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.
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.
3 Therefore my loins are filled with anguish;
pangs have seized me,
like the pangs of a woman in labor;
I am bowed down so that I cannot hear;
I am dismayed so that I cannot see.
4 My heart staggers; horror has appalled me;
the twilight I longed for
has been turned for me into trembling.
5 They prepare the table,
they spread the rugs,
they eat, they drink.
Arise, O princes;
oil the shield!
6 For thus the Lord said to me:
“Go, set a watchman;
let him announce what he sees.
7 When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs,
riders on donkeys, riders on camels,
let him listen diligently,
very diligently.”
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.
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.”
10 O my threshed and winnowed one,
what I have heard from the LORD of hosts,
the God of Israel, I announce to you.
Comment: In some ways poetry and prophecy are made both to reveal and to hide things from you! That may seem silly but they want to reveal things to us but not so quickly that we can too easily gloss over the words and not really take the message in! This ‘oracle’ would have made more easily made sense to the people living at the time than it does for us because they would have known the places named and the inferences for certain phrases. For instance what does the phrase ‘whole winds of the Negev’ mean to You? We know where the Negev is, in the southern portion of Israel but the prophecy is about Persia and Iraq (Babylon) which are E-NE. Around Babylon apparently it is very fertile but was called a sea because of the multitude of lakes, some very large! So why the ‘wilderness of the sea’? This is surely a prophecy of coming judgement! Elam and Media were kingdom names of Iraq and the traitor refers to Persia (Iran)! At the end of v2 presumably the sighing is part of the response in the anguish of the peoples whom Babylon had conquered. Babylon’s fall was to be soon! Labor pains, your heart staggering and beating irregularly, too afraid to look or listen are all terms that we understand well. The ‘I’ in v2 presumably refers to God whereas the ‘my’ in v3&4 refers to the prophet who is seeing this vision! The ‘they’ in v5 I think refers to the Babylonian army as they prepare for the advancing army from Persia. They consider themselves as ‘princes’ for they are mighty. The don’t have tanks and machine guns so they prepare their shields and presumably swords!
Then God speaks to the people of Israel, many of whom have been captured by Babylon! I think that Isaiah is the watchman and in his watching and waiting “in his watchtower’, whatever that means, he sees, actually or in a vision, the approaching army and the defeat of Babylon with their ‘gods’ in ruins! Verse 10 is either spoken to a) the Babylonians, to whom the oracle is dedicated but in the prophecy totally defeated or b) to the Jews who have been winnowed from Israel and are in this winnowed city. For one it spells disaster for the other possible freedom! ‘O my threshed and winnowed one, what I have heard from the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, I announce to you.’
Isaiah 55: 11 – So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Prayer: I don’t often understand what is happening, but You do! Thank You that You are in control, although You trust us to make choices and decisions. Please grant more wisdom than I have in myself.
As I read it! 