Isaiah 14:1

CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECY AGAINST BABYLON

Except for the last nine verses of this chapter, it is a continuation of the prophecy against Babylon. Those last verses carry prophecies against Assyria and against Philistia.

Scholars of all shades of belief have joined in extolling the sublime, effective manner in which this chapter is written. The highly imaginative reception which the illustrious dead are represented as giving the fallen king of Babylon is unique in the literary history of mankind. There's nothing like it anywhere else. It appears in the form of a sarcastic "welcome" to Babylon's fallen monarch, in which his former glory is dramatically contrasted with his position in death!

The first two verses carry an assurance that God's promises to Israel will yet be fulfilled; Isaiah 14:3-20 present the taunting, sarcastic "welcome" to Babylon's dead king! Isaiah 14:21-23 have a final prophetic curse against Babylon; Isaiah 14:24-27 prophesy the breaking of the power of Assyria; and the final five verses (Isaiah 14:28-32) have a prophetic warning for Philistia.

Isaiah 14:1-2

"For Jehovah will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the sojourner shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the peoples shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of Jehovah for servants and for handmaids: and they shall take them captive whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors."

The promise here that God will "again" choose Israel means first of all that Israel, through repeated rebellions, had at this point in their history lost their status as God's chosen people, a solemn truth emphasized especially in the prophecy of Hosea. There were, of course, some new things in this second "choice" of the Israel destined to receive all of God's promises. This also is spelled out in Hosea (See my comments on this in Vol. 2 of the Minor Prophets Series). The Israel to be honored in this "second choosing" would not apply to any race whatever but would be equally applicable to Jews and Gentiles alike. Gomer, the wife of Hosea, it will be remembered, was bought back from slavery by her husband, not as his wife but as his slave. In the same manner, Israel would be "chosen" again, all right; but her status was forever altered as a race. Moreover, their re-entry into "Jehovah's land" would be in the Church of Jesus Christ, not a re-entry into Palestine. It should be carefully noted, as Barnes pointed out that, "Although the names Jacob and Israel used in these verses simply denote Jews, they do not imply that all who were to be carried into captivity would return."[1] Only a remnant returned; and the undeniable meaning of this is that only a very small part of racial Israel would be in that "second choosing."

The statement here that the former oppressors of the Jews would become their captives as "servants and handmaids" cannot possibly be construed literally. "The true meaning is that Jewish ideas (particularly Christianity) shall penetrate and subdue mankind generally, and that among such converts to Christ there will be those peoples who once had enslaved the Jews."[2]

There is a prophecy in Revelation 3:9 in which God foretold that racial Jews would "come and worship before the feet of the Church in Philadelphia," not literally, of course, but as beautifully explained by James Moffatt's Translation of the Bible (1929). Throughout the ages many faithful Jews have received Christ, and they are still doing so. Thus, in what Moffatt calls, "The grim irony of providence,"[3] "What the Jews fondly expected of the Gentiles, they themselves will give to the Gentiles. They will play the roll of the heathen and acknowledge that the Church is the true Israel of God."[4] (For further comments on this see Vol. 12, p. 80 in my New Testament Series.)

The key to understanding this is in the truth that Christ Alone is the true Israel of God (See John 15.). Every baptized believer "in Christ" is a bond-servant of Christ; and every Gentile who ever became a Christian by being baptized "into Christ" thus became a "servant" of Christ, who is indeed the true Israel of God. No doubt the racial Jews of Isaiah's day mistakenly believed that they were "the" Israel of God who were destined to possess their enemies as slaves. It is all a question of understanding who are the "slaves" (Christians) and who are the "Israel." In this prophetic promise of Revelation 3:9, the "worshippers" are the convened Jews represented as worshipping the Lord, the true Israel; and in Isaiah's passage here, the "slaves" are the convened Gentiles, slaves of Christ. Thus, the "slaves" of this passage and the "worshippers" of Revelation 3:9 are merely "Christians" gathered from every race under heaven without racial preference or partiality of any kind.

As Hailey put it, "The returned Jews never actually enslaved Gentiles. The prophecy was fulfilled as they conquered foreigners by the Spirit of God through the truth, `Bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ' (2 Corinthians 10:5)."[5]

To be sure, the ultimate complete fulfillment of this lay so far into the future that the prophecy could have been of little value to the Jews of Isaiah's times; and that no doubt accounts for the great fact that there were also included in the prophecy many things relating to immediate fulfillments. For example, the "turn of the captivity of Israel" in the ultimate sense related to the rescue of the nation and their deliverance from sin, as indicated in Luke 4:18. The peoples (Gentiles) taking the Jews and bringing them into their place had an immediate fulfillment. "This refers to the fact that Cyrus would assist them (Ezra 1)."[6]

There was also an immediate fulfillment of the Gentiles becoming servants of the Jews in the sense of their becoming fellow-worshippers of the true God, proselytes to the Jewish faith, of whom there were increasing numbers as the falsity and futility of paganism became more and more evident. Cornelius (Acts 10) was such a person.