Isaiah 21:1-10 The burden of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it comes from the desert, from a terrible land.… This enigmatical name for Babylon was no doubt suggested by the actual character of the country in which the city stood. It was an endless breadth or succession of undulations "like the sea," without any cultivation or even any tree: low, level, and full of great marshes; and which used to be overflowed by the Euphrates, till the whole plain became a sea, before the river was banked in by Semiramis, as Herodotus says. But the prophet may allude also to the social and spiritual desert which Babylon was to the nations over which its authority extended, and especially to the captive Israelite; and perhaps, at the same time, to the multitude of the armies which it poured forth like the waters of the sea. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.) Parallel Verses KJV: The burden of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it cometh from the desert, from a terrible land. |
    |