9 Behold, the day of Yahweh comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its sinners out of it.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Behold the day of the Lord will come cruel. He repeats what he had slightly noticed a little before, that though the inhabitants of Babylon are now at ease, and rely on their wealth, the day of the Lord is at hand, to terrify those who are at ease. But a question might here be raised, Why is the day of the Lord called cruel, since nothing is more desirable than to have God present with us; for his presence alone makes us truly happy? I answer, we ought always to consider who they are that are addressed by the Prophet; for it is customary with the prophets to give various descriptions of God corresponding to the diversity of the hearers. In like manner, David also declares that God is merciful to the merciful, and cruel and severe to the ungodly. (Psalm 18:25,26.) What could wicked men imagine to be in God but the utmost severity? And therefore the slightest mention of God fills them with terror. The godly, on the other hand, whenever the name of God is mentioned, derive the greatest delight and joy from hearing it; so that nothing can be more highly gratifying. Thus, when the prophets address the godly, as soon as they have mentioned God, they speak of joy and gladness, because the godly will feel that he is gracious and merciful to them; but when they address the ungodly, they hold out the judgment of God, and speak of grief and mourning. As the godly are cheered by the presence of God, because by faith they behold his goodness; so the ungodly are terrified, because the testimony of their conscience reproves and convinces them that he comes as a severe Judge. Since even hypocrites pretend that they eagerly long for the day of the Lord, and boast that he will assist them, the prophets tear off from them this disguise, and show that to them the day of the Lord will be dreadful and alarming. (Amos 5:18,20.) Isaiah applies the usual description to this prophecy, in order to show more fully how much we ought to dread the wrath of God; for, being by nature slow, or rather stupid, we would not be powerfully affected if the Lord spoke in plain terms about his judgments. Since, therefore, an unadorned style would be too cold, he contrived new modes of expression, that by means of them he might shake off our sluggishness. When he says, and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it, he means by sinners not all men without distinction, but the ungodly and wicked men who inhabited Babylon.
The day of the Lord cometh - See Isaiah 13:6.
Cruel - (אכזרי 'akezārı̂y). This does not mean that "God" is cruel, but that the 'day of Yahweh' that was coming should be unsparing and destructive to them. It would be the exhibition of "justice," but not of "cruelty;" and the word stands opposed here to mercy, and means that God would not spare them. The effect would be that the inhabitants of Babylon would be destroyed.
Fierce anger - Hebrew, (חרון אף 'aph chărôn) 'A glow, or burning of anger.' The phrase denotes the most intense indignation (compare Numbers 25:4; Numbers 32:14; 1-Samuel 28:18).
To lay the land desolate - Chaldea, Isaiah 13:5.
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh,.... Or "is come" (e); said in Isaiah 13:6 to be at hand, but now it is represented in prophecy as already come:
cruel both with wrath and fierce anger; which, whether referred to "the Lord", or to "the day", the sense is the same; the day may be said to be cruel, and full of wrath and fury, because of the severity and fierceness of the Lord's anger, exercised upon the Babylonians in it; and he may be said to be so, not that he really is cruel, or exceeds the bounds of justice, but because he seemed to be so to the objects of his displeasure; as a judge may be thought to be cruel and severe by the malefactor, when he only pronounces and executes a righteous judgment on him; a heap of words are here made use of, to express the greatness and fierceness of divine wrath:
to lay the land desolate; the land of the Chaldeans:
and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it; this shows that what is before said most properly belongs to the Lord, to whom the destruction of Babylon, and the country belonging to it, must be ascribed; and indeed it was such as could not be brought about by human force; the moving cause of which was the sin of the inhabitants, some of whom were notorious sinners, for whose sakes it was destroyed by the Lord, and they in the midst of it, or out of it; see Psalm 104:35.
(e) "venit", Piscator; "veniens", Montanus.
cruel--not strictly, but unsparingly just; opposed to mercy. Also answering to the cruelty (in the strict sense) of Babylon towards others (Isaiah 14:17) now about to be visited on itself.
the land--"the earth" [HORSLEY]. The language of Isaiah 13:9-13 can only primarily and partially apply to Babylon; fully and exhaustively, the judgments to come, hereafter, on the whole earth. Compare Isaiah 13:10 with Matthew 24:29; Revelation 8:12. The sins of Babylon, arrogancy (Isaiah 13:11; Isaiah 14:11; Isaiah 47:7-8), cruelty, false worship (Jeremiah 50:38), persecution of the people of God (Isaiah 47:6), are peculiarly characteristic of the Antichristian world of the latter days (Daniel 11:32-37; Revelation 17:3, Revelation 17:6; Revelation 18:6-7, Revelation 18:9-14, Revelation 18:24).
The day of Jehovah's wrath is coming - a starless night - a nightlike, sunless day. "Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, a cruel one, and wrath and fierce anger, to turn the earth into a wilderness: and its sinners He destroys out of it. For the stars of heaven, and its Orions, will not let their light shine: the sun darkens itself at its rising, and the moon does not let its light shine." The day of Jehovah cometh as one cruelly severe ('aczâri, an adj. rel. from 'aczâr, chosh, kosh, to be dry, hard, unfelling), as purely an overflowing of inward excitement, and as burning anger; lâsūm is carried on by the finite verb, according to a well-known alteration of style (= ūlehashmı̄d). It is not indeed the general judgment which the prophet is depicting here, but a certain historical catastrophe falling upon the nations, which draws the whole world into sympathetic suffering. 'Eretz, therefore (inasmuch as the notions of land generally, and some particular land or portion of the earth, are blended together - a very elastic term, with vanishing boundaries), is not merely the land of Babylon here, as Knobel supposes, but the earth. Verse 10 shows in what way the day of Jehovah is a day of wrath. Even nature clothes itself in the colour of wrath, which is the very opposite to light. The heavenly lights above the earth go out; the moon does not shine; and the sun, which is about to rise, alters its mind. "The Orions" are Orion itself and other constellations like it, just as the morning stars in Job 38:7 are Hesperus and other similar stars. It is more probable that the term cesiil is used for Orion in the sense of "the fool" (= foolhardy),
(Note: When R. Samuel of Nehardea, the astronomer, says in his b. Berachoth 58b, "If it were not for the heat of the cesil, the world would perish from the cold of the Scorpion, and vice versa," - he means by the cesil Orion; and the true meaning of the passage is, that the constellations of Orion and the Scorpion, one of which appears in the hot season, and the other in the cold, preserve the temperature in equilibrium.)
according to the older translators (lxx ὁ ̓Ωρίων, Targum nephilehon from nephila', Syr. gaboro, Arab. gebbâr, the giant), than that it refers to Suhêl, i.e., Canopus (see the notes on Job 9:9; Job 38:31), although the Arabic suhêl does occur as a generic name for stars of surpassing splendour (see at Job 38:7). The comprehensive term employed is similar to the figure of speech met with in Arabic (called taglı̄b, i.e., the preponderance of the pars potior), in such expressions as "the two late evenings" for the evening and late evening, "the two Omars" for Omar and Abubekr, though the resemblance is still greater to the Latin Scipiones, i.e., men of Scipio's greatness. Even the Orions, i.e., those stars which are at other times the most conspicuous, withhold their light; for when God is angry, the principle of anger is set in motion even in the natural world, and primarily in the stars that were created "for signs (compare Genesis 1:14 with Jeremiah 10:2).
Behold - Divers words are heaped together, to signify the extremity of his anger.
*More commentary available at chapter level.