Isaiah 39:6

Behold, the days come,.... Or, "are coming (e)"; and which quickly came; after a few reigns more, even in Jehoiakim's time: that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in

Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD. The days come - 120 years afterward.

(6, 7) Behold, the days come . . .—The words, it may be noted, received a two-fold fulfilment, under widely different conditions. Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, at the time when Isaiah spoke unborn, was carried as a prisoner to Babylon by Esar-haddon, king of Assyria (2 Chronicles 33:11). The last lineal heir of the house of David, Jehoiachin, died there after long years of imprisonment (2 Kings 25:27). Daniel and his three companions were “of the king’s seed and of the princes,” and were, probably, themselves reduced to that state, placed under the care of “the master of the ennuchs” (Daniel 1:3). The actual treasures which Hezekiah showed were probably handed over to Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:15-16); but looking to the fact that that king records his capture of Babylon, after defeating Merodach-baladan, and established his son Esar-haddon there (Lenormant, Ancient History, i., p. 400), it is probable enough that the treasures may have been taken thither, and displayed, as if in irony, to the king and the counsellors, who had hoped to profit by them. Sennacherib indeed boasts that he had carried off not only the king’s treasures, and his musicians to Nineveh, but his daughters also (Records of the Past, vii. 63).

Verse 6. To Babylon] בבלה babelah, so two MSS., (one ancient;) rightly, without doubt as the other copy (2Kg 20:17) has it. This prediction was fulfilled about one hundred and fifty years after it was spoken: see Daniel 1:2; Daniel 1:3-7. What a proof of Divine omniscience!

6, 7. This is the only occasion on which a prophecy of the Babylonian Exile appears to be attributed to Isaiah. It is not easy to reconcile such a prediction with the particular circumstances in which it is reported to have been uttered. The announcement naturally left on Hezekiah’s mind the impression that his own days would be spent in peace, whereas in reality the most critical juncture of his reign still lay before him, and it is hardly credible that Isaiah should have disclosed to him the remote fate of his descendants, without warning him of the more immediate and personal consequences of his folly. This difficulty would be removed if we could hold that the prophecy was uttered after the deliverance from Sennacherib; but we have seen that this supposition is inadmissible on historical grounds. A more serious consideration is that Isaiah’s Messianic ideal leaves no room for a transference of the world-power from Assyria to Babylon, or the substitution of the latter for the former as the instrument of Israel’s chastisement. He uniformly regards the intervention of Jehovah in the Assyrian crisis as the supreme moment of human history and the turning point in the destinies of the kingdom of God, to be succeeded immediately by the glories of the Messianic age. The prediction, moreover, is without a parallel in the prophetic literature of Isaiah’s age (in Micah 4:10 the clause “and thou shalt go to Babylon” is inconsistent with the context, and in all probability a gloss). These objections are partly neutralised by the hypothesis that some nearer and more limited judgment is referred to, such as the imprisonment of Manasseh in Babylon (2 Chronicles 33:11) in the reign of Asshurbanipal. The terms of the prophecy fall short of a deportation of the people and a destruction of the city, only the fate of the treasures and the royal family being indicated. No great stress, however, can be laid on this limitation (comp. a somewhat similar case in Amos 7:17) and the suggestion fails to harmonise the prediction with Isaiah’s known anticipation of the course of events. It is possible that the prophet’s actual communication had reached the late writer of this narrative in a form coloured by subsequent events.

Behold, the days come - The captivity of the Jews in Babylon commenced about one hundred and twenty years after this prediction (compare Jeremiah 20:5).

5, 6. Hear the word of the Lord — The prophet’s soul was surcharged now with a coming of explicit, definite affliction upon his own people. The king’s imprudence was, for the first time, the occasion of such an utterance.