Isaiah 13 - Justice Will Be Done

A sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, 08 Oct 2006

 

Translation of Isa 13 by Nate

(1)  The burden of Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.

(2)  On a bare hill raise a signal, y’all;

Raise your voice to them;

wave a hand so they will enter the gates of the nobles. 

(3)  I myself have commanded my consecrated ones,

and called my mighty men to execute my anger,

my jubilant haughty ones. 

(4)  The voice of a multitude is on the mountains as of a great people!

The voice of an uproar from kingdoms of nations being gathered!

Jehovah of hosts visiting (with) a war host 

(5)  They come from a land from afar,

from the end of the heavens,

Jehovah and the weapons of his indignation,

to destroy the whole land. 

(6)  Wail, for the day of Jehovah is near;

as calamity from the Almighty it will come! 

(7)  Therefore all hands will be feeble,

and every heart of man will be melted.

(8)  They will be dismayed:

pangs and agony will seize them;

they will be in anguish like a woman birthing.

They will look aghast, each man to his friend;

their faces will be aflame. 

(9)  Look, the day of Jehovah comes,

Cruel wrath

and fierce anger,

to make the land into a desolation and

to destroy her sinners from her. 

(10)  For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light;

the sun will be dark when He goes forth,

and the moon will not shine its light. 

(11)  And I will visit evil upon the world,

and iniquity upon the wicked,

I will finish off the arrogant proud,

and humioliate the pompous pride of the ruthless. 

(12)  I will make people more rare than fine gold,

and mankind than the gold of Oman. 

(13)  Therefore I will make the heavens tremble,

and the earth will shake out of her place, at the wrath of Jehovah of hosts

in the day of his fierce anger. 

(14)  And like a hunted gazelle, or

like unshepherded sheep ,

each will face toward his people, and each will flee to his land. 

(15)  Everyone who is found will be thrust through,

and everyone who is intercepted will fall by the sword. 

(16)  Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes;

their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. 

 

(17)  Look, I am stirring up the Medes against them,

who have no regard for silver

and do not delight in gold. 

(18)  Their bows will dash apart the young men;

they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb;

their eyes will not pity children.

(19)  And Babylon,

the glory of kingdoms,

the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans,

will be like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah.

(20)  She will not remain forever, and she will not dwell from generation to generation;

The Arab will not camp there;

and shepherds will not make pasture there. 

(21)  But wild animals will lie down there,

and their houses will be full of howling creatures;

there ostriches will dwell,

and there demons will dance. 

(22)  Hyenas will cry in its towers,

and dragons in the pleasant palaces;

Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.

 

Justice is not something we always get to see.

“Justice Will Be Done” song by Hank Williams Jr, “I went down to the Mary Carter Paint store / I said give me one of them Smith & Wesson magnum 44’s / Cause there’s a man that the law let loose / And justice was not done” He complains that the man who killed his wife and son had hired a smirking big-name lawyer and had gotten off on a technicality in court. But if he takes personal revenge with that .44, will justice be served?

 

Some cheats prosper; some crime pays; bad things happen to good people. People do not often get what they deserve. Life isn’t fair. – Tim Holt

 

BBC News - August 9, 1998 - US President Bill Clinton has again promised that he will not rest until the embassy bombers in Africa are caught. Those responsible for Friday's blasts in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed at least 130 people, would be pursued "until justice is done", he said in a live radio broadcast from the White House Oval Office… Publicly, US politicians are refusing to names suspects as the US receives up to 30,000 threats a year. But privately some believe the Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden may be responsible for the synchronised bombings… SOURCE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/147738.stm Three years later, justice had not been done and the United States was hit with a terrorist attack on the trade towers, so Bush took up the refrain that “justice will be done.”

 

We all have a sense that good should be rewarded and evil should be punished. 18th Century philosopher Immanuel Kant, even brought out this point as an argument to prove the existence of God, for he said that there must be a rational reason for why so many people try to live according to morals, and that reason, he concluded, is that there is a God who can bring justice to those who violate moral law. (Source: Tim Holt, http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/kantianmoral.html Oct 3, 2006)

 

The content of this prophecy

Sequential actions carefully and personally orchestrated by God to deal with people on earth.

 

The fulfillment of this prophecy

In 539BC, about 200 years after Isaiah’s prophecy, Cyrus overthrew Babylon.

·         The prophet Daniel describes briefly the night of the overthrow which he witnessed, including the king going pale and slack just as v.7&8 prophecy (Dan 5:6).

·         As v. 4 states, the invading army was indeed composed of soldiers from a number of different nations which Cyrus had conquered, and which he gathered together in the Zagros mountains northeast of Babylon.

·         The cruelty that Isaiah mentions in v.9 corroborates with the historical record of Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in 30 BC that the Medes were particularly cruel to those beneath them.

·         V.14 mentions foreigners in Babylon escaping to their home countries, which is exactly what the medieval Jewish commentator Kimchi reported.

·         Xenophon’s history of this overthrow of Babylon mentions Cyrus’ order to kill everyone found in the streets of Babylon when they invaded, which is exactly what Isaiah prophecied in v.15.

·         As v.17 states, Cyrus was a Mede, and as history bore out, the Mede’s reason for overthrowing Babylon was not so much for economic gain but rather for revenge to overthrow an oppressive government.

·         Over the following decades, Babylon’s walls were knocked down, and by 40BC, the historian Strabo called it a “desert,” fulfilling v.19

·         A couple of years ago, when U.S. Marines penetrated Iraq to Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace, the ruins of ancient Babylon were still there next to the palace and still uninhabited by all but some wildlife, just as Isaiah had prophecied in v.20 Pictures of the ruins taken by these soldiers are easy to find on the internet now.

·         In the nineteenth century, the eminent Hebrew scholar Wilhelm Gesenius discovered stories among the locals around Babylon that ghosts inhabited the ancient city. The ancient Jewish Targums, the Greek Septuagint, King James Version, and even the reformer John Calvin translated v. 21 with “demons” rather than natural “goats” as being the inhabitants of the wasteland that God made of Babylon.

Do you see the incredible detail with which God prophecied the fall of Babylon and brought it to specific fulfillment? The detailed fulfillment is so striking that it has secular scholars scrambling to figure out a way to prove that Isaiah did not actually write this chapter, but rather someone hundreds of years later!

 

The modern commentator E.J. Young observes, “When we doubt the power of God, let us look to the wilderness where Babylon once was. So will He judge the wicked.”

 

Comparative analysis of this prophecy and the Continuity of God’s Justice

Fine and good if at one point in world history, God meted out justice upon a wicked nation. But is this a consistent pattern of God? Is this God’s character? Can we really expect this kind of thing to happen again? The very wording of this chapter gives a resounding “YES.” Isaiah uses identical words and phrases to prophecy the downfall of Babylon that He used with prophecies against other nations. The downfall of Babylon is just one of many visitations of God’s justice throughout history.

  1. Comparison with prophecies of divine punishment against ISRAEL
    1. V.1 “The burden which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw…” with 1:1 “concerning Judah and Jerusalem…” (v.24 Jehovah of hosts, the mighty one of Israel declares, ‘I will be relieved of My adversaries and avenge Myself on My foes, I will also turn My hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and will remove all your alloy.’”)
    2. V.4 “multitude” The last time we encountered that tumult or multitude was Isa. 5:13-14 “Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst. Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and he who exults in her.
    3. V. 19 “Like Sodom and Gomorrah” with 1:9 “unless Jehovah of hosts had left us a few survivors we would be like S&G” Story of which is found around Gen 19:24. (This simile is also used in the prophecy against the country of EDOM in Jer 49:18)
    4. V.20 “without inhabitant” with Isa 5:9 “The LORD of hosts has sworn in my hearing, “Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.” (Also in 6:11 and Jer. 9:11)
    5. V.19 “splendor & pomp of the Chaldeans will be like God’s overthrow” with Isa 3:17 “therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will lay bare their secret parts. (18)  In that day the Lord will take away the splendor of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents…”
  2. Comparison with prophecies against ASSYRIA
    1. V.19 “splendor & pomp of the Chaldeans will be like God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah” with Isa 10:12 “When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and upon the splendor of his high eyes.”
    2. V.5 “Jehovah and the weapons of His indignation to destroy” with 10:25-28 “Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah of hosts: ‘O my people, who dwell in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrians when they strike with the rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. (25)  For in a very little while my fury will come to an end, and my anger will be directed to their destruction, And Jehovah of hosts will wield against them a whip, as when he struck MIDIAN at the rock of Oreb. And his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it as he did in EGYPT.
    3. V.17 “I am stirring up the Medes” with Isa 10:26 “And Jehovah of hosts will stir up against him [the Assyrian] a scourge…”
  3. Continuity with New Testament prophecies about God judging sin in the end times
    1. V.6 “day of the Lord” (first mention of this phrase in Bible) with last mention (2Pe 3:10)  “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”
    2. V.8 “like a woman birthing” with I Thess 5:2 “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. (3)  While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
    3. V.10 “sun will be darkened and the moon will not shine her light” with Matt. 24:29 “But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: (30)  and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”
    4. V.13 “I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will shake” with Heb 12:26b “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” – Heb 12:26 is a quote from Haggai 2:6 which referred to Jesus’ birth, the second shaking to Jesus’ second coming.
    5. V.21 “wild animals, howlers, ostriches, & demons” with Rev 18:1-2 “After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird.” (also mentioned in respect to Edom in Isa 34)

Isaiah reminds us by the very phrases of this prophecy that God is consistent: He judges sin. He’s rendered justice to the nations in the past and He will do it again.

 

The Proverbs warn us that we can’t get away with sin.

·         Pro 6:29 “So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife; none who touches her will go unpunished.”

·         Pro 11:21 “Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished, but the offspring of the righteous will be delivered.”

·         Pro 16:5 “Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished.”

·         Pro 17:5 “Whoever mocks the poor insults his Maker; he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished.”

·         Pro 19:5 & 9 “A false witness will not go unpunished…”

·         Pro 28:20 “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.”

It is God’s nature to judge meticulously; justice will be done.

 

Living in light of God’s Justice

So in light of God’s justice, how should we live? Hear God’s word from 2 Peter 3:11-15

“Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, (12) waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! (13)  But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (14)  Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. (15)  And count the patience of our Lord as salvation…”

Between now and the “Day of the Lord” is the Day of Salvation!

That’s what Peter says we should do in light of God’s justice; be found IN CHRIST, Hastening His coming by prayer and evangelism, and waiting with patient hope in Him for His promise that justice will indeed be done.

 

 

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