Behold, the day of Yahweh comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its sinners out of it.
Parallel Translations
-
Behold, the day of Yahweh comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy its sinners out of it.
-
Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
-
Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel, and full of wrath and fierce anger; to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it,
Cross-references (14)
Passages linked to Isaiah 13:9 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Nahum 1:6 Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the fierceness of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken apart by him.
- Malachi 4:1 “For, behold, the day comes, it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all who work wickedness, will be stubble; and the day that comes will burn them up,” says Yahweh of Armies, “that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
- Isaiah 13:15-18 Everyone who is found will be thrust through. Everyone who is captured will fall by the sword. Their infants also will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be ransacked, and their wives raped. Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who will not value silver, and as for gold, they will not delight in it. Their bows will dash the young men in pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb. Their eyes will not spare children.
- Isaiah 13:6 Wail, for Yahweh’s day is at hand! It will come as destruction from the Almighty.
- Psalms 104:35 Let sinners be consumed out of the earth. Let the wicked be no more. Bless Yahweh, my soul. Praise Yah!
- Isaiah 47:10-15 For you have trusted in your wickedness. You have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge has perverted you. You have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one else besides me.’ Therefore disaster will come on you. You won’t know when it dawns. Mischief will fall on you. You won’t be able to put it away. Desolation will come on you suddenly, which you don’t understand. “Stand now with your enchantments and with the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth, as if you might profit, as if you might prevail. You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels. Now let the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators, stand up and save you from the things that will happen to you. Behold, they are like stubble. The fire will burn them. They won’t deliver themselves from the power of the flame. It won’t be a coal to warm at or a fire to sit by. The things that you labored in will be like this: those who have trafficked with you from your youth will each wander in his own way. There will be no one to save you.
- Jeremiah 6:22-23 Yahweh says, “Behold, a people comes from the north country. A great nation will be stirred up from the uttermost parts of the earth. They take hold of bow and spear. They are cruel, and have no mercy. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride on horses, everyone set in array, as a man to the battle, against you, daughter of Zion.”
- Jeremiah 50:40-42 As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and its neighbor cities,” says Yahweh, “so no man will dwell there, neither will any son of man live therein. “Behold, a people comes from the north; and a great nation and many kings will be stirred up from the uttermost parts of the earth. They take up bow and spear. They are cruel, and have no mercy. Their voice roars like the sea. They ride on horses, everyone set in array, as a man to the battle, against you, daughter of Babylon.
- Jeremiah 51:35-58 May the violence done to me and to my flesh be on Babylon!” the inhabitant of Zion will say; and, “May my blood be on the inhabitants of Chaldea!” will Jerusalem say. Therefore Yahweh says: “Behold, I will plead your cause, and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea, and make her fountain dry. Babylon will become heaps, a dwelling place for jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant. They will roar together like young lions. They will growl as lions’ cubs. When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh. “I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with male goats. “How Sheshach is taken! How the praise of the whole earth seized! How Babylon has become a desolation among the nations! The sea has come up on Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of its waves. Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it. I will execute judgment on Bel in Babylon, and I will bring out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up. The nations will not flow any more to him. Yes, the wall of Babylon will fall. “My people, go away from the middle of her, and each of you save yourselves from Yahweh’s fierce anger. Don’t let your heart faint. Don’t fear for the news that will be heard in the land. For news will come one year, and after that in another year news will come, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler. Therefore behold, the days come that I will execute judgment on the engraved images of Babylon; and her whole land will be confounded. All her slain will fall in the middle of her. Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, will sing for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers will come to her from the north,” says Yahweh. “As Babylon has caused the slain of Israel to fall, so the slain of all the land will fall at Babylon. You who have escaped the sword, go! Don’t stand still! Remember Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.” “We are confounded, because we have heard reproach. Confusion has covered our faces, for strangers have come into the sanctuaries of Yahweh’s house.” “Therefore behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will execute judgment on her engraved images; and through all her land the wounded will groan. Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet destroyers will come to her from me,” says Yahweh. “The sound of a cry comes from Babylon, and of great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans! For Yahweh lays Babylon waste, and destroys out of her the great voice! Their waves roar like many waters. The noise of their voice is uttered. For the destroyer has come on her, even on Babylon. Her mighty men are taken. Their bows are broken in pieces, for Yahweh is a God of retribution. He will surely repay. I will make her princes, her wise men, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men drunk. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies. Yahweh of Armies says: “The wide walls of Babylon will be utterly overthrown. Her high gates will be burned with fire. The peoples will labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they will be weary.”
- Nahum 1:2 Yahweh is a jealous God and avenges. Yahweh avenges and is full of wrath. Yahweh takes vengeance on his adversaries, and he maintains wrath against his enemies.
- Revelation 17:16-17 The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, will make her desolate, will strip her naked, will eat her flesh, and will burn her utterly with fire. For God has put in their hearts to do what he has in mind, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be accomplished.
- Proverbs 2:22 But the wicked will be cut off from the land. The treacherous will be rooted out of it.
- Revelation 18:8 Therefore in one day her plagues will come: death, mourning, and famine; and she will be utterly burned with fire; for the Lord God who has judged her is strong.
- Revelation 19:17-21 I saw an angel standing in the sun. He cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, “Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, small and great.” I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse, and against his army. The beast was taken, and with him the false prophet who worked the signs in his sight, with which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword of him who sat on the horse, the sword which came out of his mouth. All the birds were filled with their flesh.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 13:9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh,…
Isa 13:9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
Ver. 9. Behold the day of the Lord cometh cruel.] So it shall seem to the enemies, because "an evil, an only evil, behold, is come," {Eze 7:5} without mixture of mercy.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Cruel both with wrath and fierce anger; divers words…
Cruel both with wrath and fierce anger; divers words are heaped together, to signify the extremity of his anger.
The sinners thereof; the inhabitants of that city, who were guilty of so much idolatry and cruelty, and all sorts of luxury.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Behold, the day of the Lord cometh,.... Or "is…
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh,.... Or "is come" (e); said in Isa 13:6 to be at hand, but now it is represented in prophecy as already come:
cruel both with wrath and fierce anger; which, whether referred to "the Lord", or to "the day", the sense is the same; the day may be said to be cruel, and full of wrath and fury, because of the severity and fierceness of the Lord's anger, exercised upon the Babylonians in it; and he may be said to be so, not that he really is cruel, or exceeds the bounds of justice, but because he seemed to be so to the objects of his displeasure; as a judge may be thought to be cruel and severe by the malefactor, when he only pronounces and executes a righteous judgment on him; a heap of words are here made use of, to express the greatness and fierceness of divine wrath:
Read full note →
to lay the land desolate; the land of the Chaldeans:
and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it; this shows that what is before said most properly belongs to the Lord, to whom the destruction of Babylon, and the country belonging to it, must be ascribed; and indeed it was such as could not be brought about by human force; the moving cause of which was the sin of the inhabitants, some of whom were notorious sinners, for whose sakes it was destroyed by the Lord, and they in the midst of it, or out of it; see Psa 104:35.
(e) "venit", Piscator; "veniens", Montanus.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Behold - Divers words are heaped together, to signify…
Behold - Divers words are heaped together, to signify the extremity of his anger.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Isa 13:9-10. Behold the day — cruel both with…
Isa 13:9-10. Behold the day — cruel both with wrath and fierce anger — Dr. Waterland renders the clause, fierceness, wrath, and hot anger: divers words are heaped together, to signify the extremity of the divine indignation; to lay the land desolate — Hebrew, לשׁום לשׁמה, to make it a desolation, an entire and perpetual desolation, Isa 13:19-22. And he shall destroy the sinners thereof — The inhabitants of that city, who had persisted in their idolatries, oppressions, and all sorts of luxuries, notwithstanding the faithful testimony against their practices borne by Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and other pious Jews, and the solemn warnings given by God himself to Nebuchadnezzar, in repeated dreams and visions, and the humiliating and distressing affliction wherewith that monarch was chastised: see Dan 4:13-33. For the stars of heaven — Here the calamity to be brought upon them is set forth “under the figure of a dreadful tempest, inducing such a face of things in the heavens as the prophet describes.” It would be so grievous as to “deprive them of all light, that is, of all joy and consolation, as well as of the causes of them, and would fill them with sorrow and distress, and a fearful sense of the divine wrath poured forth from heaven upon them.” Or, rather, the prophet foretels the utter subversion of their republic, and the entire overthrow of their religion and polity, under the emblem of the extinction or passing away of the sun, moon, and stars, and all the heavenly bodies. For, as Bishop Lowth observes, the Hebrew writers, “to express happiness, prosperity, the instauration and advancement of states, kingdoms, and potentates, make use of images taken from the most striking parts of nature; from the heavenly bodies, from the sun, moon, and stars, which they describe as shining with increased splendour, and never setting; the moon becomes like the meridian sun, and the sun’s light is augmented seven-fold: see Isa 30:26. New heavens and a new earth are created, and a brighter age commences. On the contrary, the overthrow and destruction of kingdoms are represented by opposite images; the stars are obscured, the moon withdraws her light, and the sun shines no more; the earth quakes, and the heavens tremble; and all things seem tending to their original chaos.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain The day of the Lord cometh - See Isa…
The day of the Lord cometh - See Isa 13:6.
Cruel - (אכזרי 'akezārı̂y). This does not mean that “God” is cruel, but that the ‘day of Yahweh’ that was coming should be unsparing and destructive to them. It would be the exhibition of “justice,” but not of “cruelty;” and the word stands opposed here to mercy, and means that God would not spare them. The effect would be that the inhabitants of Babylon would be destroyed.
Read full note →
Fierce anger - Hebrew, (חרון אף 'aph chărôn) ‘A glow, or burning of anger.’ The phrase denotes the most intense indignation (compare Num 25:4; Num 32:14; 1Sa 28:18).
To lay the land desolate - Chaldea, Isa 13:5.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Desolate. This was effected in the course of many…
Desolate. This was effected in the course of many centuries. (Calmet) --- The building of Seleucia caused Babylon to be deserted. (Pliny, [Natural History?] vi. 27.) --- Hence we know not at present where it was situated.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain cruel--not strictly, but unsparingly just; opposed to mercy. Also…
cruel--not strictly, but unsparingly just; opposed to mercy. Also answering to the cruelty (in the strict sense) of Babylon towards others (Isa 14:17) now about to be visited on itself.
the land--"the earth" [HORSLEY]. The language of Isa 13:9-13 can only primarily and partially apply to Babylon; fully and exhaustively, the judgments to come, hereafter, on the whole earth. Compare Isa 13:10 with Mat 24:29; Rev 8:12. The sins of Babylon, arrogancy (Isa 13:11; Isa 14:11; Isa 47:7-8), cruelty, false worship (Jer 50:38), persecution of the people of God (Isa 47:6), are peculiarly characteristic of the Antichristian world of the latter days (Dan 11:32-37; Rev 17:3, Rev 17:6; Rev 18:6-7, Rev 18:9-14, Rev 18:24).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 9, 10. Day of the Lord cometh — The…
9, 10. Day of the Lord cometh — The meaning the same as in Isa_13:6.
Cruel — Applied to “day,” etc., and means, rather, terrible, inexorable; a judgment so viewed abstractly, and to human view.
Read full note →
Wrath… fierce anger — Predicates also applying to “day,” and characterizing it. If the preposition “with” is to be used, (which from the text is doubtful,) the sense remains the same.
Sinners — They who in Babylon had incurred such fierce retribution.
Stars of heaven — The Chaldeans were of note, far and near, as cultivators of astronomy; hence Isaiah’s use of this illustration.
Shall not give their light — No metaphor so vividly represents calamity as extinguishment of light. (See Isa_34:4; Mat_24:29, et plura.) Not Babylonians alone, but Egyptians and Phenicians gave much attention to astronomy, as evidenced by very early attempts at regulating time divisions by the solar and lunar motions and revolutions. Exo_7:11; Lev_20:27; Lev_19:31; Deu_18:10. These passages show that astrology, which was interdicted to the Hebrews, was connected with their study of astronomy.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 9. land] Rather, earth, as in Isa_13:5.
9. land] Rather, earth, as in Isa_13:5.
9–16. The middle division of the prophecy enlarges on the nature, purpose and effects of this day of Jehovah.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The day of the Lord (see the comment on…
The day of the Lord (see the comment on ver. 6). Cruel; i.e. severe and painful, not really "cruel." To lay the land desolate. As in ver. 5, so here, many would translate ha-arets by "the earth," and understand a desolation extending far beyond Babylonia. But this is not necessary.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain Day of the Lord
Day of the Lord
(Day of Jehovah) vs.
Read full note →
Isa 2:10-22; Isa 4:1-6; Isa 11:10-13; Isa 13:9-16; Isa 24:21-23; Isa 26:20; Isa 26:21; Isa 63:1-6; Isa 66:15-24; Rev 19:11-21.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 the day of Yahweh comes with cruel wrath and…
the day of Yahweh comes with cruel wrath and overflowing anger
The day coming with wrath and anger means that there will be wrath and anger on that day. The abstract nouns "wrath" and "anger" can be expressed with the adjectives "furious" and "angry." AT: "on the day of Yahweh, he will be furious and extremely angry" (See: Metaphor and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
Read full note →
overflowing anger
Anger here is spoken of as if the one who is angry is a container filled with anger. Overflowing anger means that he is extremely angry. (See: Metaphor)
to make the land a desolation
This can be reworded so that the abstract noun "desolation" is expressed with the verb "ruin." AT: "to ruin the land" (See: Abstract Nouns)
The stars of heaven and the constellations
"The stars in the sky"
will not give their light
Giving light represents "shining." AT: "will not shine" (See: Idiom)
The sun will be darkened
This can be stated in active form. AT: "Yahweh will darken the sun" or "The sun will be dark" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
day of the Lord
wrath
anger
desolate
sin
heaven
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.