Isaiah 21:1-17.  Today’s reading has three more messages or burdens.  The first one is kind of cryptic. Three countries are mentioned, Elam, Media, and Babylon and also the “wilderness of the sea” or “dessert by the sea”. The word translated wilderness or desert means a large uninhabited land.  The word in Hebrew comes from a root word that means to speak, but it also means to lead or drive away.  Part of the root idea probably has to do with wind or air, like the air coming from your mouth as you speak.  Interestingly the word for wilderness can also mean mouth.  If you have ever been in a desert wilderness for much time you know they can get pretty windy.

Later in the message we see Babylon has been destroyed.  In the lifetime of Isaiah Babylon would often rise up against Assyria, the dominant world power for much of Isaiah’s life.  Assyria put down these rebellions on several occasions (710 BC, 701 BC, 689 BC, and also Babylon’s final (?) destruction after a period of dominance in 539 BC).  The destruction spoken about in this burden is probably the one in 689 BC.  One of the kings of Babylon, Merodach-baladan was from a desert part of the area known as Babylon that bordered a marshy wasteland between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  So that is probably what Isaiah is talking about when he says “wilderness by/of the sea”.  In 689 he tried to throw off Assrian control of Babylon and was assisted by the Medes (people of Media) and the Elamites (people from Elam) two other people groups in the region.  Maps showing the territory of these different groups and empires all show the same area between the Caspian and Black Seas to the north and the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, Modern day Iraq and Iran (at times the empires also included Afghanistan, and Pakistan).  So the fighting was for control of this land with the Assyrians on one side and the Chaldeans, Medes, Persians and Elamites on the other side.  Later in history when the Chaldeans were in control the Medes rose up against them and conquered the new or neo-Babylonian empire (539 BC).  But at the time of Isaiah the Medes and Elamites were allies of Babylon (the Chaldeans).  That is why as part of the message they are called to the battle.  This burden or message was probably given to the people of Judah about 700 BC.  Hezekiah was king and was an ally of Babylon.  Remember thought that God never really approved of these alliances, he wanted his people to trust him for protection.  In the message a watchman is stationed and told to keep a close watch.  Eventually he sees some warriors coming.  Evidently they are friendly and coming from a battle in which Babylon has been completely destroyed.  The response of the watchman (maybe Isaiah) is horror over the vision and fear for the people of Judah.  He called his people “threshed”.  Threshing was the process for getting the seeds of grain off of the grassy stalks.  The process involved walking around and around over the cut grass on a floor then taking a rake and throwing the whole mess in the air where the wind cold blow away the lighter leaves leaving just the seeds.  So Isaiah feels that his people are being beat up and stepped on.  Assyria seems unstoppable as they destroy Babylon.

The next message is quite short and involves Edom.  Edomites were a people group who lived in the desert south-east of the land of Israel where modern day Jordan is.  Seir is a mountain range in this area.  A person comes from Seir and asks the watchman how long until dawn.  The watchman tells the person not long but then more darkness I coming.  The he tells the person to come back later and ask again.  This is another weird message.  We have no idea what it would have been about historically.

The third message is about Arabia.  In those days people moved things they wanted to sell from one region to another on donkeys, camels, and other beasts of burden.  They would often travel over great distances through different kingdoms.  There were groups of bandits who would rob and mistreat travelers.  People would travel in groups so they could better protect themselves (like wagon trains in our nations history).  These traveling groups were called caravan.  Caravans would usually stop at well known places, where there was water, to spend the night. The caravan was in Arabia (east of Israel) and the people were called Dedanites.  We don’t know too much about the Dedanites but scholars think that they lived on the shore of the Persian Gulf on the other side of the Arabian Desert.  They seem to have been professional caravaners (think UPS, FEDEX, Pony Express or Camel Express). In this message the caravan did not go to an oasis but hid in some bushes.  As they were hidden in the bushes they met a group of refugees running from an advancing army.  Then the message ends with a prediction that within a year “Kedar” (one of the tribes which made up the people of Arabia and probably used here for all Arabians) would suffer great loss.

As I have said many of these messages were given at different times for different reasons but were collected together and arranged by Isaiah for a new reason in this book.  That does not mean that none of the messages were new though.  Isaiah cold have had a new vision to complete the idea God wanted to get across. The first message continues the ideas through out the book about the weakness of human alliances.  The Israelites should not look to others for help since theses other kingdoms could not resist the power of Assyria.   In the third message we see experienced caravan operators hiding in the bushes.  Their caravans had to regularly travel across the Arabian Desert and probably had made agreements with the various nomadic Arab tribes.  For the Arab tribes to be defeated meant that their travels would be more dangerous.  In modern terms we would say the region was “destabilized”.  So in these two messages (really visions) seem to be laying out how bad the situation in the region had become.  Although Assyraia was in power they could not control every square mile every minute of the day and by removing well-established groups they were opening the way for trouble.  In this time of turmoil the Edomite asks the watchman, how much more darkness.  The watchman informs him there is hope light is coming but so is more darkness.  Thorugh out history there have been wars and people have been displaced, their lives disrupted, and their property destroyed.  Mankind has a real ability to make messes it seems to be what we do(v. 2).  We all feel threshed sometimes, even in our pretty safe and secure day to day lives there can be trouble.  But God sees (v. 10) and he acts (v. 17).  Keep in mind that this book is a total message and we have not come to the rest of it yet, but we have heard of a “day of the LORD” on in which there will be trouble like no other.  Judgment will come to many nations.  I have mentioned how the book of Revelation describes the event of that “Day of the LORD”.  At the end of Revelation we see there will be a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1) one in which there will be no more crying or sadness (Revelation 21:4).  Acts 2:20 calls that time a “great and glorious day”.  Revelation 22:5 tells us that there will no longer be any night and that God will be our eternal light.  In the mean time there will be little times of light, little moments of hope, but we need to stay focused on God, trust his love and power, and not rely on human alliances.  Focus on that day as you go through the nights of your life.  God help me stay focused on you.  It is clear you love us and want us.  You died so we could be back together.  Help me keep my eyes on the end as I go through the middle.  Help me trust.

Isaiah 19:16-20:6.  This is a very interesting reading today and an interesting arrangement.  Yesterday we saw a message about Egypt.  Isaiah calls theses messages burdens (some translations use the word “oracle” which means a spoken message but the Hebrew word means burden).  And this message certainly was a burden, some very serious stuff happened to Egypt in yesterday’s reading and the whole theme that Isaiah is dealing with in the book overall is serious as well.  Helping people see and deal with their sin (disobedience to God) and getting them to start giving God the credit instead of themselves is hard to do.  And think about how Isaiah did this for well over 40 years, through several different kings.  Then to have theses messages about nations suffering, it would be pretty tiring.

So today’s reading starts out with the Egyptians weak and afraid (Sorry to all you girls out there but in those days women just didn’t generally go out to battle, it’s a generalization and doesn’t mean that all women are weak all the time.  Remember Jael (Judges 4:17-21)).  But it is interesting that the thing they are afraid of isn’t from the civil war that was going on and the drought and famine.  Now what they are afraid of is “the land of Judah” (v. 17).  That doesn’t mean they are afraid of dirt, it doesn’t even mean they are afraid of the people of Judah, what it means is they are afraid of the God of the people of Judah.  Notice in verse 16 it is because of God’s “hand” moving over them and verse 17 mentions the purposes of Yahweh (the LORD all capitals in some Bibles).  Verses 16 mentions in that day and may be talking about the timing of the events in the first part of the chapter but the phrase, “in that day”, seems to change meaning or have a double meaning as it is used in the rest of the chapter.  Remember back in chapter 13 (Isaiah 13:6) the message about Babylon started out by talking about the “Day of the LORD” and how that is a reference to things that are described in the book of Revelation in the New Testament.  We also talked about how there were little “days of the LORD” through out history where God deals with the disobedience and disrespect of different nations.  Sometimes a predictions will be fulfilled on a “little day of the LORD” but also God will be showing us what will happen on the “day of the LORD”.  It seems like there is some of that going on here with respect to Egypt, and near the end of the chapter Assyria is back in the picture.  The message moves from trouble in Egypt to the Egyptians and the Assyrians both turning to the God of Judah.  That’s amazing and really hasn’t happened in history yet.  Look at Isaiah 19:25, Egypt my people, Assyria the work of my hands (meaning they are his too), and Israel my inheritance (meaning the people who will inherit from God), and they will be friends (v. 24).  That is awesome and amazing especially when you think that Assyria (modern day Iraq and Iran) and Egypt are both Muslim nations and the amount of hatred in that part of the world for the Israelites.  God really is the solution to the world’s problems, and it is only when the world submits to him.  We will all coexist some day but it won’t be on our terms it will be in honor and worship of Yahweh (see v. 21).  God will make himself know it says and that is really a big part of the “Day of the LORD” described in the book of Revelation, the trouble that comes always seems to have the point of getting people to return to God (Revelation 9:20-21; 169-11).

The next part of the message is pretty shocking.  Isaiah walks around naked for three years.  Obviously Judah needed a pretty shocking message from God.  What was going on was continued invasions by Assyria and continued rebellion by the different kings on the area.  In this case the Philistine town, Ashdod, was invaded by the Assyrian king, Sargon, this happened in 711 BC.  A few years earlier Sargon had replaced a rebellious king in Ashdod with one who would follow him.  The people threw that king out and replaced him with an anti-Assyrians one.  When Sargon returned to put down the rebellion a second time the new king fled to Egypt.  At the time Egypt was in the midst of internal conflict between several kings including the powerful Ethiopian king, Shabaka (Ethiopia is Cush in the Bible.  Remember the both Ethiopia and Philistia in earlier messages (Isaiah 14, 18)).  Egypt handed the refugee king over to Sargon.  In spite of their cooperation eventually Egypt and Cush would be taken over by Assyria and their captives would be humiliated by being lead away naked to Assyria.  Egypt was often turned to in times of invasion, the were a larger and somewhat powerful ally but they didn’t follow through very well.  In this case they let Ashdod down and the message was a warning to Hezekiah not to make an alliance with Egypt.  Running thought this whole section is the power and faithfulness of God.  God has the power to humble any nation he wants to and God alone deserves the worship of all of the nations.  Israel is God’s people and he will take care of them, not only that he will make their enemies their brothers, how is that for power and faithfulness.  We too are God’s people and he is the same God or purity and power in our lives as he was in those lives, in fact, remember that part of the message Isaiah gave is still in the future.  God is still working all of this out in history and we an be a part of it by turning to Jesus and worshiping Yahweh now (See John 8:58).  If we don’t we can expect the same kind of consequences in our lives that God has brought into the lives of people every where down through history.  Lord thank you for even bothering to make a new relationship with you available.  Thank you for being loving as well as pure and holy.  Help me consistently make the right choices, ones that please and honor you.  Let me not be a burden to you and to your prophets today.  Make your will clear to me and help me have the courage to follow your way.