Scripture Daily

Context No. 1601 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 14:12-17: in context

12How you have fallen from heaven, shining one, son of the dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, who laid the nations low! 13You said in your heart, “I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! I will sit on the mountain of assembly, in the far north! 14I will ascend above the heights of the clouds! I will make myself like the Most High!” 15Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit. 16Those who see you will stare at you. They will ponder you, saying, “Is this the man who made the earth to tremble, who shook kingdoms, 17who made the world like a wilderness, and overthrew its cities, who didn’t release his prisoners to their home?”

This taunt is directed at the fallen king of Babylon, and its language has long been heard as describing the deeper pride behind all such fall. How you have fallen from heaven, shining one, son of the dawn, cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart: I will ascend to heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mount of assembly, I will ascend above the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High. Yet you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit.

The anatomy of the fall is laid out in a series of self-exalting boasts: I will ascend, I will exalt my throne, I will sit enthroned, I will ascend above the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High. Five times the proud heart says I will, each reaching higher, until it claims the very place of God: I will make myself like the Most High. This is the essence of pride, the self set on climbing to God's own place, refusing all limit, determined to exalt itself supreme. And the outcome is stated with brutal simplicity: yet you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the pit. The one who said I will ascend is brought down; the higher the self-exaltation climbed, the lower the fall. There is a warning here as old as the story of the first sin, that the pride which seeks to exalt itself to God's place ends not in ascent but in a fall. It is worth hearing the five I wills in our own hearts, for the same impulse lives there, quieter and smaller but the same: the drive to exalt ourselves, to refuse limits, to make ourselves the center and the supreme, to climb over others to the top. Scripture warns again and again that this ends in a fall; God brings down the proud who exalt themselves. And the way up in God's kingdom is precisely the opposite: not I will ascend but the humbling of oneself, the descent that God then lifts. The one who says I will make myself like the Most High is brought down to the pit; the one who humbles himself, God exalts. Pride goes before a fall; the proud I will ends in Sheol.

Do I hear the self-exalting I will in my own heart, the drive to exalt myself, refuse all limit, and make myself the center and the supreme, and do I heed the warning that such pride ends in a fall, while the way up in God's kingdom is the humbling of oneself that he then lifts?

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