Isaiah 14:1-27 shows us a vision of what will happen when the king of Babylon (representing the kings of the nations who stand against God) is killed — the people of God will rejoice. This rejoicing is put in the words of a lament parody where the first stanza is on earth (4b-8), the second stanza is down below (9-11), the third stanza is up above (12-15) and the fourth stanza ends on earth again (16-21). Normally a lament would be mournful but this one is a lament parody full of rejoicing by the people left on the earth, ridicule from the other kings in the underworld, noting that he said he would exalt himself onto the Mount of Assembly but instead went down to the pit and then that he did not even get a ‘proper’ burial and would have no surviving heirs so that his name is cut off from the earth. The problem some Christians have with these kinds of passages in our Bibles is that Jesus said to love our enemies and pray for them while this passage has us celebrating the death of our enemies. But love your enemy is a commandment for this age and not the next when all of our enemies are finally defeated — in the next age the people of God will be rejoicing at the victory. What a day of rejoicing that will be when the king of Babylon is defeated!
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