Isaiahchapter 21
17 verses · Isaiah · 8th century BC · The Prophets
This is the burden against Dumah: One calls to me from Seir, “Watchman, what is left of the night? Watchman, what is left of the night?”
Introduction
Isaiah, The Prophets, Isaiah Overview.
Three short oracles make up this chapter, and each has a riddling title in place of a plain name. The first concerns Babylon, the second Edom and the third the Arabian desert tribes along the caravan roads. All three are set on a watchtower, where a lookout waits for news from the road. The chapter spoke to a small nation that heard of distant events late and secondhand. Listen for the prophet's own distress at what he sees, and for the short exchange between the watchman and a voice calling out of the night.
Context
- Who
- Judeans who learned everything about the wider world from watchmen and caravans
- What
- Three oracles, on the fall of Babylon, on Edom under the image of a long night, and on the Arabian tribes whose caravans would flee.
- Where
- A watchtower facing the desert roads, with Babylon, Seir in Edom, and the Arabian oases of Dedan, Tema and Kedar in view.
- When
- Most likely between about 715 and 700 BC, when Babylon rose against Assyria more than once.
- Why
- To show Judah that the powers it hoped would stand against Assyria would fall, and that God knows the news before the watchman does.
Historical context
The frame of the chapter is a real job. A city posted lookouts on the wall or on a tower, in shifts, day and night, and their whole duty was to call out what they saw on the road. Isaiah is told to set a watchman and have him declare what he sees. What comes is a pair of riders, and then the report: Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the carved images of her gods are broken on the ground.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
Babylon revolted against Assyria again and again in these years, and in 689 BC Sennacherib destroyed the city, diverting water over the ruins. It rose again, became an empire, and fell to Cyrus in 539 BC. A watchman's report of Babylon falling would have been heard more than once.
The oiled shield is a soldier's detail. Leather shields were greased so blows would slide off and the hide would not crack, and oiling the shields was the last thing done before battle, the equivalent of loading weapons. Isaiah pictures a banquet interrupted by that order: they set the table, they watch, they eat and drink; arise, princes, anoint the shield.
The last two oracles ride the trade routes. Dumah and Seir look toward Edom, and the exchange is famous for its bleakness: watchman, what of the night? The morning comes, and also the night. Then the caravans of Dedan are told to camp in the scrub instead of the towns, and the people of Tema are told to bring water and bread out to fugitives, because the men are running from drawn swords. Kedar's archers, the best-known bowmen of the northern Arabian tribes, get one year, counted the way a hired man counts his contract, and then their glory is gone.
Significance
The prophet describes himself doubled over by the vision, in pain like a woman in labor, dismayed at what he hears. That was part of the message. This is not gloating.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
And for a small nation whose news came in late and secondhand, there was a plain comfort in it: the watchman on Jerusalem's wall is not the first to know. God is.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
No part of this chapter is read in the synagogue. Probed for this lane, the site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot 0 and haftarah uses 0 for Isaiah 21, and no festival reading for the book. Across chapters 1 to 22 of Isaiah the same probe found a Haftarah only in chapters 1, 6, 7 and 9.
How it is read
Rashi is the main commentator on this chapter in the corpus, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. Ibn Ezra is quoted from the Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah, translated by M. Friedlander in 1873, which Sefaria reports as Public Domain.
The oracle of the wilderness of the sea "refers to Babylonia" (Rashi on Isaiah 21:1:1). Rashi reads the prophet's pain in the third verse as mercy: "The prophet is merciful and sighs over the retribution meted out to the nations" (Rashi on Isaiah 21:3:1). The feast of the fifth verse is the banquet at which Babylon's princes are called to arms (Rashi on Isaiah 21:5:2).
Rashi reads the watchman as a later prophet. One of Isaiah's disciples will complain of Babylon's long prosperity, "and that was Habakkuk" (Rashi on Isaiah 21:6:1). The lion that cries out in the eighth verse is Habakkuk again, because the Hebrew word for lion "has the same numerical value as Habakkuk" (Rashi on Isaiah 21:8:1). The chariot with a pair of riders on a donkey and a camel is "a sign of Persia" and Media (Rashi on Isaiah 21:7:1).
Dumah is Edom (Rashi on Isaiah 21:11:1), and the watchman who answers is "The Holy One, blessed be He" (Rashi on Isaiah 21:12:1).
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries 40 rabbinic locators on the verses of this chapter, 4 in the Talmud and 36 in the Midrash. It carries the text of none, so each is cited by ref here and never quoted or paraphrased. The verse numbers are the Hebrew ones the corpus prints.
On verse 1 it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Vayassa 1:6, Midrash Tehillim 80:6 and Shir HaShirim Rabbah 3:4:2. On verse 2 it holds Aggadat Bereshit 14:3, Bereshit Rabbah 44:6 and Midrash Lekach Tov on Esther, Introduction 3. It also holds Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 18:21:1. On verse 3 it holds Bekhorot 45a:21, Eikhah Rabbah 5:9 and Midrash Lekach Tov on Esther 4:4:1. It also holds Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:18:4. On verse 4 it holds Kohelet Rabbah 1:16:1 and Midrash Tanchuma, Vaera 8:2. On verse 5 it holds Bereshit Rabbah 63:14 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 111:5.
On verse 7 it holds Aggadat Bereshit 68:1, Eikhah Rabbah 2:11 and Otzar Midrashim, Midrash on the Ten Kings 1:16. On verse 8 it holds Sanhedrin 37b:13. On verse 9 it holds Bereshit Rabbah 44:17, Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 12:12 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Bachodesh 9:7. On verse 10 it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 4:1, Midrash Aggadah, Genesis 15:11:3 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bamidbar 22:3. On verse 11 it holds Avot DeRabbi Natan 1:8, Bamidbar Rabbah 11:5 and Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayigash 6.
On verse 12 it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 16:23, Bava Kamma 3b:14 and Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Miketz 24. On verse 13 it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Lech Lecha 22, Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayishlach 49 and Eikhah Rabbah 1:56. On verse 14 it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Taanit 1:21, Ein Yaakov, Taanit 1:23 and Midrash Aggadah, Genesis 21:17:1. On verse 15 it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:34, Otzar Midrashim, Midrash Shelosha v'Arba'ah 1:10 and Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 30:1.
What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Isaiah 21:1:1 to 21:17:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Isaiah 21:6:1, Commentary of Ibn Ezra on Isaiah - trans. by M. Friedlander, 1873, reported Public Domain; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/isaiah/21.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators on the verses of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for Isaiah 21: parashot 0, haftarah uses 0, and no festival reading for the book.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
The Wilderness of the Sea: Babylon Is Fallen
Isaiah 21:1-4
the Desert by the Sea: The older writers read "the Desert by the Sea" as a play on the plain of Babylon turned to wilderness. The prophet feels it in his body: "Pain grips me, like the pains of a woman in labor". Elam and Media are the powers behind the fall of Babylon.
Isaiah 21:1
“The northern parts of Media and Persia, where their soldiers were mostly bred, was waste and mountainous, terrible to strangers that were to pass through it and producing soldiers that were very formidable. Elam (that is, Persia) is summoned to go up against Babylon, and, in conjunction with the forces of Media, to besiege it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Clarke renders the first line as the plunderer plundered and the destroyer destroyed, so Babylon receives what it dealt. Wesley applies the betrayal to Elam and Media, who took the city by stratagem as well as force. The groaning put to an end is the groaning Babylon caused.
Isaiah 21:2
“The treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth “The plunderer is plundered, and the destroyer is destroyed” - הבוגד בוגד והשודד שודד habboged boged vehashshoded shoded. The MSS. vary in expressing or omitting the ו vau, in these four words. Ten MSS. of Kennicott are without the ו vau in the second word, and eight MSS. are without the ו vau in the fourth word; which justifies Symmachus, who has rendered them passively: ὁ αθετων αθετειται και ὁ ταλαιπωριζων ταλαιπωρει. He read בגוד שדוד bagud shadud.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
like the pains of a woman in labor: The same picture of labor pains falls on the people of Babylon at 13:8. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown allow the Hebrew to mean that Isaiah was too bowed down to hear and too dismayed to see. The vision overpowers the one receiving it.
Isaiah 21:3
“Therefore - In this verse, and the following, the prophet represents himself as “in” Babylon, and as a witness of the calamities which would come upon the city. He describes the sympathy which he feels in her sorrows, and represents himself as deeply affected by her calamities. A similar description occurred in the pain which the prophet represents himself as enduring on account of the calamities of Moab (see Isa 15:5, note; Isa 16:11, note). My loins - (see the note at Isa 16:11).”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:3
“And therefore the destruction of Babylon is so often prophesied of by this evangelical prophet, because it was typical of the destruction of the man of sin, the great enemy of the New-Testament church, which is foretold in the Revelation in many expressions borrowed from these prophecies, which therefore must be consulted and collated by those who would understand the prophecy of that book.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The twilight of my desire has turned to horror: The twilight Isaiah desired turns into horror. The scene fits the night of the feast of Belshazzar in Daniel 5, when Babylon fell while its nobles ate and drank at the table. Barnes takes the faltering heart as the stagger of a drunken man.
Isaiah 21:4
“My heart panted - Margin, ‘My mind wandered.’ The Hebrew word rendered ‘panted’ (תעה tâ‛âh) means to wander about; to stagger; to be giddy; and is applied often to one that staggers by being intoxicated. Applied to the heart, it means that it is disquieted or troubled. The Hebrew word “heart” here is to be taken in the sense of “mind.” The night of my pleasure - There can be no doubt that the prophet here refers to the night of revelry and riot in which Babylon was taken.”
Isaiah 21:5-8
They prepare a table: Verse 5 shows the court of Babylon at a feast, "they eat, they drink", even as the princes are told to "oil the shields". Its confidence and its danger stand in one scene. The Lord tells the prophet to "post a lookout and have him report what he sees".
Isaiah 21:5
“Prepare the table - This verse is one of the most striking and remarkable that occurs in this prophecy, or indeed in any part of Isaiah. It is language supposed to be spoken in Babylon. The first direction - perhaps supposed to be that of the king - is to prepare the table for the feast. Then follows a direction to set a watch - to make the city safe, so that they might revel without fear.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:5
“Babylon had many watchtowers on its walls. anoint . . . shield--This was done to prevent the leather of the shield becoming hard and liable to crack. "Make ready for defense"; the mention of the "shield" alone implies that it is the Babylonian revellers who are called on to prepare for instant self-defense.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
post a lookout: The lookout is part of the vision, and Barnes places the prophet in Babylon hearing the order of the Lord. In verse 10 Isaiah himself tells what he has heard, so the lookout and the prophet share one post. Habakkuk stands at the same post at Habakkuk 2:1.
Isaiah 21:6
Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth--God's direction to Isaiah to set a watchman to "declare" what he sees. But as in Isa 21:10, Isaiah himself is represented as the one who "declared." HORSLEY makes him the "watchman," and translates, "Come, let him who standeth on the watchtower report what he seeth."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:6
“One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end while he is revelling at the other end and knows nothing of the matter.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
riders on donkeys, riders on camels: Barnes and Clarke find the word for chariot obscure here, and Barnes reports that Gesenius took it as horsemen riding in pairs. The Persians rode donkeys and camels into battle. The riders in view are the army of Elam and Media.
Isaiah 21:7
“And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen - This passage is very obscure from the ambiguity of the word רכב rekeb - ‘chariot.’ Gesenius contends that it should be rendered ‘cavalry,’ and that it refers to cavalry two abreast hastening to the destruction of the city.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:7
"Chariot" is not appropriate to be joined, as English Version translates, with "asses"; the Hebrew means plainly in Isa 21:7, as in Isa 21:9, "a body of men riding." The Persians used asses and camels for war [MAURER].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Then the lookout shouted: Older versions have the lookout cry, A lion. Clarke took lion as a slip for the seer, and the Berean has the lookout who shouted from his post on the watchtower. Barnes keeps the lion as a likeness for the fierce host the lookout sees coming.
Isaiah 21:8
“And he cried, A lion “He that looked out on the watch” - The present reading, אריה aryeh, a lion, is so unintelligible, and the mistake so obvious, that I make no doubt that the true reading is הראה haroeh, the seer; as the Syriac translator manifestly found it in his copy, who renders it by דקוא duka, a watchman.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Isaiah 21:9-10
The central cry is "Fallen, fallen is Babylon", which Revelation 14:8 and 18:2 take up of Babylon at the end. Delitzsch notes that the Hebrew perfect is used here of a future event, as in chapter 53. Verse 10 addresses Judah, "O my people, crushed on the threshing floor".
Isaiah 21:9
“But HORSLEY, "The man drawn in a car with a pair of riders." The first half of this verse describes what the watchman sees; the second half, what the watchman says, in consequence of what he sees. In the interval between Isa 21:7 and Isa 21:9, the overthrow of Babylon by the horsemen, or man in the car, is accomplished.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
crushed on the threshing floor: Wesley notes that every burden against a foreign land was declared to Israel and for its use. Clarke takes the threshing as discipline that separates the grain from the chaff. Jeremiah 51:33 turns the same threshing floor on Babylon.
Watchman, What of the Night?
Isaiah 21:11-12
One calls to me from Seir: The burden of Dumah is the shortest of the oracles of the book. A voice calls "from Seir", asking twice, "Watchman, what is left of the night", and the watchman replies, "Morning has come, but also the night". He closes with "Come back yet again", leaving Edom to ask again.
Isaiah 21:11
“VITRINGA thinks "Dumah," Hebrew, "silence," is here used for Idumea, to imply that it was soon to be reduced to silence or destruction. Seir--the principal mountain in Idumea, south of the Dead Sea, in Arabia-Petræa. "He calleth" ought to be rather, "There is a call from Seir." to me--Isaiah.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the morning as deliverance for Judah and the night as judgment on Edom, the reading Obadiah 10 to 21 supports. Gesenius, as they report, takes come back as a call to turn to God and then ask again. The door is left open.
Isaiah 21:12
“The watchman said - Or rather “saith;” indicating that this is the answer which the prophet returned to the inquiry from Idumea. The morning cometh - There are signs of approaching day. The ‘morning’ here is an emblem of prosperity; as the light of the morning succeeds to the darkness of the night. This refers to the deliverance from the captivity of Babylon, and is to be supposed as having been spoken near the time when that captivity was at an end - or nearly at break of day after the long night of their bondage.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:12
“Is there a hope of the dawn of deliverance? Isaiah replies, The morning is beginning to dawn (to us); but night is also coming (to you). The Hebrew captives would be delivered, and taunting Edom punished.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
The Burden Upon Arabia: Kedar's Glory Fails
Isaiah 21:13-15
In the thickets of Arabia you must lodge: The burden against Arabia sends the "caravans of Dedanites" to lodge "In the thickets of Arabia". Verse 14 tells the "dwellers of Tema" to "meet the refugees", which Gill reads against the custom that owed a fleeing man bread and water. Verse 15 names what they flee: "the sword".
Isaiah 21:13
“The burden upon Arabia,.... Which lay heavy upon it, as a burden upon a beast; or "concerning" it, or "against" it, as Kimchi notes; which Arabia, or what part thereof, is meant, may be gathered from the names after mentioned.”
2 more voices on this verse
Isaiah 21:13
“Analysis of Isa 21:13-17. - Vision 18. “Arabia.” The remainder of this chapter is occupied with a single prophecy respecting Arabia. It was “probably” delivered about the time that the former was uttered - during the reign of Hezekiah, and before the invasion of Sennacherib. It had reference, I suppose, to Sennacherib; and was designed to foretell the fact that, either in his march to attack Judea, or on his return from Egypt, he would pass through Arabia, and perhaps oppress and overthrow some of their clans.”
Isaiah 21:13
“The Arabians generally lived in tents, and kept cattle, were a hardy people, inured to labour; probably the Jews depended upon them as a sort of a wall between them and the more warlike eastern nations; and therefore, to alarm them, they shall hear the burden of Arabia, and see it sinking under its own burden.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Bring water for the thirsty: Tema descends from a son of Ishmael named at Genesis 25:15, and Dedan from Abraham through Keturah at Genesis 25:1 to 3. The refugees and their hosts were distant kin. Job 6:19 pictures the caravans of Tema looking for water.
Isaiah 21:14
“The land of Tema “The southern country” - Θαιμαν, Sept.; Austri, Vulg. They read תימן teiman, which seems to be right; for probably the inhabitants of Tema might be involved in the same calamity with their brethren and neighbors of Kedar, and not in a condition to give them assistance, and to relieve them, in their flight before the enemy, with bread and water.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:14
“The inhabitants of the land of Tema,.... This country had its name from Tema, one of the sons of Ishmael, Gen 25:15. The Targum calls it the land of the south, as if it was Teman.”
Barnes gives the word for stress as kobed, the weight of battle. Henry thinks an Assyrian army took Arabia on its march. The warriors and archers of Kedar fall under the same sword.
Isaiah 21:15
“And he places the cause of mercy: for they are fled from before the swords, that they might be moved to mercy: at the voice of the horsemen, and the archers, all the city is fled away (Jer 4:29).”
Thomas Aquinas · written before 1274 · Commentary on Isaiahpatristic
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:15
“For they fled - The inhabitants of one part of the land. The grievousness of war - Hebrew, כבד kobed - “the weight, the heaviness, the oppression” of war; probably from the calamities that would result from the march of the Assyrian through their land, either on his way to Judea or to Egypt.”
Isaiah 21:16-17
as a hired worker would count it: The term is fixed: "Within one year, as a hired worker would count it, all the glory of Kedar will be gone". "The remaining archers, the warriors of Kedar, will be few". Barnes and Delitzsch note that the closing words seal the oracle as the book seals other timed predictions.
Isaiah 21:16
“For thus hath the Lord said unto me,.... The prophet; which confirms what is before said, as well as assures the accomplishment of what follows: within a year, according to the years of an hireling; that is, exactly and precisely, as soon as ever the year is come to an end; for the hireling, when his year is up, instantly demands dismissal from his service, or his wages, or both.”
The remaining archers: Genesis 21:20 says Ishmael grew up in the wilderness and became a great archer, and Aquinas sees Kedar keeping the craft of its father. Henry observes that neither skill nor courage shields a people once God's judgment comes. Their famous bows are counted and found few.
Isaiah 21:17
“And the residue of the number - That is, those who shall be left in the invasion. Or perhaps it may be read, ‘There shall be a renmant of the number of bowmen; the mighty people of Kedar shall be diminished.’ Of archers - Hebrew, ‘Of the bow;’ that is, of those who use bows in war. The bow was the common instrument in hunting and in war among the ancients. Shall be diminished - Hebrew, ‘Shall be made small;’ they shall be reduced to a very small number.”
1 more voice on this verse
Isaiah 21:17
“Second, by the Chaldeans: the residue, left behind by the Assyrians, shall be diminished, by the Chaldeans; Cedar, the son of Ishmael; archers, following the art of their father, where it is said of Ishmael that he became an archer (Gen 21:20).”
Thomas Aquinas · written before 1274 · Commentary on Isaiahpatristic
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Isaiah; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah.