Woe to Ariel
1 Woe to Ariel! Ariel, the city where David encamped! Add year to year; let the feasts come around; 2 then I will distress Ariel, and there will be mourning and lamentation. She shall be to me as an altar hearth. 3 I will encamp against you all around you, and will lay siege against you with posted troops. I will raise siege works against you. 4 You will be brought down, and will speak out of the ground. Your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will be as of one who has a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and your speech will whisper out of the dust. 5 But the multitude of your foes will be like fine dust, and the multitude of the ruthless ones like chaff that blows away. Yes, it will be in an instant, suddenly. 6 She will be visited by Yahweh of Armies with thunder, with earthquake, with great noise, with whirlwind and storm, and with the flame of a devouring fire. 7 The multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all who fight against her and her stronghold, and who distress her, will be like a dream, a vision of the night. 8 It will be like when a hungry man dreams, and behold, he eats; but he awakes, and his hunger isn’t satisfied; or like when a thirsty man dreams, and behold, he drinks; but he awakes, and behold, he is faint, and he is still thirsty. The multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion will be like that. 9 Pause and wonder! Blind yourselves and be blind! They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. 10 For Yahweh has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes, the prophets; and he has covered your heads, the seers. 11 All vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one who is educated, saying, “Read this, please;” and he says, “I can’t, for it is sealed;” 12 and the book is delivered to one who is not educated, saying, “Read this, please;” and he says, “I can’t read.”
A besieging army vanishes like a dream of dinner, and a nation is described as unable to read.
Woe to Ariel! Ariel, the city where David encamped! Add year to year; let the feasts come around;
The name means lion of God, and it also means altar hearth — the place on the altar where the fire burns. The chapter uses both senses: she shall be to me as an altar hearth Isaiah 29:2.
Woe to Ariel! Ariel, the city where David encamped! Add year to year; let the feasts come around;
The festival calendar rotating on schedule, and the tone is weary. Everything is being observed and nothing is happening.
I will encamp against you all around you, and will lay siege against you with posted troops. I will raise siege works against you.
The besieger is God. The Assyrian army outside the walls is not the subject of the sentence.
You will be brought down, and will speak out of the ground. Your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will be as of one who has a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and your speech will whisper out of the dust.
The city is reduced to a whisper coming out of the earth, and the comparison is deliberate — it sounds like the mediums the eighth chapter described chirping and muttering Isaiah 8:19. A nation that consulted the dead ends up sounding like them.
But the multitude of your foes will be like fine dust, and the multitude of the ruthless ones like chaff that blows away. Yes, it will be in an instant, suddenly.
The reversal takes half a verse, and the timing word is the point.
It will be like when a hungry man dreams, and behold, he eats; but he awakes, and his hunger isn’t satisfied; or like when a thirsty man dreams, and behold, he drinks; but he awakes, and behold, he is faint, and he is still thirsty. The multitude of all the nations that fight against Mount Zion will be like that.
The finest image in the chapter. The besieging army had been dreaming of taking the city, and wakes with nothing — the specific frustration of a dream about food, which leaves a person hungrier than before. It is also what every empire in this book eventually finds.
Pause and wonder! Blind yourselves and be blind! They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.
The staggering of the previous chapter, now without the excuse.
For Yahweh has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes, the prophets; and he has covered your heads, the seers.
The men whose work is seeing have been blindfolded, and the word for the sleep is the one used of Adam when the rib was taken Genesis 2:21.
11 All vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one who is educated, saying, “Read this, please;” and he says, “I can’t, for it is sealed;” 12 and the book is delivered to one who is not educated, saying, “Read this, please;” and he says, “I can’t read.”
A small comic scene with a serious point. The scroll goes to the literate man, who cannot open it, and then to the illiterate one, who could open it and cannot read. Two different obstacles, one result, and neither man is at fault in a way he can fix.
settled What this mark means