Isaiah 14:15

"Yet thou shalt be brought down to Sheol, to the uttermost parts of the pit. They that see thee shall gaze at thee, they shall consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, and overthrew the cities thereof; that let not loose his prisoners to their home? All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, everyone in his own house. But thou art cast forth away from thy sepulchre like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, that are thrust through with the sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a dead body trodden under foot. Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people; the seed of evil-doers shall not be named forever."

Notice that this is written in the future tense, outlining what was to happen to the proud king of Babylon. His great glory would culminate in the destruction of Jerusalem, the captivity of God's people, and the incompetent, drunken Belshazzar's desecration of the sacred vessels of the House of God by Belshazzar and his wives and concubines drinking wine from the sacred vessels in the frenzied orgy that terminated both Belshazzar and his kingdom.

Whatever specific king the Lord could have been speaking of in this prophecy, we must believe that this chapter should be read, "as a prediction of the fall of every human tyrant and his fate in the afterlife."[21] The projected fate of the Babylonian despot reminds one of what Herod Agrippa II said at Caesarea, when, shortly after having had himself proclaimed as a god, he collapsed on the stage and at once died from being eaten up internally with worms! (Acts 12). He said, "I, whom you call a god am commanded presently to depart this life. Providence thus reproves your lying words. I, called by you immortal, am immediately to be hurried away by death."[22]

The whole point in these remarkable verses is the remarkable contrast between the earthly glory of ambitious rulers (actually all mortal glory) and the inevitable frustration and defeat terminating all of it at last in the dust of the grave. The picture here of people already dead gazing in astonishment and wonder at the king of Babylon and the taunting remarks made to him is a highly imaginative device used to emphasize the depths to which the tyrant had fallen. If the dead knew anything, and if the dead knew all about earthly affairs that took place after their own death, and if they could have spoken to vainglorious earthly rulers after the death of such rulers, then we might suppose that the scene depicted here is factual; but such assumptions cannot be based upon anything that one may read in God's Word. Nevertheless, students of all ages have marveled at the power of this passage.

According to the thinking in ancient times, "To be excluded from burial was the most extreme disgrace for a king." Isaiah 14:20 adds even that to the humiliation of Babylon's vainglorious monarch who would have assaulted heaven itself.