Biblion Bible Commentary
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Woe to Ariel
Isaiah 29:1-12
1 Woe to Ariel! Ariel, the city where David encamped! Add year to year; let the feasts come around; · WEB
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! Isaiah 29:1.
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.
Add year to year; let the feasts come around Isaiah 29:1.
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 Isaiah 29:3.
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 Isaiah 29:4.
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... Yes, it will be in an instant, suddenly Isaiah 29:5.
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 Isaiah 29:8.
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.
They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink Isaiah 29:9.
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 Isaiah 29:10.
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.
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;" and the book is delivered to one who is not educated, saying, "Read this, please;" and he says, "I can't read" Isaiah 29:11–12.
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.
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