Isaiah 21

World English Bible 84 include this book

1 The burden of the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, it comes from the wilderness, from an awesome land.

2 A grievous vision is declared to me. The treacherous man deals treacherously, and the destroyer destroys. Go up, Elam; attack! I have stopped all of Media’s sighing.

3 Therefore my thighs are filled with anguish. Pains have seized me, like the pains of a woman in labor. I am in so much pain that I can’t hear. I am so dismayed that I can’t see.

4 My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.

5 They prepare the table. They set the watch. They eat. They drink. Rise up, you princes, oil the shield!

6 For the Lord said to me, “Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees.

7 When he sees a troop, horsemen in pairs, a troop of donkeys, a troop of camels, he shall listen diligently with great attentiveness.”

8 He cried like a lion: “Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and every night I stay at my post.

9 Behold, here comes a troop of men, horsemen in pairs.” He answered, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the engraved images of her gods are broken to the ground.

10 You are my threshing, and the grain of my floor!” That which I have heard from the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, I have declared to you.

11 The burden of Dumah. One calls to me out of Seir, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?”

12 The watchman said, “The morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire. Come back again.”

13 The burden on Arabia. You will lodge in the thickets in Arabia, you caravans of Dedanites.

14 They brought water to him who was thirsty. The inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with their bread.

15 For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the heat of battle.

16 For the Lord said to me, “Within a year, as a worker bound by contract would count it, all the glory of Kedar will fail,

17 and the residue of the number of the archers, the mighty men of the children of Kedar, will be few; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has spoken it.”

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2 places named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Jerusalem attested Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem across the Assyrian crisis.

Babylon disputed Chapters 40 onward address the exiles and are usually placed in Babylonia.

When this was written

Traditions differ. Each position is shown rather than one asserted as settled.

Traditional: 740 BC–681 BC Isaiah of Jerusalem
The whole book is ascribed to the 8th-century prophet, with later chapters read as predictive.
Critical: 740 BC–500 BC Isaiah and later hands
Chapters 40 onward presuppose the Babylonian exile and name Cyrus, which most critical scholars take as evidence of 6th-century authorship.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (740 BC–500 BC).

1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
750 BC–650 BC Homeric epics take written form Greece
The Iliad and Odyssey were fixed in writing after generations of oral transmission.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
722 BC Fall of Samaria Levant
The Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel and the deportation of much of its population.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.
600 BC–500 BC Daoism takes shape in China China
The teaching associated with Laozi, emphasising harmony with the natural order.

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