BibleInTonguesWEB
Isaiah 21
Three short oracles share this page, each headed "the burden of": the wilderness of the sea (v.1), Dumah (v.11), and Arabia (v.13). The first is the longest — a vision of attackers from a terrible land that leaves the prophet doubled over with labor-pains of dread, watching for the messenger who will finally cry, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon" (v.9). Watch how the prophet himself becomes a posted watchman straining for news, and how Dumah's anonymous voice keeps asking, "Watchman, what of the night?" — a question the answer never quite settles.
- 1
The burden of the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, it comes from the wilderness, from an awesome land.
- 2
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.
- 3
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.
- 4
My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.
- 5
They prepare the table. They set the watch. They eat. They drink. Rise up, you princes, oil the shield!
- 6
For the Lord said to me, “Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees.
- 7
When he sees a troop, horsemen in pairs, a troop of donkeys, a troop of camels, he shall listen diligently with great attentiveness.”
- 8
He cried like a lion: “Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and every night I stay at my post.
- 9
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.
- 10
You are my threshing, and the grain of my floor!” That which I have heard from the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, I have declared to you.
- 11
The burden of Dumah. One calls to me out of Seir, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?”
- 12
The watchman said, “The morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire. Come back again.”
- 13
The burden on Arabia. You will lodge in the thickets in Arabia, you caravans of Dedanites.
- 14
They brought water to him who was thirsty. The inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with their bread.
- 15
For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the heat of battle.
- 16
For the Lord said to me, “Within a year, as a worker bound by contract would count it, all the glory of Kedar will fail,
- 17
and the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, will be few; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has spoken it.”
A year on the clock for Kedar
The Arabian oracle closes with a deadline a refugee would feel in the body: within one year "as a worker bound by contract would count it" (v.16), the glory of Kedar's archers fails. After the proud collapse of Babylon, the chapter turns to thirsty caravans of Dedanites and the people of Tema carrying bread to fugitives — the war reaching the desert trade routes, not only the great cities.
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