Isaiah 21:9 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 21:9
And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
chariot
רֶ֣כֶבRe.khev
H7393
a vehicle · noun, common masculine singular construct
men
אִ֔ישׁ'Ish
H376
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular absolute
couple
צֶ֖מֶדTze.med
H6776
hence · noun, common masculine singular construct
horsemen
פָּֽרָשִׁ֑יםpa.ra.Shim
H6571
a steed (as stretched out to a vehicle · noun, common masculine plural absolute
answered
וַיַּ֣עַןvai.Ya.'an
H6030
properly · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
said
וַיֹּ֗אמֶרvai.Yo.mer
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Babylon
בָּבֶ֔לba.Vel
H894
Babel (i.e. Babylon) · proper noun, a place name
fallen
נָפְלָ֤הna.fe.Lah
H5307
to fall · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
fallen
נָֽפְלָה֙na.fe.Lah
H5307
to fall · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person feminine singular
images
פְּסִילֵ֥יpe.si.Lei
H6456
an idol · noun, common masculine plural construct
gods
אֱלֹהֶ֖יהָ'e.lo.Hei.ha
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
broken
שִׁבַּ֥רshi.Bar
H7665
to burst (literally or figuratively) · verb, piel perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
ground
לָאָֽרֶץla.'A.retz
H776
the earth (at large · preposition with the article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Revelation 18:2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the h…
Jeremiah 51:8 Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed: howl for her; take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.
Revelation 14:8 And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of t…
Jeremiah 51:44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow to…
Isaiah 13:19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
Isaiah 14:4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!
Isaiah 46:1-2 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden t…
Jeremiah 50:2-3 Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Meroda…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 21:1-10
We had one burden of Babylon before (ch. 13); here we have another prediction of its fall. God saw fit thus to possess his people with the belief of this event by line upon line, because Babylon sometimes pretended to be a friend to them (as Isa 39:1), and God would hereby warn them not to trust to that friendship, and sometimes was really an enemy to them, and God would hereby warn them not to be afraid of that enmity. Babylon is marked for ruin; and all that believe God's prophets can, through that glass, see it tottering, see it tumbling, even when with an eye of sense they see it flourishing and sitting as a queen. Babylon is here called the desert or plain of the sea; for it was a flat…
chariot of men--chariots with men in them; or rather, the same body of riders, horsemen two abreast, as in Isa 21:7 [MAURER]. But HORSLEY, "The man drawn in a car with a pair of riders." The first half of this verse describes what the watchman sees; the second half, what the watchman says, in consequence of what he sees. In the interval between Isa 21:7 and Isa 21:9, the overthrow of Babylon by the horsemen, or man in the car, is accomplished. The overthrow needed to be announced to the prophet by the watchman, owing to the great extent of the city. HERODOTUS (1.131) says that one part of the city was captured some time before the other received the tidings of it.
answered--not to somethin…
And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men,.... Or "of a man" (x); a chariot with a man in it, Cyrus or Darius:
with a couple of horsemen; the army of the Medes and Persians, with their two leaders or generals, as before; only now seen nearer the city, just entering into it; for so the word may be rendered, "goeth", or "is gone in a chariot", &c.:
and he answered, and said; either the watchman, upon seeing the chariot and horsemen go into the city; or one of the horsemen that went in; so the Syriac and Arabic versions; or rather the prophet, and the Lord by him:
Babylon is fallen, is fallen: which is repeated to show the certainty of it. The same words are used of the fall of mystical Baby…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 9.) Behold, here comes a rider of a chariot with horsemen, and he answered and said: Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the carved images of its gods are shattered on the ground. Therefore, what did the lion call out? Behold, that man comes, the ascender of the chariot of the horsemen; no doubt, Cyrus is indicated. And he answered and said, the lion himself who had called out before: Babylon has fallen, fallen, and all the sculptures of its gods are shattered on the ground. For with the devastating ascender of the chariot, Babylon is destroyed forever, and the temple of Bel and all the idols are laid to the ground.
(Verse 9.) Behold, here comes a chariot rider, a man riding in a pair of horses, and he answered and said: Babylon has fallen, has fallen, and all the idols of its gods are shattered on the ground. LXX: And behold, here comes a chariot rider, and answering he said: Babylon has fallen, has fallen, and all its idols, and its manufactured things, are shattered on the ground. Behold, he says, he is coming, indicating that he has seen this, the Lord Savior coming seated on a chariot, and joining together two animals, a donkey and a camel. The Prophet responded and said: Babylon has fallen, the confusion of the whole world has fallen. And in my coming, in which I took on a human body, it will completely collapse at the end of the world. And all its sculptures have been crushed on the ground. For this reason, the seventy idols and artifacts have been interpreted, signifying the Scriptures of the heretics and the various errors of heresies, who are the fabricators of idols and worship what they have imagined in their own hearts.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Babel — (confusion), Bab’ylon (Greek form of Babel), is properly the capital city of the country which is called in Genesis Shinar, and in the later books Chaldea, or the land of the Chaldeans. The first…
Watches — The periods into which the time between sunset and sunrise was divided. They are so called because watchmen relieved each other at each of these periods. There are frequent references in Scripture to…
Babylon · Was called: Desert of the sea — Was called: Desert of the sea
Watchmen · In time of danger: Reported the approach of all strangers — In time of danger: Reported the approach of all strangers
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Babylon is fallen, is fallen. This shews plainly that it is not king Belshazzar's watchman who is introduced, for this speech would be unsuitable to such a character. The Prophet therefore makes known, by the command of God, what would happen. Now, this may refer either to God or to Darius, as well as to the watchman; and it makes little difference as to the meaning, for Darius, being God's servant in this matter, is not inappropriately represented to be the herald of that judgment. There would be greater probability in referring it to God himself; for Darius had no such thoughts when he overthrew the idols of the Babylonians. But the speech agrees better with the character of a guardian, as…
But when he is about to speak, his complaint is stifled in his mouth. "And, behold, there came a cavalcade of men, pairs of horsemen, and lifted up its voice, and said, Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the images of its gods He hath dashed to the ground!" It is now clear enough where the long procession went to when it disappeared. It entered Babylon, made itself master of the city, and established itself there. And now, after a long interval, there appears a smaller cavalcade, which has to carry the tidings of victory somewhere; and the spy hears them cry out in triumph, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon!" In Rev 18:1-2, the same words form the shout of triumph raised by the angel, the antitype…
Babylon is fallen, fallen: Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed the city of Babylon in 689 BC. The final fall of Babylon was in 539 BC. In Scripture, Babylon represents all the ungodly power structures of this world, including nations and kingdoms that do not submit to God and his word. The apostle John gave hope with his prophecy that all Babylons will fall (Rev 14:8; 18:2). • All the idols of Babylon lie broken: False gods could not save the Babylonians (see Isa 46:1-2).
Rashi on Isaiah 21:9
And behold this is coming When he prays concerning this, he will see sort of a chariot of men, etc.
Babylon has fallen, yea, it has fallen Jonathan renders: Has fallen and is also destined to fall. This denotes two downfalls in two consecutive years, first through Media and Persia, and in the second year, through Heaven, as it is stated (supra 13:19): “And Babylon, the beauty of the kingdoms, the glory of the pride of the Chaldees, shall be like God’s overturning of Sodom...” And so we find in Seder Olam (ch. 28): And in that year the news came concerning Darius, and after him, in the year, the news, “And Babylon, the beauty of the kingdoms...shall be like the overturning, etc.” (supra 13:1…
