1. set them down on their land. This formulation looks distinctly like the perspective of a prophet in the Babylonian exile.

sojourner. That is, the resident alien, someone from a different ethnic stock who lives in the community of Israelites. This notion of non-Israelites joining the community of God’s people is a recurrent theme in the late chapters of Isaiah.

2. own them on the LORD’s lands as male slaves and slavegirls. The idea that in the return to Zion the former captors of the Israelites will become their menial servants is still another emphasis of Second Isaiah.

4. you shall take up this theme concerning the king of Babylon. It is by no means clear that this prose passage concluded here is by the same hand as the poem that now follows. In any event, it is quite possible that the poem exulting over the fall of the king of Babylon was actually composed at the moment when the Persians defeated the Babylonians and put an end to their empire. But some scholars think the introductory attachment of the poem to the king of Babylon is merely editorial and that the monarch could be Sargon, who was not buried in a tomb, or Sennacharib, who was assassinated.

How is. The poem begins with the word eikhah, which usually signals the beginning of an elegy, but here instead it introduces an exultant poem celebrating the death of the tyrant.

5. scepter / . . . rod. The Hebrew terms can mean scepter, staff, rod, or even club, and this is a king who wielded his scepter like a club.

7. All the earth. The celebration of the tyrant’s death is universal. This is the first of three senses in which the noun ʾerets will be used in the poem.

8. the cedars of Lebanon / . . . you now laid low. As elsewhere, the cedars of Lebanon are proverbial for their loftiness. These lines begin a thematic swinging between high and low that underlies the structure of the poem. The lofty trees are both literal and figurative. The tyrant cut down forests for his building projects and his siege-works, and, at the same time, the cedars and cypresses are metaphors for the great ones of the earth hacked down by the Babylonian king.

9. It rouses the shades. For the most part, Sheol in the Bible is imagined as a vast and deep pit that swallows those who have died, who thus know nothing but darkness and silence after their deaths. Here, however, the poet imagines an assembly of spirits of the dead, greeting the king, an idea loosely analogous to the representation of Hades in the sixth book of the Odyssey. It is hard to know if this whole picture reflects popular belief or is rather a useful—and vivid—poetic fiction.

all the chiefs of the earth. They may have been chiefs when they were on earth, but ʾerets also means “underworld,” and so what they may be is chiefs of the kingdom of death.

11. your covers are maggots. The Hebrew shows a brilliant pun: toleʿah, “maggots,” also means “crimson cloth.” The monarch who was used to sleeping under sumptuous dyed fabric now has a blanket of worms.

12. How are you fallen from the heavens. This verset encapsulates the up-down spatial thematics of the poem.

Bright One, Son of Dawn. The appellation, of course, is heavily sarcastic; this is a sun that has set forever. The cosmic sweep of the language generated the idea among Christian interpreters that this figure is Lucifer (which means “light-bearer,” in accordance with the Hebrew), that is, Satan.

cut down. In the Hebrew, this is a term used for chopping down trees.

13. To the heavens will I ascend. This arrogant presumption links the tyrant with the Tower of Babel and many other biblical texts.

the mount of divine council, / in the far reaches of Zaphon. In Canaanite mythology, Mount Zaphon was the place of the council of the gods, like Olympus in Greek tradition.

15. brought down, / to the far reaches of the Pit. Instead of up, he goes down; instead of Mount Zaphon, the Pit.

18. in their homes. Many understand “homes” as “tombs” (compare the reference in Qohelet 12:5 to death as man’s “everlasting home”) with an eye to a neat contrast between honorable burial and being flung from the grave. But the Hebrew word does almost always mean “house” or “home,” and the contrast may be between kings sleeping peacefully in their homes and the tyrant not even sleeping in the grave. But one cannot exclude the possibility that “homes” could be a wry epithet for the grave.

19. to the floor of the Pit. The Masoretic Text has ʾavney bor, “the stones of the Pit,” which is a little puzzling. This translation reads with Blenkinsopp, ʾadney bor. The emended noun means “sockets,” and in Job 38:6 it is used for the foundations of earth.

20. for your land you laid waste. This is the third sense of ʾerets displayed in the poem.

21. Ready slaughter for his sons / for their father’s crime. Here sons are punished for the sins of fathers. In political terms, what is envisaged is a massacre of the whole royal line, a not infrequent practice when a king is overthrown.

let the world be filled with towns. Once the destructive tyrant is gone, the world can be rebuilt.

22. And I will rise against them. This clearly begins a new prophecy, connected with the previous one by the theme of the destruction of Babylon.

kith and kin. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “offspring and grandchildren.”

23. herons. The identification of the qipod is uncertain. Elsewhere it appears to mean “hedgehog” (as in modern Hebrew), but hedgehogs do not live in marshlands.

24. The LORD of Armies has vowed. This is the beginning of a third distinct prophecy in this chapter, directed to the destruction of Assyria and so perhaps composed by Isaiah son of Amoz.

25. To break Assyria in My land, / and on My mountains. The Assyrian empire will be broken in the Judahite territory it has attacked and sought to conquer.

26. the plan framed for all the earth. It is noteworthy that the poem imagines the opposition between the people of Israel and the Assyrians in a global perspective, a design affecting all the earth and all nations.

28. In the year of the death of King Ahaz. This brief prose introduction marks the fourth prophecy included in this chapter, this one directed against the Philistines.

29. the rod of him who struck you is broken. Several Assyrian kings carried out campaigns against the Philistines along the Mediterranean coast, and there is scholarly debate about which one is referred to here.

from the stock of a snake an asp shall come out. The probable reference is Assyria: though seemingly defeated, it will produce venomous successors. This understanding may be supported by the mention in verse 31 that destruction will come down from the north, the point of departure for the Assyrian forces.

fiery flying serpent. Here saraf appears to carry its full serpentine mythological weight. See the comment on verse 2 in chapter 6 regarding seraphim.

30. in My pastures. The received text shows bekhorey, “firstborn of” (the poor), which makes little sense. Some Hebrew manuscripts have bekharay, “in My pastures,” which works perfectly with the verb “graze.”

31. smoke. The clear implication is the cloud of smoke (and probably dust) over the heads of the vast invading army. It is best to understand this as an evocative ellipsis: from the distance, as the enemy approaches, only the column of smoke is visible.

and none is alone in his ranks. The Hebrew here is somewhat obscure, and there are some odd textual variants. The word translated as “ranks,” moʿadim, usually means “appointed time.” Perhaps here it might indicate “appointed forces.”

32. the LORD again has founded Zion. The Hebrew merely says “has founded,” but the implication is a new founding of Zion after the exile, just as the verb “build” is sometimes used to mean “rebuild.” These final words clearly place this text among the prophecies of national restoration composed in the Babylonian exile.