It requires a very pedestrian and worldly mind to render this chapter with any significant degree of literalness. The soaring imagery serves to symbolize the nature of events in the Spirit Realm. While the prophetic word here rests on very real historical events, it is anchored in eternity. To restrict this passage to literalism is to miss the message entirely.
God is sovereign over the affairs of all humanity. Unlike mankind, when He decides something, that is what will be, regardless what it appears to us to whom He chooses to reveal Himself. He has chosen to allow Israel to fall and be taken into exile. He has chosen to bring them back. This did happen, but the business of their escorts becoming their slaves cannot be read literally. The closest we can come to literalness would be the solicitous manner of Persian Imperial support for the Restoration. That so many in Israel did after Isaiah's time read it literally is part of what contributed to the False Messianic Expectations. That literal reading requires a corrupted and Westernized mind, twisting a mystical spiritual image into some monstrosity. It is enough to see God can do anything which pleases Him.
Rather, the full realization of this image is in the Kingdom of God inaugurated by Christ. Satan and his demons, for all their wiles, cannot harm us unless we surrender to him. His worst efforts serve the Kingdom purpose, even though we scarcely understand how. It should thus surprise no one the image of Babylon remains that of Satan and his Kingdom of Darkness in the souls of fallen man. It is this kingdom which cannot receive spiritual truth, and derides mystical revelations, because their dead spirits cannot receive God's truth, and process it into something the mind can obey. Thus, while the literal historical Babylon which would come someday in Isaiah's future was but a manifestation of something far, far older, and would be around until all Creation is redeemed at the End. This is not simply about Babylon in 600 BC, but about Babylon the symbol of man's efforts to ignore the Spirit Realm. Demanding a literal rendering is the sin of Babylon.
Using broad brush strokes, Isaiah paints a picture of what Babylon will be by describing how she will fall. The city festooned with gold, dominating such a vast stretch of earth, would fall suddenly. Her end would be a relief to all creation. We know Nebuchadnezzar had a thing for visiting his workmen in Lebanon and swinging an ax himself. The cedars of Lebanon symbolize kingdoms on the periphery of Imperial Babylon, which rejoiced when they saw the threat pass away.
Indeed, so great would be her fall, Babylon's royal house is portrayed as finding a raucous welcome in Hell. Preceding tyrants would rise to meet Babylon's rulers, welcoming them to their reserved place of suffering. Smack in the middle of this, Isaiah paints the imperial house of Babylon as Satan himself. The description is too much like that of Job 38:7 ("star" also means "prince") and Ezekiel 28:12-19, with the incredible arrogance of the power behind the throne of Tyre. It depicts the nature of Satan's fall, and Isaiah points out how this strong similarity doomed the imperial house of Babylon. Indeed, so much more like Satan than any other human rulers, House Babylon would not be allowed to molder in their own graves like all the other great rulers. Instead, their tombs would be desecrated, and their bodies exposed to ridicule. There will come a time when Satan will experience something similar.
Great though she would be in her day, Babylon would pass into the sands of time. No one of the imperial house survived, and the city disappears, as described in the previous chapter. The God who raised her up will in turn crush her down. It will be no different from the Assyrian Empire before her, against whom Babylon would rise up in revolt and overthrow. This Babylonian rise will be made possible by God's crushing first of Assyria. This would happen in Isaiah's future, depicted as perishing in great numbers on the mountains near Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:35-36). God had decided, and so it would be done.
Sometime before this confrontation, Isaiah notes what the death of King Ahaz means to the Philistines. Uzziah was pretty rough on the Philistines while Isaiah was quite young. His son Ahaz was wimpy enough to allow the Philistines to recover and take some Judean territory. Isaiah knew in his spirit Ahaz's successor, Hezekiah, would be nothing like his father, and much more powerful than his grandfather. Thus, Hezekiah later attacks and destroys several of the great cities of Philistia. From the very beginning, they were known for coming up into the Israeli hill country during harvest, in part because they believed their god Dagon had given all grain to them, regardless who grew it. Isaiah makes reference to these annual raids by noting even the poorest of Judea would be prosperous because the Philistines would be unable to raid for quite some time under Hezekiah's pressure.
Oddly, this military victory would be the excuse Babylon needs, during the fading power of Assyria, to send envoys to Jerusalem. Naturally, they were hoping to convince Hezekiah to be their ally in throwing off the Assyrian yoke. While Hezekiah did act the fool in showing them all the royal treasures, he did one thing right. The Babylonians asked excitedly about his military campaign against Philistia, prepared to offer adulation for Hezekiah's military prowess, which they hoped to use against Assyria. Judah's king dodged it by ascribing all protection for Jerusalem to Jehovah.
Isaiah teaches such is the correct answer of God's People throughout eternity to any overtures from the worldly minds of fallen men. We cannot afford to compromise by allowing Satan's friends to pull us down into the dirt.
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By Ed Hurst
28 August 2008
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