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Isaiah 21 · a question people ask

Why is the one who speaks in such pain (21:3-4)?

In the text

The chapter joins the pain to the vision with one word, "Therefore" (21:3). Before it comes "A grievous vision is declared to me" (21:2), a vision of treachery and destruction, of Elam called to go up, and of Media's sighing stopped (21:2). The chapter doesn't say for whom the pain is, and these notes don't guess. What it does say is plain: "Pains have seized me, like the pains of a woman in labor" (21:3), and "The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me" (21:4). The same burden that has "Fallen, fallen is Babylon" (21:9) has, before it, the pain of the one who speaks.

The verses

“A grievous vision is declared to me. The treacherous man deals treacherously, and the destroyer destroys. Go up, Elam; attack! I have stopped all of Media’s sighing. Therefore my thighs are filled with anguish. Pains have seized me, like the pains of a woman in labor. I am in so much pain that I can’t hear. I am so dismayed that I can’t see. My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.”
Isaiah 21:2-4 · World English Bible
“Behold, here comes a troop of men, horsemen in pairs.” He answered, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the engraved images of her gods are broken to the ground.”
Isaiah 21:9 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Isaiah 21

Isaiah 21: Watchman, what of the night?

Isaiah 21 is the only chapter of Isaiah with more than one burden heading, and it has three. Its first heading names no city: Babylon is named only in 21:9, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon" (21:9). And the pains that seize the one who speaks (21:3) are, in Hebrew, the words of Isaiah 13:8, where "the LORD’s day is at hand" (Isaiah 13:6).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions