DRAFT: A Chiastic Reconfiguration Of Isaiah 18

Kuruvilla Thomas
Bangalore
Published on 9 May 2024 *

Fig. 1

Introduction

This study treats Isaiah 18 as a cryptochiasmus in order to arrive at a coherent reconfiguration of the text ( see definition of cryptochiasmus in [1] ). If you wish to skip the technicalities of a chiastic parse, you may read starting from Section 4 of the Discussion section, which has the reconfigured text.

Among the prophecies of Isaiah, this short one in Ch. 18 is the most obscure and difficult. The chapter may appear to only foretell the defeat of Egypt/Cush, but we show with this parse that the prophecy principally predicts the end of the world-hegemon status of the Western Empire (USA, Europe, Canada, Australia...) before the start of Christ's Millennial Reign. The Western Empire is the 6th king of Rev 17:10, it is the empire that has ruled the world for Satan after the fall of Rome, and it will be a crucial part of the Beast empire (Rev. 13:1-7,17:9-11).

Discussion

1. Presuppositions

We base our parse of Isaiah 18 on the assumption that it refers to 3 Periods:

1. The Defeat of Egypt by the Babylonians (c. 605BC). Nebuchadnezzar defeats an alliance of Egypt and Assyria at Carchemish.
2. The Massacre of Judah during the First Jewish–Roman War (66AD–73AD).
3. The End of the Reign of the Western Empire at the Start of Christ's Millennial Reign (circa 2027AD).

2. Parsing the chiasmus

We will use the NIV Bible for this parse.

Parsing this chiasmus involves dividing portions of the text into three categories as above. We will call the time of the Defeat of the Egyptians by the Babylonians Period 1, the First Jewish-Roman War Period 2 and the start of Christ's Millennial Reign Period 3.

Categorizing Isaiah 18

Vs 1-3 belong to Period 3. Although this passage seems to be about ancient Cush/Egypt, we propose that it describes the Western Empire (see commentary below). Also, in vs 3, an announcement is made to the whole world, so dating it to Period 3.

vs 4 belongs to Period 1. God appears to be uninvolved, but He is behind the defeat of ancient Egypt.

vs 5 belongs to Period 2. The Judahites are decimated so that only the Christian Judahites remain. We believe this passage predicts the massacre of 70AD because we expect to see it in all chiastic reconstructions.

vs 6 belongs to Period 1. The Egyptian army is slaughtered during the Battle at Carchemish and in the aftermath. Note the abrupt shift away from the figurative language of the previous verses.

vs 7 belongs to Period 3. The people of the Western Empire come to the New Israel bearing gifts.

Original text

We color-code the chiastic units of the original text (NIV) below for easy visual identification using: red for Period 1, blue for Period 2 and green for Period 3.

We have retranslated parts of the text that have been inaccurately rendered because of a lack of proper context.

Isaiah 18 1 Woe
to the land of whirring wings beyond [a] the seas [b] of Cush,
2 which sends anguish [c] by sea
in weapons of reed [d] over the water—"Go, swift messengers"— [e]
to a people plucked and uprooted [f],
to a people feared far and wide, a powerful and oppressive nation [g], whose land is divided by seas [h].
3 All you people of the world, you who live on the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it, and when a trumpet sounds, you will hear it.
4 This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
5 Before [i] the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the shoots with pruning knives, he will [j] cut down and take away the spreading branches.
6 They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey and to the wild animals; the birds will feed on them all summer, the wild animals all winter.
7 At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord Almighty
from a people plucked and uprooted [k],
from a people feared far and wide, a powerful and oppressive nation [l], whose land is divided by seas [m]—
the gifts will be brought to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the Lord Almighty.

Retranslation notes for Isaiah 18
[a] vs 1 "beyond" instead of "along". From the KJV.
[b] vs 1 "seas" instead of "rivers". See similar translation in Psalm 24:2 (cf. vs 2,7 below and Zeph. 3:10).
[c] vs 2 "anguish" instead of "envoys".
[d] vs 2 "weapons of reed" instead of "papyrus boats".
[e] vs 2 '—"Go, swift messengers"—' instead of "Go, swift messengers,". Changed only the punctuation.
[f] vs 2 "plucked and uprooted" instead of "tall and smooth-skinned". Based on the Peshitta Bible.
[g] vs 2 "a powerful and oppressive nation" instead of "an aggressive nation of strange speech". From the NASB.
[h] vs 2 "seas" instead of "rivers". See similar translation in Psalm 24:2.
[i] vs 5 "Before" instead of "For before".
[j] vs 5 "knives, he will" instead of "knives, and". Changed for chiasmus.
[k] vs 7 "plucked and uprooted" instead of "tall and smooth-skinned". From the Peshitta Bible.
[l] vs 7 "a powerful and oppressive nation" instead of "an aggressive nation of strange speech". From the NASB.
[m] vs 7 "seas" instead of "rivers". See similar translation in Psalm 24:2.

3. Building the reconfigured text

From this parse, it appears that Isaiah 18 forms a cryptochiasmus as below:

A1   vs 1-3 Period 3. Woe is pronounced on the Western Empire
  B1   vs 4 Period 1. God is behind the war at Carchemish
    X   vs 5 Period 2. The First Jewish-Roman war
  B2   vs 6 Period 1. The massacre after the war at Carchemish
A2   vs 7 Period 3. The people of the Western Empire bring gifts to the New Israel

We now reconstruct the passages in the right order based on the chiastic structure above and based on the ordering rules of a cryptochiasmus [1].

We lead with central pivot point 'X'. The corresponding subunits (For example; subunit A1 corresponds to A2) are placed contiguously to form units (For example, A1,A2 is a unit ) so that we get a list of such units.

The sequence selected for rearrangement is:

X  [A1,A2]  [B1,B2]        (1)

Translating (1) into verse numbers, we get:

vs 5  [vs 1-3, vs 7]   [vs 4, vs 6]        (2)

We arrive at the reconfigured passage in the next section by rearranging the verses so they are in sequence (2).

4. Isaiah 18 Reconfigured

The Massacre of Judah during the First Jewish–Roman War (66AD–73AD) (vs 5)



The End of the Reign of the Western Empire at the Start of Christ's Millennial Reign (circa 2027AD) (vs 1-3, vs 7)



The Defeat of Egypt by the Babylonians (c. 605BC) (vs 4, vs 6)

5. A Commentary on the Reconfigured Text

5.1 The Massacre of Judah during the First Jewish–Roman War (66AD–73AD) (vs 5)

This Period is arranged in the form of a single-unit chiasmus:

A1 5a The wicked Judahites are killed
    X 5b The righteous Judahites are saved
A2 5c The wicked Judahites are killed

According to the metaphor of this Period, the branches of the vine that bear fruit represent the righteous among the Judahites and the branches that do not represent the wicked (we base this interpretation on John 15:2).

Subunit A1: The wicked Judahites are killed (5a)

5a Before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape,

Well before the harvest, it is clear that some branches will bear fruit and others will not, and it is necessary to trim off the dead wood so that the good branches may flourish. This passage sets up the metaphor of this Period - the "harvest" and "blossom/flower" do not represent anything.

Pivot X: The righteous Judahites are saved (5b)

5b he will cut off the shoots with pruning knives,

The righteous Christian Judahites (those "branches that produce the fruits of the spirit" - Galatians 5:22-23), may face some correction ("pruning") but they will be preserved during the First Jewish-Roman War (Joel 2:32).

Subunit A2: The wicked Judahites are killed (5c)

5c he will cut down and take away the spreading branches.

The Judahites who did not believe in Christ, but followed the wicked Pharisees instead, were killed by the Romans (70AD) in a savage slaughter (these "branches that bore no fruit" were "cut down"). ( See more details on this Period in our parse of the 70 Weeks of Daniel [2].)

5.2 The End of the Reign of the Western Empire at the Start of Christ's Millennial Reign (circa 2027AD) (vs 1-3, vs 7)

This Period is arranged in the form of a single-unit chiasmus:

A1 1-2 The Western Empire: Woe is pronounced on it
    X 3 The Western Empire is defeated when it attacks the New Israel
A2 7 The Western Empire: It worships God

The subunits of this chiasmus primarily consist of a list of features of the Western Empire. In subunit A1, the preposition "to" indicates a new item in this list of features, while in the second subunit, the word "from" is used to indicate new list-items.

Subunit A1: The Western Empire: Woe is pronounced on it (1-2)

1a Woe

The prophet pronounces woe on the Western Empire, which is made up of Western Europe and its offshoots - the USA, Canada, Australia etc.. The Western Empire makes up a significant part of Satan's Beast Empire (the Beast of Rev. 13:1-3), and the Beast army will be defeated and destroyed when it comes to attack the New Israel (Ezekiel 39).

1b to the land of whirring wings beyond the seas of Cush,

We take the mighty empire of "Cush" (which consisted of Ethiopia and Egypt in Isaiah's time) to synecdochically represent Africa. So this "land beyond the seas of Cush" refers to the nations of the Western Empire that, from Israel, lie beyond the waters surrounding Africa: Western Europe lies across the Mediterranean to the north, the USA and Canada across the Atlantic to the east and Australia even further away.

We take the "whirring wings" to refer to the buzzing propellers or jet-blades on the wings of aircraft. As the empire that invented and developed aircraft and as its biggest manufacturer and user, the Western Empire can be called the land of "whirring wings".

We believe this passage and the next (1b and 2a) are designed to highlight the military might of the empire, and so the "whirring wings" may particularly refer to the air forces of the Western Empire (NATO), the strongest in the world.

2a which sends anguish by sea
in weapons of reed over the water—"Go, swift messengers"—

We take the "weapons of reed" to be intercontinental missiles that carry their warheads across the world to their distant targets; they may be called "weapons of reed" to figuratively indicate that their airframes are made of advanced alloys and composite materials that are light but strong, like reeds (the "reed" figure may also be used to evoke Egypt of Period 1). So the quote, "Go, swift messengers", may represent the command to launch these unmanned, supersonic missiles - weapons that are sent across the oceans ("over the water") as "swift messengers" of death and destruction.

The Western Empire has invented (in Germany) and perfected (in the USA) these weapons of mass destruction, and in this Period, any war between major powers will be primarily fought with these missiles and the combat aircraft of the previous verse.

2b to a people plucked and uprooted,

The people of the USA, Canada and Australia, have been uprooted from their original home in Europe and spread around to these distant lands.

( We must clarify that this verse continues with a list the features of the nation of whirring wings in vs 1b - the items on the list start with the preposition "to". Verse 2 does NOT describe the land to which the "messengers" of the previous verse were sent.)

2c to a people feared far and wide, a powerful and oppressive nation,

The Western Empire is feared around the world for its political, military and economic might; as Satan's primary nation, it covertly controls all nations of the world. Before the USA took up a leading position in the empire, the powerful colonising powers of the Western Empire (like England, France, Spain and Portugal) controlled most of the earth. While most of the former colonies have ostensibly gained independence, their institutions have been set up so that they continue to be covertly controlled by the Western Empire for the Vatican. The Western Empire is the 6th "king" of Rev 17:10, the empire from which Satan ruled the world for more than 1500 years after the fall of Rome (c 480AD). During the reign of the Beast, the Western Empire will play a major role in the 7-nation Beast army (see Rev 17:10,11).

2d whose land is divided by seas.

The Western Empire - which consists of nations like the USA, Britain and Australia - is widely separated by vast oceans. At the start of the reign of the Western Empire (c 480AD) the people of these scattered nations were all located in one region, Europe.

Pivot X: The Western Empire is defeated when it attacks the New Israel (vs 3)

3 All you people of the world, you who live on the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it, and when a trumpet sounds, you will hear it.

The Beast army, of which the Western Empire's army is a major part, will call its constituent nations and allies to assemble ("a banner is raised", "a trumpet sounds") on the mountains (literal mountains) outside the New Israel, so as to join an assault on the New Israel (see Rev. 19:19). The whole world will pay close attention to this attack on God's nation by Satan's forces ("you will see it", "you will hear it"). But the Beast army and its allies will be thoroughly defeated and humiliatingly destroyed (see Ezekiel 39).

Subunit A2: The Western Empire: It worships God (vs 7)

7 At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord Almighty
from a people plucked and uprooted,
from a people feared far and wide, a powerful and oppressive nation, whose land is divided by seas—
the gifts will be brought to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the Lord Almighty.

Though the Western Empire is controlled by Satanic bloodlines (see appendix in [4]) and Satan worshippers (such as the Freemasons), it has the largest Christian population in the world; the righteous Christians of this Empire have been a force for good and have spread the word of Christ around the world. After Satan's reign and the start of Christ's reign, these Christians will come to the New Israel ("Mount Zion") to honour God with their gifts - themselves and their contributions; the place of the name of the Lord is the New Israel, where the "name of the Lord" refers to the "glory of God" (see the parallelism in Isaiah 59:19, Psalm 102:15). Note that the instruments of war of vs 1,2 - the "whirring wings" and the "weapons of reed" - are omitted in this closing passage, for the Prince of Peace rules over the world at this time (Isaiah 9:6).

And so power over the world passes from the Western Empire, which reigned for more than 1500 years for Satan, to the New Israel ("Mount Zion"), which will reign for Christ during the final millennium (see Rev. 16:12).

5.3 The Defeat of Egypt by the Babylonians (c. 605BC) (vs 4, vs 6)

A great slaughter is predicted in this Period, but there is nothing in the passage to indicate the nation affected or the occasion. We believe that the nation is ancient Egypt, because of phrases in the passages of Period 3 that evoke Egypt - phrases such as "reeds", "whirring wings" and "waters of Cush" (Egypt was controlled by a Cushite dynasty in 744BC–656BC during Isaiah's ministry 742BC–687BC). Also, in prophecy, the Western Empire is frequently associated with Egypt and even called "Egypt" (for ex, see our parse of Isaiah 19 [6], see appendix below). So although the nation in Period 3 is not Egypt, the passages of Period 3 hint at the nation of Period 1.

We believe the occasion of this slaughter is the battle of Carchemish: it was a watershed that ended Egypt's reign as a regional power (see 2 Kings 24:7, Jer. 46:11,12), just as the events of Period 3 end the worldwide domination of the Western Empire.

This Period is arranged in the form of a single-unit chiasmus:

A1 4a God appears to play no part in Egypt's defeat
    X 4b God plays a vital role in Egypt's defeat
A2 6 God appears to play no part Egypt's defeat

Subunit A1: God appears to play no part in Egypt's defeat (4a)

4a This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place,

The Lord quietly looks on from heaven ("dwelling place") as this war between Egypt and Babylon unfolds; it appears that He is not involved.

Subunit A1: God plays a vital role in Egypt's defeat (4b)

4b like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”

The Lord says his involvement in the slaughter of vs 6 below is like that of the shimmering heat from sunshine or a cloud of dew on crops - sunlight and moisture are vital for the growth of crops, though they appear to do nothing. It was God who instigated this engagement between Israel's enemies that resulted in Egypt's rout and loss of regional power. At Megiddo, when King Josiah tried to stop the Egyptian army en-route to Carchemish (609BC) King Necho II warned Judah's king against interfering, as it was the God of Israel that urged him into this war with Babylon (see 2 Chronicles 35:20-22, Jer. 46:1-10).

Subunit A2: God appears to play no part in Egypt's defeat (vs 6)

6 They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey and to the wild animals; the birds will feed on them all summer, the wild animals all winter.

The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar routed the Egyptians at Carchemish, and the Egyptians fled to Hamath - in the mountainous region of modern western Syria - in such disarray that they left without their weapons. There, the Babylonians slaughtered the remnant so that none remained (see also Jer. 46:1-12, esp. v. 10,11). The bodies were left to the birds and the beasts, unburied apparently for at least a year ("all summer", "all winter") - an undignified end to this once great army.

Conclusion

With this chiastic reconstruction of the text, we have shown that Isaiah 18 contains prophecies on three distinct Periods. All three Periods describe a great defeat - that of Egypt, Judea and the Beast. Just as the battle of Carchemish signalled the end of Egypt as a regional power, the battle near the start of the Millennial Reign represents the end of the Western Empire as a world controlling power. In both battles, God, though He appears to play no role, instigates the attacks, and in both battles, the army of the "Egypt" of the time was slaughtered.

Appendix

The Connection between Ancient Egypt and the Modern Western Empire

The Western Empire is treated as equivalent to "Egypt" in this and other cryptochiasmi (see Isaiah 19), but in what sense? At the time of the prophecy, Satan ruled the world from Assyria, and ancient Egypt was a secondary capital, because Egypt was controlled by powerful Pharaonic, Satan worshipping bloodlines (see Isaiah 19:11). Similarly, around the time of the start of the Millennial Reign, China (the 7th "king" of Rev 17:10) will be Satan's primary capital, and the Western Empire will be a secondary capital, because of the presence of powerful Satanic bloodlines in Western nations.

References

[1] A Definition of Cryptochiasmus
[2] A Chiastic Reconfiguration Of "The 70 Weeks Of Daniel"
[3] A Chiastic Reconfiguration Of Obadiah
[4] A Chiastic Reconfiguration Of Daniel 8
[5] A Chiastic Reconfiguration Of Revelation 4-22, Part 2
[6] A Chiastic Reconfiguration Of Isaiah 19





* First version published on 5 October 2021.