The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

IV. Isaiah’s Parabolic Taunting Ode on King of Babylon

The taunting ode, or parable, of Isaiah 14:4-11, is likewise presumed by various Immortal-Soulists to teach that she’ol is a land of active ghost life, with ghostly memories and thoughts of life on earth. But in the narrative itself Isaiah twice plainly identifies she’ol with “the grave” (Isaiah 14:9, margin, and Isaiah 14:11), while personifying for the moment the eerie shades of the dead as infused with life, in order to utter God’s doom upon the tyrannical king of Babylon. CFF1 170.2

In the story conquered kings are parabolically represented as having thrones in she’ol, and sitting upon them as they had sat in the royal palaces from which they had been rudely ejected by the conquering arms of Nebuchadnezzar. And now, when the haughty king of Babylon, himself defeated and dead and descending to the grave, joins them in their dark domain, these departed monarchs are portrayed as rising up from their shadowy thrones to mock the fallen tyrant with feigned obeisance—but actually with insult and derision—just as in life they rendered him feigned homage. CFF1 171.1

1. PERSONIFIED TREES REJOICE OVER FALLEN MONARCH

The whole earth rejoiced in Nebuchadnezzar’s overthrow, and here the “she’ol-eans” rejoice over the downfall of this tyrannical king of Babylon, as the scene shifts from earth to she’ol, region of the dead. Even the fir trees and the cedars (Isaiah 14:8) are introduced as uttering a derisive taunt over the fallen tyrant, and voicing their new security now that he is no more. CFF1 171.2

But this impressive parable was all in imagery—the inspired poet creating one of the classic odes of the Old Testament, to cast contempt upon the pride of Babylon, while its broad walls and mighty gates still stood imperiously on the plains of Chaldea. It was all in the striking figure of prosopopoeia, ¹⁰ or personification, by which the dead are represented as speaking. CFF1 171.3

In the same passage the prophet makes the fir trees and cedars of Lebanon to speak (Isaiah 14:8-10)—thus to portray, through this literary device, how death will reduce the king of Babylon to the same level as his subjects, and become fellow prisoners in the realm of death. CFF1 171.4

2. PATHS OF GLORY LEAD BUT TO GRAVE

So this she’ol, to which these royal inhabitants were made to descend, was actually the silent grave (Isaiah 14:11; Isaiah 14:9, margin), or gravedom. And these kings are so represented under this figure of personification, thus to describe their real condition, and to say to the king of Babylon: CFF1 172.1

“Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave [she’ol], and the noise of thy viols: the worm [rimmah, “maggot”] is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee” (Isaiah 14:10, 11). CFF1 172.2

Thus in the mind and teaching of Isaiah she’ol was none other than the grave, the place where worms revel in their feast on the dead—worms being grossly material, not spiritual. No one was to assume that the characters portrayed actually acted or spoke as pictured. The term “proverb,” ¹¹ as here used, simply means a parabolic taunt (Isaiah 14:4, “taunting speech,” margin). CFF1 172.3

It was never Isaiah’s purpose, in this impressive ode, to reveal the conditions of the death state. Rather, it was to forecast in graphic pictorial language God’s coming judgment upon Israel’s great oppressor, and to show that the paths of cruel glory “lead but to the grave.” Thus the second argument in behalf of conscious persistence of the soul after death likewise collapses. CFF1 172.4