Isaiah 21:1 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

ISAIAH CHAPTER 21 The prophet's fear and trouble at his vision of Babylon's ruin by the Medes and Persians, Isaiah 21:1-4. He mocketh Babel, Isaiah 21:5-9. Edom, scorning the prophet, is called to repentance, Isaiah 21:11,12. The time of Arabia's calamity set. The desert of the sea; Babylon, as is evident both from her destroyers, the Medians, Isaiah 21:2, and especially from Isaiah 21:9, where she is named. She seems to be called desert prophetically, to intimate, that although she was now a most populous city and kingdom, yet shortly she should be turned into a desolate wilderness, as was threatened, Isaiah 13:19, &c. But the word here rendered desert sometimes signifies a plain, as a very learned interpreter hath observed, and thus it most properly agrees to Babylon, and the land about it, which geographers note to be a very plain country, without any considerable mountains in it. It is called the desert of the sea, because it is situate by the sea, as the isles of the sea, Esther 10:1, are those countries which were beside the sea. And the title of the sea might well be given to the waters of Babylon, because of the great plenty and multitude of them, the great channel of Euphrates, and the several several lesser channels cut out, and the vast lakes of water; in which respects it is said to sit upon many waters, Jeremiah 51:13, the name of sea being given by the Hebrews to every great collection of waters. In the south; in those parts which lay southward from Judea where there were many and grreat deserts, in which the winds have greater force. See Job 1:19 Jeremiah 4:11. Pass through; as meeting with no stop or opposition. It; the burden or judgment. Or, he, the Median, as it is in the next verse. Cometh from the desert; from Media and Persia; thus expressed, either because those countries were full of deserts, or because a great desert lay between them and Chaldea, as geographers and historians report. From a terrible land; from the Medes, a warlike and formidable people, as appears both from sacred and profane writers.