Isaiah 21:5

In the vision I saw that the leaders of Babylonia were preparing a great feast. They had spread rugs for people to sit on; everyone was eating and drinking. But they should get up and prepare their shields, because they are about to be attacked!

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield.

In Context

4I cannot think straight/correctly, and I tremble. I was eager for it to be nighttime, but now it is night, and I am horrified.

6Then Yahweh said to me, “Put a watchman on the wall of Jerusalem, and tell him to shout/proclaim what he sees.

Read all of Isaiah 21

Cross References

Isaiah 13:2Lift up a flag on the bare top of a hill, to signal that an army should come to attack Babylon. Shout to them and wave your hand to signal to them that they should march through the city gates into the palaces of the proud rulers of Babylon!

Isaiah 22:13But instead of doing that, you were happy and celebrating; you slaughtered cattle and sheep, in order to cook their meat and eat it and drink wine. You said, “Let’s eat and drink all that we want to, because it is possible that we will die tomorrow!”

Jeremiah 51:11You enemy soldiers, sharpen your arrows! Lift up your shields, because Yahweh has incited your kings of Media and Persia to march with their armies to Babylon and to destroy it. That is how Yahweh will get revenge on those foreigners who entered his temple in Jerusalem and defiled it.

Jeremiah 51:39But while they are extremely hungry, I will prepare a different kind of feast for them. It is as though I will cause them to drink wine until they are very drunk, with the result that they will fall asleep. But they will never wake up from that sleep!

Daniel 5:1Several years later, Belshazzar became the king of Babylon. One day he invited 1,000 of his officers to a big feast, and he drank a lot of wine with them.

Matthew Henry on Isaiah 21:2-11

The Doom of Babylon. ( b. c. 714.) 1 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. 2 A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease. 3 Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth: I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was… Read the whole commentary →

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