Introduction
The Book of Isaiah is typically divided by scholars into three sections: Proto-Isaiah or First Isaiah consists of chapters 1–39, Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah is chapters 40–55, and Trito-Isaiah or Third Isaiah is chapters 56–66. Proto-Isaiah is attributed to the actual Isaiah, who lived in the eighth century BCE. Deutero-Isaiah and Trito-Isaiah each come from authors in the late exilic and early post-exilic periods — just before, and sometime after, 538 BCE — respectively.
Even this is an over-simplification, though.
Many scholars think so. The presence of a history of redaction is most obvious in First Isaiah.
There are two other anomalous sections of First Isaiah: chapters 13–14 and 34–35. I will be looking at the first of these.
I was vaguely aware that scholars had doubts that these two sections went back to Isaiah himself, but I didn’t know any specifics. I read through Isa 13–14, made notes of what stood out to me, and then consulted some commentaries for further insight.
Isaiah 13
The Unrelenting Oppressor
Internal divisions are not clearcut in First Isaiah, but the book does have some sections which cluster around certain themes. Chapters 1–12 are largely focused on God’s judgment on Israel, along with the threat of Israel, Syria, and Assyria over Judah. Chapters 13–23 turn the focus of God’s judgment toward foreign nations, with occasional comments tying back to Israel and Judah. Chapters 24–35 contain further messages of judgment, as well as talk of restoration for Israel. (I’ve examined chapters 24–27 in another article, and came to the conclusion they did not come from Isaiah himself, but a later author.)
Isa 13.1–14.23, which kicks off that section on judgment against foreign nations, targets Babylon. If this was written by Isaiah, this would be extremely unusual. In these two chapters, Babylon is portrayed as a long-time world power finally getting its comeuppance for its ‘unrelenting’ oppression of weaker nations.
Yhwh has broken the staff of the wicked, the sceptre of rulers, that struck down the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows, that ruled the nations in anger with unrelenting persecution.
This does not resemble the political situation in Isaiah’s time, and wouldn’t for another hundred-plus years. The foreign powers most problematic for Israel and Judah in Isaiah’s day were Assyria and Egypt. Babylon is only mentioned two or three times in the Hebrew Bible’s historical narrative before Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Judah in 597 BCE, more than a century after Isaiah’s time. In the days of Isaiah, Babylon was not the threat that chapters 13–14 depict.
When Isa 13.1–14.23 are isolated from the surrounding chapters, other peculiarities emerge. Verses 14.1–4a break the flow of the section in half. These verses are a careful bridge between the two halves, but they seem almost like an afterthought to chapter 13. If this bridge is an insertion, then it means the two halves — 13.1–22 and 14.4b–23 — were probably written in different time periods.
Desolation of Babylon
Looking carefully at chapter 13 on its own, I found numerous parallels with exilic and post-exilic literature (when Babylon was a major world power). Of special note is the way Isa 13.21–22 describes the desolation of Babylon, such that its only inhabitants will be desert creatures.
Isaiah 13
Jeremiah 50–51
The oracle concerning Babylon that Isaiah son of Amoz saw. On a bare hill raise a banner [
The word that Yhwh spoke concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, by the prophet Jeremiah: Declare among the nations and proclaim, raise a banner [
See, I am stirring up [
Yhwh has stirred up [
And Babylon […] will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah [
Therefore wild animals shall live with hyenas in Babylon, and ostriches shall inhabit her; she shall never be inhabited again or lived in for all generations. As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah [
This is a stock threat of the prophets,
The second item above is an important connection. Jeremiah predicted that the Medes would conquer Babylon.
Jeremiah 51
Yhwh has stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, because his purpose concerning Babylon is to destroy it, for that is the vengeance of Yhwh, vengeance for his temple.
Prepare the nations for war against her, the kings of the Medes, with their governors and deputies, and every land under their dominion. The land trembles and writhes, for Yhwh’s purposes against Babylon stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.
In Isaiah we have the same thing:
Isaiah 13
See, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendour and pride of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.
However, the historical reality was that Persia, not Media, conquered Babylon. In fact, Persia conquered Babylon several years after having already conquered the Medes. Jeremiah’s prediction only makes sense within the narrow time period between Babylon conquering Jerusalem (587 BCE) and Persia conquering the Medes (549 BCE). The ‘afterthought’ in 14.1–2 anticipates the people of Israel returning from exile into foreign lands, which of course indicates they are already in exile. These verses were written to explain the immediate relevance of the prophecy to the Judean people.
There is the opinion that Isa 13 contains these parallels with Jer 50–51 because the latter text actually quotes from the former,
Parallelism in the Prophecy
Because of the highly dramatic style of 13.2–16 in contrast to the more historically grounded 13.17–22, some have thought the chapter was written by several hands over many years. In this view, an earlier prophecy against a single enemy nation was progressively turned into ‘a description of an all-encompassing world judgment and final judgment’.
The ‘universal’ language is intentionally dramatic, but a careful reader sees that despite this elevated language, there is still the implication of concrete history behind them. Verses 13.2–5 say that Yhwh is raising an invading army ‘from a distant land’, and verse 13.17 identifies the invaders as the Medes. Verses 13.7–16 say that Yhwh is sending the army to attack a ‘people’ who will ‘flee to their own lands’. Verse 13.19 identifies them as the people of Babylon, the people of Chaldea.
The style used in the chapter is not one of chronological sequence, but rather a veiled, eschatological army is portrayed ushering in the day of , which engulfs the entire world. Then v. 17 with its introductory particle, “behold” (hinnēh), pulls back the veil to reveal the solution to the mystery: It is the Medes executing the judgment on Babylon who constitute God’s phantom army.9
There is a unity across chapter 13 that reads very naturally.
Isaiah 14
Rejoicing Cedars of Lebanon
As the canonical form of Isa 13–14 plays out, we have a prophecy of Babylon’s conquest by the Medes, with a brief word on Israel’s return from exile. This is then followed by the statement that, when the exiles return home, they will taunt the king of Babylon with a song that parodies a dirge.
When Yhwh has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon
The poem in Isa 14.4b–23 has its own intertextual relationships with other prophetic parts of the Hebrew Bible, but not in the same way as Isa 13. I did notice that Isa 14 shares more verbage in common with the rest of First Isaiah.
There are far fewer parallels with any specific anti-Babylonian passages in Jeremiah or elsewhere, but I did see an increase in parallels with certain passages in Ezekiel. Specifically, places where Ezekiel had something to say about Assyria.
Isaiah 14
Ezekiel 31
The cypresses exult over you, the cedars of Lebanon, saying, ‘Since you were laid low, no one comes to cut us down.’ Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. You said in your heart […] ‘I will ascend to the tops of the clouds’
Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon […] its top among the clouds. […] I made the nations quake at the sound of its fall, when I cast it down to Sheol with those who go down to the Pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that were well watered, were consoled in the world below.
Both texts make a connection between the enemy of Israel — Babylon’s king and Assryia, respectively — and the ‘cedars of Lebanon’. The enemy reaches, or tries to reach, the ‘tops of the clouds’. In each case, the enemy is condemned and thrown to the underworld, Sheol, where the enemy’s dead victims find consolation in their oppressor’s demise.
The overlap is strong enough that some think Ezekiel owes direct literary dependence to Isaiah,
The cedars of Lebanon—often the object of Assyrian plunder—are portrayed as sharing in the rejoicing.15
If Ezek 31 borrows from Isa 14, but Ezek 31 is about Assyria, why is Isa 14 nominally about Babylon?
Helel Against the Gods
The message of the poem in Isa 14 is of Babylon’s king meeting his demise, divine vengeance for his brutal abuse of power. The second half of the poem (given below) reiterates the king’s downfall, but situates it within a story of the king attempting to rise above the overworld of Heaven, only to be thrown down to the underworld of Sheol. To some scholars, the poem in Isa 14.4b–23 ‘obviously contains material that has been reworked’ from a Canaanite myth, and still retains the polytheistic worldview of this earlier material.
How you are fallen from heaven, O Helel, son of dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of El; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like Most High.’ But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.
In different versions, the Hebrew word hêlêl is variably translated as ‘day star’, ‘morning star’, ‘shining star’, or ‘shining one’. It comes from a root verb with a wide semantic range, meaning ‘boast’, ‘commend’, ‘praise’, or ‘shine’. It doesn’t actually contain the word ‘star’ in its definition, but it is traditionally connected to the ‘morning star’ due to the additional epithet ‘son of dawn’, as well as its ancient translations in Greek (εωσφορος) and Latin (lucifer), both names for Venus. As will be shown below, this connection is warranted, but I’ve left ‘Helel’ untranslated above since it seems to function as a name.
In verse 14.13, we find the Hebrew word
There are a handful of items in this half of the poem which show its roots in a pre-exilic polytheism. As mentioned, there is the naming of El, rather than the Hebrew word usually used for Yhwh as ‘god’, ʾĕlôhîm. El was also sometimes called ʿElyōn (most high), which is used here as well. The ‘stars of El’ likely refers to a pantheon of gods, since stars were commonly identified as divinities in Southwest Asian literature, including in the Bible (e.g. Deut 4.19; Job 38.7). This interpretation is corroborated by the mention of the ‘mount of assembly’ (har-mōwʿêḏ), cognate of Ugaritic ‘group of the assembly’ (pḫr mʿd) and Akkadian ‘assembly of the gods’ (puḫur ilī).
Simply, Isa 14.12–15 depict Babylon’s king as attempting to scale Mount Zaphon, to rise up over the divine assembly in heaven, above even the most high god El.
Some think Ezek 28 borrows from this same myth,
Isa 14.4b–23 appears to derive from an astrological story.
The most plausible reconstruction is of Helel’s challenge to the power of Elyon, who, when thwarted, was thrown down to Sheol. The myth depicts a cosmic battle between Helel and Elyon in the brilliant rise of the morning star in the heavens and its sudden dimming before the strengthening rays of the sun.21
In contrast, Ezek 28 seems to borrow from the same myth behind Gen 2–3, where a man blessed in the garden of Eden later sins and is exiled by a cherub sent from God.
The Identity of Helel
The obvious question to be asked when reading Isa 14 is, who is ‘Helel’, the ‘son of dawn’?
First Isaiah was shaped in response to the Babylonian exile. The section prophesying judgment on foreign nations begins (13.1–14.23) and ends (21.9; 23.13) with further condemnation of Babylon.
those who shaped the Isaiah scroll were deeply concerned to make sense of the memories of the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon […] At the time when the Isaiah scroll was constructed, Babylon’s era of power seems to be at an end.23
Because the poem is prefaced with the declaration that ‘you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon’ — and because Babylon in Isaiah’s time was nothing like the oppressive power condemned Isa 13–14, as mentioned above — the most obvious suggestion is ‘the king of Babylon’ is an anachronistic reference to Nebuchadnezzar. He was the king responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, as well as the deportation of Judeans to a foreign land.
The most suitable candidate for the ruler intended in the introduction is Nebuchadnezzar, the typical king of Babylon.24
However, identifying the target of the prophecy as Nebuchadnezzar is problematic because his fate does not resemble the king’s as described in verses 14.18–21.
All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb; but you are cast out, away from your grave, like loathsome carrion, clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the Pit, like a corpse trampled underfoot. You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have killed your people. May the descendants of evildoers nevermore be named! Prepare slaughter for his sons because of the guilt of their father. Let them never rise to possess the earth or cover the face of the world with cities.
Here, the king is exhumed from his burial (‘cast out, away from your grave’) or simply left unburied (‘you will not be joined with them in burial’),
The shift in style in prose in 14.3–4a over to poetry, then back to prose in 14.22–23, indicates redaction has taken place.
The interpretation of the political context of the Isaiah passage is debated as well, yet despite some problems (see Olyan 2006), evidence indicates that the allegedly “Babylonian” king whose downfall Isaiah 14 describes was, originally, no king of Babylon at all, but rather the Assyrian ruler Sargon II (Ginsberg 1968; Frahm 1999).28
We saw before the parallels between this taunt and Ezek 31. The latter text names Assyria as the object of derision, and because of the parallels some scholars think Ezek 31 is dependent on Isa 14. This may suggest the exilic Ezekiel made use of an earlier, pre-exilic version of Isa 14 which was originally aimed against Assyria, which was redacted into its current anti-Babylonian form in the post-exilic period. There are also the previously noted linguistic similarities between this poem and First Isaiah, as well as the overt polytheism more at home in the pre-exilic world.
A rather convincing case can be made that this taunt song was originally directed against a hated Assyrian king.29
Between Isaiah’s time (circa 740–700 BCE) and the fall of Assryia (612 BCE) there were ten Assyrian kings. The first two, Isaiah’s immediate contemporaries, are mentioned favorably in the Bible, making them doubtful candidates for the taunted king’s identity.
While some insist the poem really was written during the Babylonian period and was aimed against Nebuchadnezzar or one of his successors,
Sargon was the third king of Assyria during Isaiah’s time. He antagonized Judah and nearly conquered Jerusalem, qualifying him (from a Judean’s perspective) as an ‘oppressor’ who ‘ruled the nations in anger with unrelenting oppression’. And, as the king suffering in 14.19–20 indicates, Sargon did not receive a proper burial.
Isaiah 14:19 reports that the king in question had been “cast out, away from [his] grave, like loathsome carrion, clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword.” Whereas this description is quite compatible with what we know about the sad end of Sargon, who had died on the battlefield and whose body had not been recovered, no such tradition is attached to a king of Babylon.35
The use of an astrological myth to criticize an Assyrian king is also fitting, since Assyrian kings employed astrological symbolism to identify themselves as ‘the rising sun’, indicating ‘their status as "living images" of the sun-god’.
Conclusion
Let’s summarize our findings on Isa 13.1–14.21. The passage in question appears to be made from several layers of redaction.
The earliest layer would be Isa 14.4b–21. This was an anti-Assyrian poem, adapted from an astrological Canaanite myth, and still contains a polytheistic worldview of El ruling the council of gods atop Mount Zaphon. The poem was definitely written before the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE, but probably comes from the time of Sargon II. This would make the poem contemporary with the historical Isaiah, though we can’t say for certain if it comes from him specifically.
Later, sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE but before the conquest of the Medes by the Persians in 549 BCE, the prophecy in Isa 13.1–22 was written. The author believed, as Jer 50–51 also did, that Babylon would be conquered by the Medes in retaliation for Babylon conquering Jerusalem.
At some point during the Babylonian exile, or shortly after it, verses 14.3–4b and 22–23 were added to the first layer. This changed the poem from one against Assyria into a condemnation of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. Later still, verses 14.1–2 were appended to 13.1–22, probably with the intention of bridging chapter 13 to chapter 14. This would have happened around the same time other anti-Babylonian redactions were made throughout Isaiah 1–35. As the exile came to a close, First Isaiah had taken the shape we are now familiar with.