‏ Isaiah 14:13

13. above ... God--In Da 8:10, "stars" express earthly potentates. "The stars" are often also used to express heavenly principalities (Job 38:7).

mount of the congregation--the place of solemn meeting between God and His people in the temple at Jerusalem. In Da 11:37, and 2Th 2:4, this is attributed to Antichrist.

sides of the north--namely, the sides of Mount Moriah on which the temple was built; north of Mount Zion (Psa 48:2). However, the parallelism supports the notion that the Babylonian king expresses himself according to his own, and not Jewish opinions (so in Is 10:10) thus "mount of the congregation" will mean the northern mountain (perhaps in Armenia) fabled by the Babylonians to be the common meeting-place of their gods. "Both sides" imply the angle in which the sides meet; and so the expression comes to mean "the extreme parts of the north." So the Hindus place the Meru, the dwelling-place of their gods, in the north, in the Himalayan mountains. So the Greeks, in the northern Olympus. The Persian followers of Zoroaster put the Ai-bordsch in the Caucasus north of them. The allusion to the stars harmonizes with this; namely, that those near the North Pole, the region of the aurora borealis (compare see on Job 23:9; Job 37:22) [Maurer, Septuagint, Syriac].

‏ Obadiah 3-4

3. clefts of ... rock--(So 2:14; Jr 48:28). The cities of Edom, and among them Petra (Hebrew, sela, meaning "rock," 2Ki 14:7, Margin), the capital, in the Wady Musa, consisted of houses mostly cut in the rocks.

4. exalt thyself--or supply from the second clause, "thy nest" [Maurer] (Compare Job 20:6; Jr 49:16; Am 9:2).

set ... nest among ... stars--namely, on the loftiest hills which seem to reach the very stars. Edom is a type of Antichrist (Is 14:13; Da 8:10; 11:37).

thence will I bring thee down--in spite of thy boast (Ob 3), "Who shall bring me down?"

Copyright information for JFB