14:1  The Lord will have compassion on Jacob and once again choose Israel; he will settle them in their own land, and proselytes will adhere to them and join the house of Jacob.

This is the Jacob-Israel category that the Lord intends or hopes to save, and have compassion on them, and again renew a covenant relationship with them.  But they need to do their part; they need repent, and then he can choose them again and then they become the category of Zion-Jerusalem that survives.  Having compassion and choosing are covenant terms, especially “compassion” means to have a covenant relationship with.  Of course, many are called but few are chosen.  The actual choosing is an elect status or confirmation.  When you prove faithful to the Lord in covenant keeping then he confirms the covenant upon you.  Instead of a conditional covenant, an unconditional covenant with you. 

“He will settle them in their own land,” or give them back the promised land, from which they have been exiled and dispersed. “Proselytes will adhere to them and join the house of Jacob.”  Remember the clean animals living in peace and harmony with the unclean, or the unclean living in harmony with the clean?  So there will be proselytes among the Gentiles who will join the House of Jacob and become the covenant people of the Lord.  They will all become one people. 

14:2  The nations will take them and bring them to their own place. And the house of Israel will possess them as menservants and maidservants in the land of the Lord: they will take captive their captors and rule over their oppressors.

Or the Gentiles will, in particular the kings and queens of the Gentiles as we see in chapter 49, verse 22 and other places.  Who are the kings and queens of the Gentiles?  Not the political kings and queens of the Gentiles; they aren’t involved in this work.  So it refers to some other category of kings and queens who perform a ministering function to the house of Israel.  Kind of like Joseph in Egypt: he ministered to and saved his brethren in a time of famine in Egypt. 

Does that mean there will be captors and oppressors still left alive? It’s possible it may have begun like that.  It refers no doubt to the posterity of those who perhaps were left alive at that time.  Or it is possible that those who were involved as oppressors and captors at first were converted to the Lord because of remorse at having perpetrated these things upon innocent people, and that caused their conversion.  There were many of Hitler’s people during the second world war who had such remorse and who changed sides, in fact: who would not participate in that horrible scene of conquest and destruction.

“The house of Israel will possess them as menservants and maidservants.”  So that means that there will be different categories of people: some elect categories and some lesser categories of people.  And then people will be able to distinguish between the two, and the veil of mortality is taken away as it says later on in Isaiah 25 and 26.  Right now we have sheep and goats living together and we can’t distinguish necessarily between the two.  But then, when mortality is done away, then people will be seen for who and what they are.  Some will be in higher spiritual categories than others, and they will minister down to lower categories.  And so we’ll have an unequal situation, to facilitate upward progression, with those above ministering to those below, and those below being helped to ascend higher by those above. 

14:3  In the day the Lord gives you relief from grief and anguish and from the arduous servitude imposed on you, 4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say, How the tyrant has met his end and tyranny ceased!

The day is still the same day of judgment, but it is when the king of Babylon comes to an end, and the king of Babylon is destroyed from the earth himself.  “King of Babylon” was a title that Assyrian kings anciently assume when they conquered Babylon, as it was a religious title.  And that’s the connotation here.  The name Babylon implies idolatry. Isaiah uses it to emphasize his idolatrous aspect.  “King of Assyria” implies the political aspect and “king of Babylon” implies the religious aspect.  And that religious aspect is in the nature of idolatry.  He’s idolatrous; Babylon is idolatrous; Babylon set the precedent anciently for idolatry. 

“In the day the Lord gives you relief from grief and anguish and from the arduous servitude that he imposed upon” the Lord’s people.  The arduous servitude is the yoke and the rod and the staff of the king of Assyria, or the king of Babylon.  Which people?  Not the ones whom he destroyed, not the elect who went on the exodus, but the middle category of people.  They’re the ones over whom he has power for a time and then, when he is overthrown by the Lord’s servant, that is the day when that category of people is released from such oppression. 

“And they will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say...” A taunt is like a tirade, or a song of putting down the king of Babylon. “How the tyrant has met his end and tyranny ceased!”  “How” begins a lament as in the Book of Lamentations.  And so this is a lament for him, but it’s not really so much a lament as a parody of the king of Babylon and his power.  He is the tyrant of all tyrants, the arch-tyrant in the Book of Isaiah, and with his demise came the end of tyranny on the earth.                                   

14:5  The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked, the rod of those who ruled—

There are the two terms, rod and staff, that identify the King of Assyria in chapter 10.  And so, the breaking of the staff and the rod is the breaking of the power of the King of Assyria, who’s called the King of Babylon here.  He’s the wicked one, the rod and staff of the wicked, who ruled for a time. 

14:6  him who with unerring blows struck down the nations in anger, who subdued peoples in his wrath by relentless oppression.

This is like one of those verses you can read two ways.  The King of Assyria, the King of Babylon, struck down the nations.  He was angry with them, he subdued them wrathfully by relentless oppression.  He was a vengeful, wrathful, angry, oppressive person—you can read it that way.   Or you can say the Lord struck down the nations using the King of Assyria as his instrument. 

14:7  Now the whole earth is at rest and at peace; there is jubilant celebration!

I remember after the second world war, the jubilant celebration that came in the day of liberation, when Holland, where I was born, was liberated from the Germans.  After five or six years of continuous warfare, people just went and danced in the streets and sang and hugged and kissed each other in jubilant celebration.  Now the whole earth—because the whole earth was destroyed by him—is at rest and at peace.  So the time of peace, or the millennium, now begins.  This is the time of the thief in the night.  The thief in the night has done his robbing, his plundering, his pillaging, and now he’s come to an end and now the Lord himself may come.  That is the redemption of Zion.  You can link this to other parts of Isaiah—that is the redemption of Zion.

14:8  The pine trees, too, rejoice over you, as do the cedars of Lebanon: Since you have been laid low, no hewer has risen against us!

Now remember he was the one who hewed down the cedars of Lebanon; he was the axe and the saw.  But what he did to others is now done to him.  He’s now laid low.  He’s now hewn down.  So, trees being a metaphor for peoples, they’re the ones who are rejoicing over his fall.  In fact, everything in Isaiah that exalts itself falls.  He exalts himself higher than all, as we’ll see in this chapter, and he falls below all.  Babylon exalts herself and she falls.  And all those who oppress and exalt themselves over other people, they all fall to a greater or lesser degree as they emulate this paradigm.

14:9  Sheol below was in commotion because of you, anticipating your arrival; on your account it roused all the spirits of the world’s leaders, causing all who had ruled nations to rise up from their thrones.

Sheol was the underworld, or the spirit prison, or Hell, anticipating the arrival of his spirit when he died. So there was some kind of hierarchy maintained in that underworld, where all of these phantoms or spirits of the dead—the wicked ones—were aroused to greet this individual, knowing he was coming.

14:10  All alike were moved to say to you, Even you have become powerless as we are! You have become like us!

Now the righteous don’t become powerless, so you know that it’s talking about the wicked: the oppressive, the unrighteous rulers of the earth, or those who would rule unrighteously on the earth. “Even you have become powerless as we are!  You have become like us!” Whereas they thought him to be some great one.  In fact, he made himself “god of this world” as we’ll see in the next few verses.  And he is perhaps even more powerless than they are because of his greater wickedness.

14:11 Your glory has been cast down to Sheol, along with the music of your lyres. Beneath you is a bed of maggots; you are covered with worms.

Implying that there is some sort of subculture associated with him in art and music, perhaps. “Beneath you is a bed of maggots; you are covered with worms.”  This is very literal: that he dies like a man and his flesh rots, and the worms eat it.

14:12  How you have fallen from the heavens, O morning star, son of the dawn! You who commanded the nations have been hewn down to earth!

This is the still same individual, the one who has been laid low.  (Verse 8, “since you have been laid low, no hewer has risen against us!”) Now what he did to others is done to him; he is hewn down.  He is the one who commanded the nations whom he conquered, and yet some say this refers to Lucifer, or Satan.  And could that be the case?  What Isaiah does here is he combines several attributes from historical and mythological figures into one person.  Like Assyrian world conquerors from the north, they set a precedent for that.  King of Babylon—the Babylonians set a precedent for false, idolatrous ideologies.  Then he takes figures out of ancient near-eastern mythology and combines those character traits into one person.  So this would be like a compound of several different types from the past or from mythology to characterize this one individual, this king of Babylon or Assyria.  An individual who could be like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Darth Vader all rolled into one.  And that’s what he does here.  This is the mythology part of that: he’s fallen from the heavens.  Now could this have secondary allusions to Lucifer or to Satan?  Yes it could, the same as chapter 9, verse 4 (“To us a son is born, a child appointed”) could have a secondary connotation referring to Christ.  Not the primary connotation because it doesn’t link with word links to the Lord’s servant as Isaiah has established there.  But yes, there can be several different levels on which we can read this as well.  When we apply purely to a mythological level, or some kind of pre-history of the earth, then there could be some relevance there, no doubt.  The point is that “that which exalts itself falls,” and it’s talking about a man here who is hewn down, whose body is eaten by maggots, who doesn’t get a burial.  “Is this the man who made the earth shake and kingdoms quake,” in verse 16.  It talks about his “corpse.”  It’s literal, despite whatever mythological or spiritual connotations this may have

“How you have fallen from the heavens, O morning star, son of the dawn!”  Now how can a man fall from the heavens?  Well, it tells you in verses 13 and 14 that he actually ascends up above the clouds, and sits up there.  And that of course is possible with today’s technology.  You can go up in a spaceship today and be up there and fall down—your spaceship can come crashing down.  What does a spaceship look up there, circling the globe?  It just looks like a star, doesn’t it?  It looks like a blob of light reflecting in the sun.

“You who commanded the nations have been hewn down to earth!”  The one who commands the nations in the book of Isaiah is the King of Assyria, this time under his title the “King of Babylon.”

14:13 You said in your heart, I will rise in the heavens and set up my throne above the stars of God; I will seat myself in the mount of assembly of the gods, in the utmost heights or Zaphon.

And the Book of Daniel mentions one who ascends to the heavens in order to escape calamity upon the earth.  So the very destruction that he’s causing upon the earth, he’s seeking himself to avoid by going up there. 

“I will seat myself in the mount of assembly of the gods, in the utmost heights of Zaphon.”  Zaphon is the north, so like the pole star up there, he’s up in perhaps his spaceship, monitoring things like Darth Vader upon the earth, with power to enforce his commands from such a place. 

14:14  I will ascend above the altitude of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High!

The Most High was “El Elian,” the highest of the Hebrew gods.  He wants to displace god.  He wants to make himself the god of heaven and the god of the earth.  Of course he doesn’t believe in a literal god, so he makes himself a god.  This is a counterfeit of exaltation.   The Lord does exalt his people as they ascend higher on the spiritual ladder.  Each ascends up the spiritual ladder.  Progression is a form of exaltation.  They are exalted on higher and higher levels.  But this is a counterfeit of such exaltation; this is a false way of exaltation.  That which exalts itself now, falls.  That which humbles itself now, the Lord exalts.  Later on we see in the Book of Isaiah how the suffering servant is humiliated or humbled, and then he is exalted as King of Zion.  This is the exact opposite paradigm of that: the King of Babylon establishes this false paradigm of self-exaltation followed by humiliation and fall.  The suffering servant, who turns out to be the Lord himself in one of Isaiah’s structures, he’s humbled and then he is exalted as King of Zion.  And those two ideas kind of establish paradigms and, in the end time, happen concurrently.

“I will ascend above the altitude of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High” just like those Mesopotamian gods of mythology did.  They aspired to be the god of gods, they aspired to displace other gods.  In the process, they fell.  So Isaiah draws upon ancient near-eastern myth as one of his components in characterizing, or creating a character trait or description of this literal person.

14:15  But you have been brought down to Sheol, to the utmost depths of the Pit.

In fact, “the utmost depths” establishes him as the lowest of the low, and as a paradigm of such.  Not just Hell or the underworld or the spirit world in general, but the very bottom of it.

14:16  Those who catch sight of you stare at you, wondering, Is this the man who made the earth shake and kingdoms quake,

14:17  who turned the world into a wilderness, demolishing its cities, permitting not his captives to return home?

That was done by the kings of Assyria, which is what he is.  He’s the rod and the staff, the yoke, the sword and all that.  The anger and the wrath.  In chapter 5 verse 25 it says, “Therefore the anger of the Lord is kindled against his people: he draws back his hand against them and strikes them; the mountains quake, and their corpses lie like litter about the streets.”  The mountains or nations quaking is a word link to this, chapter 14 verse 16, “Is this the man who made the earth shake and kingdoms quake.”  He’s a power of chaos.  He does turn the world into a wilderness, as we’ve already seen.  He is the one who demolishes its cities.  He is the one who commits people to servitude and yokes them down with heavy burdens.

14:18  All rulers of nations lie in state, each among his own kindred.

14:19  But you are cast away unburied like a repugnant fetus, exposed like the slain disfigured by the sword, whose mangled remains are thrown in a gravel pit.

Yuck.  Other people, other nations, who were not as wicked as he was, or who were not wicked at all, receive a proper burial.  But not him.  To have no burial is a covenant curse.  Later on we see, in chapter 53, how chapter 14 is juxtaposed with chapters 52 and 53, and everything that is spoken of the King of Babylon in this chapter, has its counterpart or opposite in chapters 52 and 53 which talk about the King of Zion.  One of the things that happens to the suffering servant is that he does die, but he is buried, whereas the King of Babylon is not buried.  Also it talks about the suffering servant seeing his seed or having seed or offspring in chapter 53, whereas the King of Babylon’s offspring are massacred or destroyed from the face of the earth.  So there’s kind of an antithesis going on between the King of Babylon here and the King of Zion, in chapters 52 and 53.  The King of Babylon exalts himself now and is humiliated; in chapters 52 and 53, the King of Zion is humiliated and then exalted. There’s a direct antithesis between the two and direct parallelism. “You are cast away unburied,” this is an actual person with a corpse.

14:20  You shall not share burial with them, for you have destroyed your land and murdered your people. May the brood of miscreants never more be mentioned!

How does he destroy his own land and his own people and murder them?  Because he took them into the war with him to destroy the people of God and then vengeance came upon him and his people.  Very much like after the second world war, when the allies destroyed much of Germany.  Germany was desolated because of Hitler’s ambitions to conquer the world, or conquer Europe.
“May the brood of miscreants never more be mentioned!”  So their very name becomes an anathema.

14:21  Prepare for the massacre of their sons, in consequence of their fathers’ deeds, lest they rise up again and take possession of the world, and fill the face of the earth with cities.

They are world conquerors, populous, they have now destroyed themselves, and their offspring are also destroyed as in the next verse.

14:22  I will rise up against them, says the Lord of Hosts. I will cut off Babylon’s name and remnant, its offspring and descendants, says the Lord.

So no offspring or descendants are left behind.  In fact, all the wicked including them are erased from the face of the earth.  None of them are left behind.  But the words “sons” and “fathers” also have a covenantal connotation.  “Sons” could refer to their vassal status to the King of Assyria or the King of Babylon. “I will cut of Babylon’s name and remnant, its offspring and descendants.”  When the Lord says he will rise up against them, that is a word link to other places when the Lord intervenes.  When they cause this destruction, the Lord intervenes, to deliver his people and to reclaim the earth from the power of the King of Babylon.  Now as King of Babylon, he’s also the one, as we saw in chapter 13, who destroys Babylon, or the world and its wicked inhabitants.  That’s kind of an irony that he, being King of Babylon, destroys that which he represents.  The very wicked world that he represents, he destroys.  Whereas the Lord himself does the exact opposite.  As King of Zion, he delivers Zion.  He’s a deliverer of his people.  The King of Assyria is very destructive.  It’s as if he beats up on his wife, the woman Babylon, and kills her.  Whereas the King of Zion delivers his wife, the woman Zion.  A paradigm of wickedness and a paradigm of righteousness.  To have no remnant or offspring or descendants is a covenant curse of course.

14:23  I will turn it into swamp lands, a haunt for ravens; I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of Hosts.

This sweeping, the use of the word “sweep,” is a total annihilation or destruction.  It’s a total destruction of all the living. I will turn it into swamplands, a haunt for ravens,” like we saw, the unclean animals will inhabit those destroyed places.  They become places that are associated with evil, and become a testimony of what happened to those who were evil who inhabited it.  It’s like the before and after scenarios.  Before, it was inhabited by unclean human creatures, right?  Now it’s inhabited by unclean animal creatures.  The one symbolizes the other.

14:24–25  The Lord of Hosts made an oath, saying, As I foresaw it, so shall it happen; as I planned it, so shall it be: I will break Assyria in my own land, trample them underfoot on my mountains; their yoke shall be taken from them, their burden removed from their shoulders.

I will break Assyria in my own land, trample them underfoot on my mountains; their yoke shall be taken from them, their burden removed from their shoulders.” 
Now remember the King of Assyria trampled underfoot the people of the Lord, as mud.  What he does to others is now done to him, or his armies.  Still talking about the King of Babylon, or the King of Assyria.

“Mine oath.”  It was all planned from the beginning.  “As I foresaw it, so shall it happen; as I planned it, so shall it be.”  And it’s the same idea as what I read in chapter 37:26-27, “Have you not heard how I ordained this thing long ago, how in days of old I planned it?  Now I have brought it to pass.  You were destined to demolish fortified cities, turning them into heaps of rubble, while their timorous inhabitants shrank away in confusion.”  It was planned, it was built into the plan for this earth, that at some point all the wicked should be erased from the face of the earth.  And that Assyria would be chosen for that destruction, and then Assyria itself would be destroyed—except the remnant of Assyria, the ten tribes.  So we see how in every case the Lord brings good out of evil.  The ten tribes were taken captive, and then they end up not only being the survivors of this destruction in the last days, but also the land of Assyria becomes their land of inheritance.  Who would have thought when the ten tribes were taken captive, that would be the result?  Only God can orchestrate history like that: bring good out of evil and fulfill his purposes for all mankind. 

 “I will break Assyria in my own land,” that is, in the promised land, “trample them underfoot on my mountains,” or among the nations of his people, not just the one nation that existed anciently but the nations of his people out there, who now have become a universal entity.  There is more than one promised land. “Their yoke shall be taken from them, their burden removed from their shoulders.”  That is the yoke of the King of Assyria’s power shall be taken from them.  He is the yoke around their necks.  They’ll be delivered from bondage to him, the King of Babylon or Assyria.

14:26–27  These are things determined upon the whole earth; this is the hand upraised over all nations. For what the Lord of Hosts has determined, who shall revoke? When his hand is upraised, who can turn it away?

It’s like that decree we talked about earlier that Isaiah talks about.  The hand upraised over all nations is the King of Assyria who is given power over all nations of the earth for a time.  And no one can turn that hand away because the Lord upraises it or sustains it so that work of destruction may be done on all those who don’t repent when their lease of time runs out.  And yet, the Lord’s servant is also his hand, and eventually the Lord’s right hand of deliverance wins out.  The Lord’s servant is given power over the King of Assyria. “When his hand is upraised, who can turn it away?”  Well, the Lord’s servant can, when the Lord empowers him.

14:28–29  In the year King Ahaz died, came this oracle: Rejoice not, all you Philistines, now that the rod which struck you is broken. From among the descendants of that snake shall spring up a viper, and his offspring shall be a fiery flying serpent.

Now this is Messianic imagery, serpent imagery.  The word “serpent” or “snake”, nahash, in Hebrew, has the same numerical value as the word “messiah” or “anointed one”, which anciently kings of Israel were.  They were called “anointed one” or “messiah.”  In numerology they have the same numerical value, the two terms.  The word “serpent” is a messiah symbol.  Just as the brazen serpent that Moses held up in the wilderness became a messiah symbol for all those who looked.  They were delivered from the poisonous serpents who bit the people, and for their labor of looking, they survived and did not perish. 

Now “the rod which struck you is broken,” refers to King Ahaz, a Davidic king.  And here are people rejoicing that King Ahaz has died.  That is in historical context.  “From among the descendants of that snake,” or the descendants of King Ahaz, “shall spring up a viper, and his offspring shall be a fiery flying serpent.”  Saraph me-ofef, as it says in Hebrew, and seraph is the same word as saraph.  So, a “flying seraph.”  His offspring will be a flying seraph, and he is a messianic-type of person.  And that flying seraph alludes to the seraph category of the spiritual ladder in the book of Isaiah, which is the category below the Lord.  There’s the Lord, then the seraphim or seraphs, then there are the sons and servants of God, then there is Zion/Jerusalem, then there is Jacob/Israel and so on down until the King of Assyria.  So this is an allusion to a descendant of David, over several generations, who attains seraph status, or ascends to the seraph category.  And that will be people of the caliber of Moses and Elijah, translated beings, and others like them.  And those beings have special powers, as Elijah did and as Moses did.  That is the power that the Lord’s servant will have in the book of Isaiah, who is a messianic type and a descendant of David. 

14:30  The elect poor shall have pasture, and the needy recline in safety. But your descendants I will kill with famine, and your survivors shall be slain.

Remember the youngster who will lead them to pasture?  “But your descendants I will kill with famine, and your survivors shall be slain.”  So that means that these elect poor and these needy, who will have pasture and recline in safety, they will inherit the Millennium, a time of peace in the promised land.  They are like sheep here, meaning the Lord’s covenant people, versus these other people who will have no survivors, no descendants, meaning the wicked.  In that category come the Philistines who are rejoicing over the death of one of these messianic types, a death of a descendant of David.  Famine is a covenant curse, and being slain is a covenant curse.  So while one group experiences deliverance, the other group experiences destruction.  When?  Or through whose agency?  Through the agency of a seraph, or a savior figure of some kind who is a descendant of David.  This is very similar to the allegory in 11:1, where the shoot comes forth from the stock of Jesse and the branch from its graft bears fruit.  This is also an instance of what is called “Zion ideology,” which appears all the way through the book of Isaiah wherever the word “Zion” is mentioned.  Wherever the word is mentioned you have destruction of the wicked and deliverance of the righteous in the presence, or through the agency, of a descendant of David, the Lord’s servant.  Do you have all those components here?  You do.  You have the mention of Zion in verse 32, you have the destruction of the wicked in verse 31, and you have the deliverance of the righteous: the poor and the needy who are identified in verse 30.  The poor and the needy have been identified before as the Lord’s covenant people, the righteous people.  It also says “the elect.”

14:31  Wail at the gates; howl in the city! Utterly melt away, you Philistines! From the North shall come pillars of smoke, and no place he has designated shall evade it.

So a time of howling and wailing, which is a covenant curse, and of calamity for the Philistines, the enemies of the Lord’s people.  Whether they are actual Philistines or whether they are just a symbolic category doesn’t matter. “From the North shall come pillars of smoke.”  From the North always comes destruction, meaning from Assyria.  So these Philistines are destroyed by the Assyrians.  “Shall come pillars of smoke” could mean what we saw earlier, mushroom clouds of smoke. “No place he has designated shall evade it.”  So every place that is doomed for such destruction, that is “on the list” so to speak, is destroyed.

14:32  What shall then be told the envoys of the nation? The Lord has founded Zion; let his longsuffering people find refuge there.

The envoys of the nation are those who take news abroad, whether the nation of Israel or other nations.  That time, when that destruction comes, is also the time when the Lord establishes his people Zion.  How does he do that?  He does it when they come out of an exodus and become one people.  They are reborn, or are born as the people of Zion.  They experience rebirth as a nation.  Just as Israel anciently was born at the exodus out of Egypt and became a nation at that time.  Before that they were not.  They were just some captive tribes of Israel, or Hebrews.  But they became a nation, and they were born as a nation, and they covenanted with God in the Sinai wilderness.  So it is here.  At this universal destruction by the Assyrians, these people come on an exodus and are born as a nation.  People called Zion.  Zion is both a people and a place.  It is those of Israel who repent and the place to which they return, which is a place of safety. “The Lord has founded Zion; let his longsuffering people find refuge there.”  Longsuffering meaning they have gone through some trials.  They have waited it out.  They have exercised faith in the Lord that he will deliver them.