Isaiah 43:14 - Exposition

For your sake I have sent to Babylon . For Israel's sake God has already, in his counsels, sent to Babylon the instruments of his vengeance—Cyrus and his soldiers—and by their instrumentality has brought down all their nobles; or rather, has brought them all down ( to be fugitives (comp. Isaiah 15:5 ); and the Chaldeans ; or, even the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans are not in Isaiah, as in Daniel ( Daniel 2:2 ; Daniel 4:7 ; Daniel 5:7 ), a special class of Babylonians, but, as elsewhere commonly in Scripture, the Babylonians generally (see Isaiah 12:1-6 :19; Isaiah 47:1 ). In the native inscriptions the term is especially applied to the inhabitants of the tract upon the sea-coast. Whose cry is in the ships ; rather, into their ships of wailing. The Chaldeans, flying from the Persian attack, betake themselves to their ships with cries of grief, the ships thereby becoming "ships of wailing." The nautical character of the Babylonians is strongly marked in the inscriptions, where "the ships of Ur are celebrated at a very remote period, and the native kings, when hard pressed by the Assyrians, are constantly represented as going on ship-board, and crossing the Persian Gulf to Susiana, or to some of the islands. The abundant traffic and the numerous merchants of Babylon are mentioned by Ezekiel ( Ezekiel 17:4 ). AE sehylus, moreover, notes that the Babylonians of his day were "navigators of ships" ('Persae,' 11. 52-55).