Isaiah 14:4

That thou shall take up this proverb against the king of Babylon,.... Or "concerning" him, his fall, and the fall of the Babylonish monarchy with him; if we understand this of any particular king of

That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!

Shalt take up into thy mouth, as it is fully expressed, . How hath the oppressor ceased! this is spoken by way of astonishment and triumph. Who would have thought this possible? The golden city, as they used to call themselves; which therefore he expresseth here in a word of their own language.

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!Ver. 4. That thou shalt take up this proverb.] Or, Taunting speech; this exultatory and insultatory song, which upon the fall of Babylon shall be in every man’ s mouth. How hath the oppressor ceased!] q.d., This is wonderful and beyond all expectation. The golden city.] Or, Gold thirsty city. Carmen, ελεγκτικονκαιονειδιστικον. Aurata vel auri avida.

(4) That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon.—The prophet appears once more (comp. Isaiah 5:1; Isaiah 12:1) in his character as a psalmist. In the mashal or taunting-song that follows, the generic meaning of “proverb” is specialised (as in Micah 2:4; Habakkuk 2:6; Deuteronomy 28:37, 1 Kings 9:7, and elsewhere) for a derisive utterance in poetic or figurative speech. The LXX., singularly enough, renders the word here by “lamentation.” How hath the oppressor ceased.—If we take “the golden city” of the English version as the correct rendering, it finds a parallel in the epithet of “gold abounding” applied to Babylon by Æschylus (Pers. 53). The word so translated is, however, not found elsewhere, and the general consensus of recent critics, following in the wake of the Targum and the LXX., is in favour of the rendering, the task-master, or the place of torture. The Vulgate, how has the tribute ceased, expresses substantially the same thought. The marginal reading, exactress of gold, seems like an attempt to combine two different etymologies.

Verse 4. This proverb - "This parable"] משל mashal, I take this to be the general name for poetic style among the Hebrews, including every sort of it, as ranging under one or other, or all of the characters, of sententious, figurative, and sublime; which are all contained in the original notion, or in the use and application of the word mashal. Parables or proverbs, such as those of Solomon, are always expressed in short pointed sentences; frequently figurative, being formed on some comparison; generally forcible and authoritative, both in the matter and the form. And such in general is the style of the Hebrew poetry. The verb mashal signifies to rule; to exercise authority; to make equal; to compare one thing with another; to utter parables, or acute, weighty, and powerful speeches, in the form and manner of parables, though not properly such. Thus Balaam's first prophecy, (Numbers 23:7-10,) is called his mashal; though it has hardly any thing figurative in it: but it is beautifully sententious, and, from the very form and manner of it, has great spirit, force, and energy. Thus Job's last speeches, in answer to his three friends, chap. 27-31, are called mashals; from no one particular character, which discriminates them from the rest of the poem, but from the sublime, the figurative, the sententious manner which equally prevails through the whole poem, and makes it one of the first and most eminent examples extant of the truly great and beautiful in poetic style. See Clarke on Proverbs 1:1. The Septuagint in this place render the word by θρηνος, a lamentation. They plainly consider the speech here introduced as a piece of poetry, and of that species of poetry which we call the elegiac; either from the subject, it being a poem on the fall and death of the king of Babylon, or from the form of the composition, which is of the longer sort of Hebrew verse, in which the Lamentations of Jeremiah, called by the Septuagint Θρηνοι, are written. The golden city ceased] מדהבה madhebah, which is here translated golden city, is a Chaldee word. Probably it means that golden coin or ingot which was given to the Babylonians by way of tribute. So the word is understood by the Vulgate, where it is rendered tributum; and by Montanus, who translates it aurea pensio, the golden pension. Kimchi seems to have understood the word in the same sense. De Rossi translates it auri dives, rich in gold, or auri exactrix, the exactor of gold; the same as the exactor of tribute.

4b—21. The song of triumph over the king of Babylon is one of the finest specimens of Hebrew poetry which the Old Testament contains. A division into five strophes, each containing seven long lines, is distinctly recognisable, and the occasional deviations from strict symmetry of form are probably due to defects in the text.

That thou shalt take up - Thou shalt utter, declare, or commence. The word ‘take up,’ is used in the sense of utter, speak, or declare, in Exodus 20:7; Exodus 23:1; Psalms 15:2. This proverb - (המשׁל hamâshâl).

3, 4. The state of deliverance and rest expressed in the third verse is intensified by the contrast of exchanged positions between recovered Israel and the fallen oppressor, who poetically represents