Isaiah 13 Bible study: The burden of Babylon

"The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw" (13:1). It is a heading, like the book's first two: "The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz" (1:1), and "This is what Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem" (2:1). In Hebrew saw is chazah, the verb of 2:1's heading too. Burden is massa' (tap burden), and Brown-Driver-Briggs gives the massa' of these headings its own entry, "utterance, oracle", apart from massa' as a load. It is the first of eleven headings in Isaiah with burden; the book's introduction lists them, from Babylon (13:1) to Tyre (23:1) and "the animals of the South" (30:6). Here is what almost everyone misses: after its heading the chapter doesn't name Babylon again until "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms" (13:19). In between it speaks of an army mustered (13:4), of "the LORD’s day" (13:6), and of "the world": "I will punish the world for their evil" (13:11) (tap Babylon). The chapter names Babylon, the Chaldeans (13:19) and the Medes (13:17) as the text has them, and these notes apply none of it to any nation, city or conflict today.

Isaiah 13:10→leads toMatthew 24:29

The burden of Babylon (Isaiah 13:1) says, "For 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" (Isaiah 13:10), in the day it calls "the LORD’s day" (Isaiah 13:6). On the Mount of Olives the disciples asked Jesus, "What is the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?" (Matthew 24:3), and he said, "But immediately after the suffering of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken" (Matthew 24:29), and "then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky" (Matthew 24:30). Jesus doesn't name Isaiah, and other prophets also speak of the sun, the moon and the stars darkened (Joel 2:10, 3:15; Ezekiel 32:7), so setting Isaiah 13:10 beside Jesus's words is a reading. Some hear in Jesus's words the prophets' words for the LORD's day, 13:10's among them, taken up for what comes before they "will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30). Others read 13:10 of Babylon's fall, which the chapter names (Isaiah 13:1, 13:19), in words the prophets use for the LORD's day, and read Jesus's words on their own, without Isaiah 13. Neither reading names a date or an event, and these notes pick neither.

מַשָּׂאmassa'say mas-SA

Brown-Driver-Briggs gives the massa' of this heading its own entry, "utterance, oracle", and gives massa' as a "load, burden" another. Strong's has one entry for both: "a burden", and, "figuratively, an utterance, chiefly a doom". "The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw" (13:1): it is the first of eleven headings in Isaiah with this word, and the book's introduction lists them, to "The burden of Tyre" (Isaiah 23:1) and "The burden of the animals of the South" (Isaiah 30:6). The Hebrew Bible has this entry 27 times, and Isaiah 11 of them. Isaiah also has massa' as a load, three times, as in "They could not deliver the burden" (Isaiah 46:2). 2 Kings 9's notes set out Jehu's "the LORD laid this burden on him" (2 Kings 9:25).