World English Bible
- The burden of the wilderness of the sea. As whirlwinds in the South sweep through, it comes from the wilderness, from an awesome land.
- 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.
- 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.
- My heart flutters. Horror has frightened me. The twilight that I desired has been turned into trembling for me.
- They prepare the table. They set the watch. They eat. They drink. Rise up, you princes, oil the shield!
- For the Lord said to me, “Go, set a watchman. Let him declare what he sees.
- When he sees a troop, horsemen in pairs, a troop of donkeys, a troop of camels, he shall listen diligently with great attentiveness.”
- He cried like a lion: “Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and every night I stay at my post.
- 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.
- 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.
- The burden of Dumah. One calls to me out of Seir, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?”
- The watchman said, “The morning comes, and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire. Come back again.”
- The burden on Arabia. You will lodge in the thickets in Arabia, you caravans of Dedanites.
- They brought water to him who was thirsty. The inhabitants of the land of Tema met the fugitives with their bread.
- For they fled away from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the heat of battle.
- 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,
- 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.”
Isaiah 21 (World English Bible)
Babylon eats; Tema feeds.
Isaiah places two meals in this chapter. At the first, a table is prepared while a watchman scans the horizon. People eat and drink, but the alarm is already near: “Rise up, you princes, oil the shield!” At the second, people in the Arabian desert bring bread and water to travelers fleeing war. One table tries to carry on as though danger can be kept outside. The other makes room for those danger has driven out.
The first scene belongs to Isaiah’s vision of Babylon’s fall. The strange title, “the wilderness of the sea,” may call to mind the marshes and waterways of southern Mesopotamia. Babylon seemed protected by its walls, its wealth, and its gods. Yet the watchman announces that Babylon has fallen and its carved gods lie broken. In 539 BC, Babylon did fall to forces led by Persia; Isaiah’s vision reaches beyond any single night’s events. It asks a question that every age must face: What can we trust when the powers that promise safety cannot save themselves?
Isaiah does not deliver this news with cold satisfaction. The vision grips him like labor pains. He can scarcely hear or see. A prophet may tell the truth about judgment and still grieve for those caught in it. If our certainty about evil has made us unable to mourn, we may be listening more to our anger than to God.
Then a voice calls from Seir, the land of Edom: “Watchman, what of the night?” The question comes twice, as fearful questions often do. Isaiah answers, “The morning comes, and also the night.” He will not promise an easy dawn. Strikingly, a few verses later God gives Kedar a precise measure—within a year its glory will fail. God can count the days; the watchman simply has not been given every answer. Faithfulness sometimes means saying what we have heard and refusing to invent what we have not.
Meanwhile, Tema’s people do not wait for the whole future to become clear. They carry water to the thirsty. In a dry land, that is no small kindness. They cannot stop the armies, but they can keep someone alive today.
Perhaps this is Isaiah’s searching question for us: Which table are we preparing? We cannot make the night end. We can keep watch without pretending to know its hour, and we can share our bread while others pass through it. Christ, who will one day bring a morning without night, meets us now among the hungry and the displaced.
For further reading: Psalm 130:5–6; Matthew 25:35; Revelation 18:2; 22:5. A fitting hymn is “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night.”
Prayer: Lord, make us truthful watchmen and generous neighbors. Keep us from false comfort and from joy in another’s ruin. Until your full morning comes, teach us to carry water into the night. Amen.