Isaiah 13:10
For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light. The rising sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.
Sermons
Oracle Concerning BabylonE. Johnson Isaiah 13:1-22














Faint. A common experience enough this. Some people pride themselves on the speciality of their experiences, just as they consider their physical ailments to be altogether peculiar and unique. Faint! Who amongst us does not understand that? Why, we do not know. Care is like the atmosphere; its pressure is enormous, but the thing itself is invisible. "Light as air," some say; but many temperaments could say, "heavy as air," which depresses all the nerve-functions of the body. Faint! We like to know not only that it is common, but that greatly heroic spiritual natures have felt it! Read at your leisure Luther's letter where he says of the evil one, "He lies closer to me than my Catharine," and where in one part of his diary he is so desolate and disheartened that he suggests, if God wishes the Reformation to go on, he must come and take it in hand himself. Faint! If lousy men feel it, women feel it sometimes more - thinking about the children; having the worry of household management; finding it so difficult to preserve elevation of thought amid the cares of common life.

I. WE ARE FAINT IN OUR FAILURES TO REACH OUR OWN IDEAL OF THE DIVINE LIFE. Our ideals have been beautiful. They have charmed our meditation, inspired our purposes, I am not speaking of spiritual excitements or emotions, No, my friend! Rather quiet and meditative hours. When we verily and indeed feel that piety is more than safety, when we feel that we would not do without religion if we could, we are fulfilling all the noblest aspirations within us. And these have been noble. In gazing on the image of Christ we have desire to be conformed to that image. But our condition here, you say, is one in which we have to do with such mean things - it is such a battle to live at all! Mean things? No, my friend. Nothing is mean that Christ can shine through. We can dignify common life, or God would not have given us common life to dignify. Christian life is beautiful, but it is difficult. It is detail that casts down men and women too. When we read Stanley's last journey through the dark continent, we find a week's desolation is crowded into ten lines of print; but it must have been very wearisome sometimes, and now and then all seemed nearly over. Yet the motto was "Onward!" You may have an idea or two - but try and write a book. It is completeness that tries. You may have looked at the Christian life with aesthetic admiration. But now you are in it. God help you, as he will. Be diligent. Gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober. Hope to the end. The ideal shall be realized some day. Not destroyed. You will be without fault before the throne.

II. WE ARE FAINT IN RELATION TO THE MORAL STATE OF THE WORLD. Jesus wept over Jerusalem as he gazed on the city that was doomed, for its own denial and rejection of himself. We are not one whit nearer solving the mystery of moral evil. No one can give us the why of sin. Some of the Germans have tried hard at a philosophy of that, but have failed. It cannot be educational only, or we should never have the sense of guilt. But here it is, and we have it in ourselves. Even now sin exists, if it does not reign. And here it is around us everywhere. We have a mighty Savior, and we want men to love him, to trust him. But they are often so besotted, so blinded, so hardened, that they prefer their slavery. What wonder we are faint-hearted! You tell us that Christ is the same in heaven that he was on earth - the same in all sensitive care and love and desire. Yes. And I believe that the world's sin grieves him still - pains him always. "Ye crucify the Son of God afresh" is not to be frittered away as a mere metaphor! What did Christ say after his ascension to the persecuting Saul? "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Not My Church" merely. The Head felt with the members. Fainti spoke of great men just now. Did not Moses shatter the tables of the Law in sad and bitter disappointment? Did not Paul find fickleness in his converts? Did not the Judaizers hamper his work? Did not some of his companions desert him? Was not sin still mighty within him, as well as around him? But Christ, the Conqueror of sin and death, was his Lord. The Holy Ghost gave him inner might.

III. FAINT IN RELATION TO THE DISCIPLINE OF SORROW. We need it. But "no affliction for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous" Faint! You may have left one at home who used to come and drink of the brook by the way at church, who is frail and ill now. You remember some who have had a dire discipline of trial through kith and kin, who have cast the crown of honor into the dust. You would not think much of them if they had not been cast down. Superficial people who say, "Make an effort!" "Cheer up!" only worry the nerves; they-do not really ease trouble, because we cannot be "merry" with a heavy heart. You must lift up with a wise hope, a real trust, a child's confidence. "Show us the Father," then we can endure; then we can "rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him." But you say, "Faintness depresses us." Mind what you say, because you reveal character. It is just like saying, "Music must always be made for me; I won't be made sad; I won't enter an atmosphere of depression." Human hearts cannot always smile. Faint people must be in a world like this, but it will be only for a season; it will lead them to him who can raise up, who will lay beneath them his own everlasting arms, who will "not destroy," Never. "Chastened, but not destroyed" - tested, but not destroyed. At such times do not rest in "moods" or feelings, but look out of yourselves to Christ,

IV. WE ARE FAINT IS RELATION TO OUR INFLUENCE OVER OTHERS. We had hoped so much to send such bright rays over the dark sea from the lighthouse of our faith; to give the emerald beauty of a new spring to so many sterile places. We have not been such guides, such comforters, as we hoped to be. And the fault has been, not in lack of doing, but in want of being. To live has not been Christ. We have not been watchful enough either, against inimical forces in our fields. The Red Indians come when we are asleep or on a journey, and stamp out our corn. We are "faint too because arrest will so soon be laid on our powers. But is it not right to rejoice that we have been able to do some good? Certainly. We have been unprofitable servants at the best, but it would be not only unreal, but wrong, to forget what God may have accomplished through us. Paul said, Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ." We are not as the men of this world, cast down into the loss of joy and hope - and in despair. No, it is only for a season. We are Christ's. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." - W.M.S.

The burden of Babylon.
Whenever we find the word "burden" in this association it means oracle, a speech of doom; it is never connected with blessing, hope, enlarged opportunity, or expanded liberty; it always means that judgment is swiftly coming, and may at any moment burst upon the thing that is doomed.

(J. Parker, D. D.)

"Which Isaiah did see." How did he see it? The word "see" needs to be defined every day. Blind men may see. We do not see with the eyes only, else truly we should see very little; the whole body becomes an eye when it is fun of light, and they who are holiest see farthest. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Men see morally, intellectually, sympathetically, as well as visually. How could Isaiah see this burden of Babylon when it did not fall upon the proud city for two centuries! Is there, then, no annihilation of time and space? Are we the mean prisoners we thought ourselves to be is it so, that we are caged round by invisible iron, and sealed down by some oppressive power, or blinded by some arbitrary or cruel shadow? We might see more if we looked in the right direction; we might be masters of the centuries if we lived with God. Isaiah is never weary of saying that he "saw" what he affirms. He does not describe it as having been seen by some other man; having written his record he signs it, or having begun to deliver his prophecy he writes it as a man writes his will; he begins by asserting that it is his testament, his own very witness, for he was there, saw it, and he accepts the responsibility of every declaration.

(J. Parker, D. D.)

In the New Testament, Babylon, more than any other city, stood for the personification of the forces of the world against God. In the history of Israel Babylon was the scourge of God to them. They were as grain under the teeth of the threshing machine. In the Captivity the Jews felt the weight of Babylon's cruelty, so that in the prophetic literature of the Exile, Babylon became the type of oppression and of the insolence of material force. Thought is carried back to primitive times in the Book of Genesis, in which Babylon is pictured in the vain and arrogant attempt to rival God: "Go to, let us build us a city, and tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." So deeply had the experience of Babylon's cruelty entered into the heart of Israel that even in the New Testament, St. John, in the Book of Revelation, uses the word "Babylon" to describe the material power of Rome. He could not get a better word than just the old word "Babylon" to represent the overwhelming force of the great Roman Empire, with its legions of soldiers, with its policy which made the whole world a network of nerves running back to their sensitive centre in the haughty city on the Tiber. St. John saw past the glitter and the conquest, and recognised in pagan Rome the mighty Babylon which lifts her impious head against God. To him she was the "scarlet woman"; he heard, her say in the pride of her heart, as the prophet had heard Babylon say, "I sit a queen and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Thus the very name "Babylon" came to take on the religious signification of the spirit of the world; it stood for the dead weight of the material which resists the spirit.

(Hugh Black, M. A.)

Here the prophet pronounces doom upon the bloated empire which seemed to stand so secure, and notes the evidence of weakness in spite of apparent prosperity and careless trust in material resources. Disregard of human rights, lusts, and selfishness and pride of life, and the impious atheism which disregarded all this he declared would all exact their inevitable price. Cruelty and oppression would react upon the tyrant after their usual historic fashion. The huge accumulations on which they rested would only attract the foe, would weaken her hands in her hour of trial, and make her, in spite of her wealth, an easy prey to the spoiler. To Babylon would come a time when she would have more money than men. It is a picture of absolute ruin which the prophet gives, when the great city would be depopulated (ver. 12).

(Hugh Black, M. A.)

has not left the world, and every great civilisation (for it is not confined to one) is menaced in the same way by the temptation of forgetfulness of God, cruelty of sheer force, insolence of pride, and the empty trust of wealth. Our foes are the old foes with a new face on them.

(Hugh Black, M. A.)

People
Amoz, Babylonians, Isaiah, Ophir
Places
Babylon, Gomorrah, Ophir, Sodom
Topics
Armies, Bright, Cause, Causeth, Constellations, Dark, Darkened, Flash, Forth, Heaven, Heavens, Journey, Moon, Rises, Rising, Shed, Shine, Sky, Stars, Thereof
Outline
1. God musters the armies of his wrath
6. He threatens to destroy Babylon by the Medes
19. The desolation of Babylon

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 13:10

     4212   astronomy
     4251   moon

Isaiah 13:1-22

     5305   empires

Isaiah 13:6-12

     9140   last days

Isaiah 13:9-10

     4284   sun

Isaiah 13:9-11

     4921   day
     9220   day of the LORD

Isaiah 13:9-13

     1025   God, anger of

Isaiah 13:10-11

     4918   dawn

Library
The Blind Man's Guide
'I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.'--ISAIAH xiii. 16. The grand stormy verses before these words, with all their dread array of natural convulsions, have one object--the tender guidance promised in the text. So we have the combination of terror and love, the blending in the divine government of terrible
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Scriptures Showing the Sin and Danger of Joining with Wicked and Ungodly Men.
Scriptures Showing The Sin And Danger Of Joining With Wicked And Ungodly Men. When the Lord is punishing such a people against whom he hath a controversy, and a notable controversy, every one that is found shall be thrust through: and every one joined with them shall fall, Isa. xiii. 15. They partake in their judgment, not only because in a common calamity all shares, (as in Ezek. xxi. 3.) but chiefly because joined with and partakers with these whom God is pursuing; even as the strangers that join
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

A Clearing-Up Storm in the Realm
(Revelation, Chapters vi.-viii.) "God Almighty! King of nations! earth Thy footstool, heaven Thy throne! Thine the greatness, power, and glory, Thine the kingdom, Lord, alone! Life and death are in Thy keeping, and Thy will ordaineth all: From the armies of Thy heavens to an unseen insect's fall. "Reigning, guiding, all-commanding, ruling myriad worlds of light; Now exalting, now abasing, none can stay Thy hand of might! Working all things by Thy power, by the counsel of Thy will. Thou art God!
by S. D. Gordon—Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

"If So be that the Spirit of God Dwell in You. Now if any Man have not the Spirit of Christ, He is None of His. "
Rom. viii. 9.--"If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." "But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth?" 2 Chron. vi. 18. It was the wonder of one of the wisest of men, and indeed, considering his infinite highness above the height of heavens, his immense and incomprehensible greatness, that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, and then the baseness, emptiness, and worthlessness of man, it may be a wonder to the
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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