Context No. 2445 of 4322 · Isaiah
Context · Reflection
Isaiah 13:6-16: in context
6Wail, for the LORD’s day is at hand! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. 7Therefore all hands will be feeble, and everyone’s heart will melt. 8They will be dismayed. Pangs and sorrows will seize them. They will be in pain like a woman in labor. They will look in amazement one at another. Their faces will be faces of flame. 9Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its sinners out of it. 10For the stars of the sky and its constellations will not give their light. The sun will be darkened in its going out, and the moon will not cause its light to shine. 11I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will humble the arrogance of the terrible. 12I will make people more rare than fine gold, even a person than the pure gold of Ophir. 13Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place in the LORD of Armies’ wrath, and in the day of his fierce anger. 14It will happen that like a hunted gazelle and like sheep that no one gathers, they will each turn to their own people, and will each flee to their own land. 15Everyone who is found will be thrust through. Everyone who is captured will fall by the sword. 16Their infants also will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be ransacked, and their wives raped.
Isaiah announces the day of the LORD against Babylon, and it is terrible. Hands go limp, hearts melt, the sky goes dark, and the imagery of war is unsparing in its cruelty. It is not a scene to relish; it is the real horror of a proud empire's violent undoing. In the middle of it God states his purpose plainly: I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud and humble the haughtiness of the ruthless.
The target named is arrogance. For all the fearsome imagery, what the day of the LORD comes against is human pride that has grown ruthless and thinks itself untouchable. Babylon believed it stood beyond any reckoning, and the point of the oracle is that no such throne is secure. It is a sobering thing to read, and it should not be read for the spectacle of others' ruin but as a warning turned toward my own heart. The proud are not permanently safe, and the arrogance that feels invincible today is exactly what such a day would humble.
Where has arrogance quietly convinced me I am beyond any reckoning, in a way the day of the LORD would humble?
Sources
- Isaiah 13:11: I will punish the world for their evil... I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will humble the arrogance of the terrible.
- Isaiah 13:6: Wail, for the LORD's day is at hand! It will come as destruction.
- Proverbs 16:18: Pride goes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall.