them, "Do not confine your thoughts to that only which you can at present see; take in the future; view things in the larger light of him who has all men and nations in his control, and the long ages in which to work his purposes." Isaiah shows them that sin is sin everywhere, it carries its tremendous consequences everywhere. Delays are, everywhere, but the long-suffering patience of God that loudly calls to repentance. For the unrepentant everywhere - call him Gentile or call him Jew, be he covenanted or be he uncovenanted - there is only a "fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries." But these prophecies were intended to be a power upon the many as well as upon the few. The many were heedless and blind, puffed up with their apparent security. For long years the warnings of their earlier national history had been neglected. In their self-security they had even ceased to fear the "Judge of all the earth." To them there came the voice as of a man rapt in sublime vision: "I see the burden of Babylon. Exalted to heaven in privilege; thrust down to hell in disgrace, I see the place of Babylon. Behold, it is not: the hand of the Lord hath swept it away." "Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand: it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty." II. AS GREAT AND PROMINENT NATIONS, GOD'S DEALINGS WITH THEM CARRY LESSONS FOR ALL AFTER GENERATIONS. In order to reach us with helpful moral influences, God finds it necessary to set the little matters concerning the progress of our little life in large before us in the histories of nations. A nation is, as it were, a man whose entire life-course can be watched through from childhood to decay. The invisible things of morals may be made manifest in the visible scenes of history. An old divine has the following remark: "God can punish nations in this world, but for the punishment of individuals he wants both this world and the next." We live such brief lives here on earth that we cannot get extensive and worthy ideas of the issues of sin from studying merely our own experiences. Nor can we, even from the most striking cases of individual suffering, as a result of sin, discern the full majesty of the Divine indignation. But the life of a nation can be set forth in its completeness; it is a finished whole. We can read the story of Babylon and Tyre, from cradle to grave. The life of a nation is long enough for us to trace in its history its growth, its sin, its fall, and its woe. And the calamities that come at last upon sinful nations are figured in such aspects of terror as to create the profoundest impression on us. This may be illustrated by the Persian overthrow of Babylon, or the Roman siege of Jerusalem, or the manifest decay of the Turkish empire in our own times. 1. From this subject we learn to have faith in God about the nations of the earth. God has set England in the very midst of the world-kingdoms, very much as he set old Canaan in the center of the great ancient empires, on purpose that we might be a gracious power on them, and learn wise lessons from them. God is painting truth for us in his dealings with them. And God's ways, whether in the small for individuals, or in the large for nations, are ways of chastisement, are instinct with love; are intended to do them good. in their latter end. So we may have faith in God concerning the nations of the earth. 2. And we learn to have faith in God about a true and godly life. If we only see lives in the little, as Asaph did, who wailed out the seventy-third psalm, we may easily be bewildered. But see lives in the large, in the mass, and then we are assured that iniquity never flourishes through; at the last it always "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Many a man dies without the suffering and punishment exhausting itself. But a nation never dies without the sin-degradations and the sin-judgments being plain to view upon it. It is true, forever true, that "righteousness tendeth unto life." Sin is simply a tremendous, awful burden, more than any man can bear, such as no man can bear away. Kept, it must crush unto wounding and woe. Somehow, somewhere, outside ourselves, we must find a sin-bearer, who can carry our sin away. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! |
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