Isaiah 14: The Birth of a Zombie Apocalypse?

Unearthing the Original Form and Setting of Isaiah 14:4b–21 and 14:24–27

Our two specific texts of interest here, Isa 14:4b–21 and Isa 14:24–27, take the form of oracles against a foreign nation and fittingly have their place within a larger block of such oracles in Isa 13–23. Prophecies collected in this block include: Isa 14:28–32 (against the Philistines); 15:1–16:14 (against Moab); 17:1–4 (against Damascus); 18:1–7 (against Ethiopia); 19:1–24 (against Egypt); 21:1–10 (against Babylon); 21:11–12 (against Dumah); 21:13–17 (against Arabia); and 23:1–18 (against the Phoenicians).

In the present form of Isaiah’s book, Isa 14:4b–21 forms a subsection of a larger oracle against Babylon, Isa 13:1–14:23. However, the text, as I will show, originally oriented itself not on Babylonia but on Assyria. The same proves true for 14:24–27. Only later did Isaiah’s editors rework these texts as prophecies against Babylonia (see Isa 14:22–23 and the discussion below). Still later, Isa 14:4b–21 and Isa 14:24–27 reemerge within Ezekiel’s Gog prophecies as the referent of Ezek 38:17. God is referencing Isaiah’s “Shining One” here, which begins a fascinating history of reception that makes Isaiah14 of enormous interest and significance in the history of the Bible’s interpretation, effects, and consequences.

In form-critical terms, the text is a prophetic taunt song, designed to belittle the addressee through mockery. More specifically, it is a celebratory dirge on the death of an enemy king, a parody of a royal funeral lament. ¹ The dirge has two major sections, each introduced with the particle ʾêk (“Can you believe it?” “What a comedown,” vv. 4b, 12), an idiom of mourning. The intention of the parody is to expose the misguided spirit of all human false pride. To mock human pride and hubris is fully reverent, for such satire reinforces the shamefulness of willful human amnesia about mortal simplicity and limits. In the face of God’s dread and enormous majesty, the bubble of human pride must burst and the arrogant be pulled down from their pedestals, even down into the realm of death.

Originally, the core text in Isa 14:4b–21 castigated an Assyrian monarch. In its original setting, it surely dates to the era after the death of Sargon II of Assyria in 705 BCE (at some point between 705–689 BCE). ² The ignoble death of the tyrant in Isaiah 14 matches no known Babylonian ruler. Instead, it fits the death on the battlefield and lack of proper burial of Sargon II in 705 BCE, known from extrabiblical sources. It was only later oriented against Babylon, taking its present form after the exile (see the additions in Isa 14:3–4a, 22–23).

In 705 BCE, Sargon led his army in an attack on Tabal, in central Anatolia. The province had thrown off his yoke in a bloody rebellion in 712 BCE. The plan was to reestablish Tabal as an Assyrian province. Instead of meeting his objective, his plan collapsed in his army’s destruction, his death in battle, and the loss of his corpse into enemy hands. ³

OPEN IN VIEWER

Fig 1.

King Sargon II of Assyria with his rod associated with God’s anger in Isa 10:5–6. Bas-relief from Sargon’s palace in Khorsabad, eighth cent. BCE. Louvre, Paris, France. Erich Lessing /Art Resource, NY.

The portrayal in Isa 14:4b–21 of a proud Assyrian conqueror fits the period from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III to that of Esarhaddon. This was an era characterized by an imperialistic Assyrian policy of conquest and annexation, a policy that strongly affected the Levant and led to powerful responses in Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and Nahum. Later, after Isaiah’s death, Assyria’s imperialistic ambitions collapsed, especially after the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE. ⁴ At this time the empire descended into years of civil war. Babylonia eventually destroyed it.

The immediacy and vitriol of Isaiah 14’s taunt presupposes Assyria’s deepening imperial hold on Judah under Sargon. Precisely at this time, after Samaria fell to Sargon in 722 BCE, various prophecies of Isaiah began shifting their rhetoric. In texts such as ours, they took on a harsh anti-Assyrian tone characteristic of a suffering, colonized people. According to Aster, related texts include Isaiah 36 and 37. ⁵

Along with the harsh tone, specific motifs and allusions in the text point to an era of composition between 705–689 BCE. The language of Assyria as a weaponized scepter or rod (šēbeṭ) in 14:5–6 echoes Isa 10:5, where God famously calls Assyria “the rod of my anger.” The image most likely reflects the characteristic Assyrian portrayal of Sargon II with a prominent staff in hand. For one good example, see Fig. 1, the relief of Sargon from his palace at Dur-Šarruken (Khorsabad) excavated by P. E. Botta in 1842. ⁶ So too, the Isaian text’s reference to the permanent deportation of populations in 14:17 fits Sargon’s practice of removing rebels from their homelands and settling them elsewhere in the empire.

Confirming its Assyrian-era provenance, Isa 14:4b–21 uses language specifically about Assyrian royalty in Isa 10:5–9, 13–15. ⁷ The association of Sargon’s characteristic rod šēbeṭ; Isa 10:5, 15) with God’s anger (ʾap) in 14:5–6 (“the staff of the wicked, the scepter of the rulers that struck down the people with wrath”) reuses the same diction occurring earlier in 10:5, “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger—the club in the hands of my fury!” So too, God’s fury (ʿebrâ) in 10:6 (“Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets”) reappears in 14:6 (“[the scepter] that struck down the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows”). A bit later, Isa 14:9 presents a reversal of 10:13. Those rulers whom Assyria had toppled from their thrones now rise from new underworld thrones to welcome Sargon to death’s realm. Isaiah 14:10–11 insists Sargon is merely one of many mortal earthly rulers; Isa 10:15 similarly puts the Assyrian monarch in his place as a mere instrument of God. As Aster notes, both Isa 10:5–15 and 14:4–12 critique Sargon for his failed attempts to gain status through conquest. ⁸

Even the Isaian reference to the antihero of Isaiah 14 as “the king of Babylon” in v. 4 may fit an original Assyrian provenance. Sargon applies to himself the very title in his Babylonian inscriptions, and the move fits and reinforces the picture of an egomaniac aspiring to be a universal king. One of Sargon’s most significant imperial triumphs was taking the Babylonian crown for himself after ousting Merodach-baladan from the throne in 710 BCE. Sargon spent the next three years residing in Babylon, receiving homage and gifts from distant kingdoms.

The editors of Isa 14 have followed up the taunt against the Shining One with another text from the eighth-century, Isa 14:24–27. This passage specifically prophesies Assyria’s defeat (14:25). Marvin Sweeney dates Isa 14:24–27 to Sargon II’s march through Judah in 720 BCE, but the text may be somewhat later. ⁹ The language of removing Assyria’s yoke and burden in 14:25 echoes the same statement of release from Assyrian oppression in 10:27, which Aster confidently assigns to the period 714–705 BCE, based on the Assyrian texts to which the passage refers. ¹⁰

The Shameful Demise of Sargon as a Key Element within Isaiah 14

As noted, Isa 14:19 presents the most specific reference to Sargon II of the texts under discussion: “All the kings of the nations lie in glory, each in his own tomb, but you are cast out, away from your grave, like loathsome carrion, clothed with the dead, those pierced by the sword, who go down to the stones of the Pit, like a corpse trampled underfoot” (14:18–19). In 705 BCE, Sargon lay dead and exposed on the battlefield, fitting the portrayal in the verse. The king’s dishonorable demise was of international infamy, since he died not only overpowered on the field of battle but also in a massive defeat that precluded the recovery and proper burial of his body. This absolutely catastrophic event led to the abandonment of Dur-Šarruken as the royal residence and was later thought to lie at the root of Sargon’s heirs’ bad fortune. Isaiah 14:21 rightly assesses the curse on his offspring levied by Sargon’s infamous life and shameful fate: “Prepare slaughter for his sons because of the guilt of their father.”

The image of Isa 14:19 does not appear to be exhumation, as suggested by Saul Olyan (cf. van Keulen). ¹¹ Rather than expressing notions of removal, so that the meaning is that the ruler is “cast out of your tomb” (an ablative use; NIV, cf. NET, NLT), the Hebrew syntax, with the preposition min likely designates privation and disassociation (a privative use; see, e.g., Num 15:24; Deut 33:11; Jer 48:45; Job 21:9). ¹² A meaning of death without burial, deprived of any grave, is indicated. Thus, the king has been “thrown away unburied” (NJB), “left lying unburied” (NJPS), “cast forth without burial” (NABR). Such translations best fit a description of a fallen warrior lying alongside those “pierced by the sword,” exposed to insects and scavengers “like loathsome carrion” (LXX, cf. NRSV).

An interpretation of Isa 14:19 as a lack of proper burial especially fits the king’s corpse being “covered with heaps of the slain” (NJB), “by the bodies of soldiers killed in battle” (GNT). The verse conjures an image of the immediate aftermath of battle, not an event sometime subsequent to a proper internment. As many other soldiers’ bodies lay decomposing on the battlefield, a hasty, unceremonious and collective burial was requisite. The scenario in mind is the mass disposal of the abandoned corpses. The term bôr (“pit”) in 14:19 alludes to the abode of the wretched dead but also to the mass grave into which Sargon was dumped along with other corpses of slain warriors, “thrown with them into a rocky pit” (GNT). Aster points to the evidence from Ashdod related to Sargon’s 712 campaign. Hays compares the mass grave of the Israelite defenders of Lachish from the same era but about a decade later (in Sennacherib’s time). ¹³ Aster puts his interpretation of the scene of 14:19 this way:

The verse certainly describes a defeated corpse on the battlefield, pierced by arrows, and a standard practice of disposing of battlefield casualties is recorded. Upon the conclusion of every battle with significant casualties, burial of the corpses was a matter of great urgency for the surrounding population because of the overwhelming danger of plagues caused by insects inhabiting unburied corpses. Corpses might quickly be covered over with earth, but were then, as soon as possible, taken from where they lay and cast into pits. This was most likely the fate of Sargon’s corpse, and it corresponds to the description in these verses [of Isaiah 14]. ¹⁴

Sargon’s sudden, shameful death on the battlefield sent shock waves not only through his army but also through the Assyrian administration. His shocking fate left the empire in disarray—it essentially underwent a temporary collapse. In the Levant, every kingdom now withheld tribute from Assyria. Some, such as Judah and Ashkelon, plotted open revolt. Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 BCE aimed to put down the rebellion.

The Mythological, Archetypal, and Transcendental Backdrop to Isaiah 14

The Isaiah circle would have been aware of the geopolitical reactions to Sargon’s demise. Isaiah, however, was not content merely with prophecies that played up Sargon’s humiliation on the world stage. He was intent on depicting a much more profound, extra-worldly reversal of fortune. Using fantastic images of heaven and the underworld, he depicted a paradigmatic fate, an ideal requital. The prophecy aims primarily against Sargon, but it attests and authenticates a transcendent/spiritual reality that Sargon instantiates, but does not exhaust. The GNT risks denuding the text of the transcendent element of its subject matter, when it renders v. 12: “King of Babylon, bright morning star, you have fallen!” The rendering risks reducing a weighty archetype to mere colorful hyperbole.

Sargon’s outrageous hubris, with all its devastating social and political terrors, provoked a powerful prophetic reaction, as Isa 14:4–21 attests. For Isaiah and his followers, Sargon’s reign represented the epitome of all affronts to the cosmic prerogative of God. The Assyrian monarch’s imperial program was the moral antithesis of God’s own cosmic plan, a “plan that is planned concerning the whole earth” (Isa 14:26). To drive the point home, our passage expands the standard “once-now” rhetoric of the Near Eastern funerary lament genre that it employs. It takes Sargon’s reversal of fortunes to extremes—to astral heights and infernal depths.

Images of postmortem horror undergird Isaiah 14’s rhetoric of reversal. Verses 4b–11, the dirge’s first half, describe the Assyrian ruler’s descent from imperial arrogance deep into a slithering underworld. The depths to which the haughty tyrant falls, the poetry jeers, are unfathomably degrading. So powerful and unstoppable in life, Sargon is now as weak as any dead shade (v. 10). The despot who once felled giant Lebanon cedars (v. 8) now occupies underworld chambers of squirming vermin. Instead of lying clean and warm in a stone sarcophagus, he sleeps atop a mattress of maggots, snuggled under a quilt of worms (v. 11). ¹⁵

Christopher Hays outlines the several reversals of Near Eastern royal afterlife expectations within Isa 14:4b–21. ¹⁶ Among the most striking reversals are the following. Instead of hearing the wails of mourners at his funeral, the king hears joyful song issue forth from nature itself: “The whole earth is at rest and quiet; they break forth into singing. The cypresses exult over you…” (14:7–8a). In place of orations recalling a blessed reign of fecundity, there is relief at a cruel deforestation’s end (14:8b, 17a), as the cypresses and cedars of Lebanon say, “Since you were laid low, no one comes to cut us down.” The indignity of mass burial replaces the typical extravagant interment of royalty in a tomb of splendor (14:18–19). “Those slain in battle, pierced by swords, will cover you,” “a corpse left on the battlefield” (v. 19 VOICE).

Rather than high-ranking souls hailing the deceased upon arrival in Sheol, the shades degrade him instead (14:9–11; see further below). Instead of a royal estate in the netherworld, there is squalor deep in shame (14:11), at “the bottom of the Pit” (14:15 NJPS). As the VOICE version paraphrases v. 15: “You’ve hit bottom of the bottommost pit.” Any connection with the land of the living is lost forever, for God cuts cut off all offspring and posterity (14:20b–21). Experiencing a “second death,” his soul receives no invocations and summons by posterity. ¹⁷

According to the dirge’s second half, vv. 12–21, the despot’s fall into Sheol begins in the heights of the cosmos (vv. 13–14). Diametrically opposite to his heavenly aspirations, his bloated pretensions end him in infernal depths, “the depths of the abyss” (v. 15 NJB, REB). Hugh R. Page offers several insights into the nature of the Semitic myth that must form the background here. ¹⁸ Based on evidence from biblical texts such as Isaiah 14, Job 38, and Psalm 82, he reconstructs the revolt of an astral antihero, who was originally part of the high god El’s coterie but was corrupted by his own wisdom and beauty. El, or one of his commanders, puts down the figure’s hubristic attempt to wrest control of the cosmos and casts him to the underworld. Joel Burnett concurs that Isa 14 draws on a myth of divine rebellion. ¹⁹ Like Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14 employs traditional language and imagery of a divine assembly under the authority of the high god El.

The Reception and Reuse of the Original Anti-Assyrian Prophecies of Isaiah 14

The editors of Isaiah 14 have received and reused Assyrian-era prophecies to describe God’s plans to judge Babylonia and other world nations. A brief glance at Isa 14:24–27 makes the fact obvious. The text directly addresses Assyria (Isa 14:25), but the redactors have placed it in a context about Babylonia’s judgment. They have used it to furnish an analogy for Babylonia’s appointed fate. Some brief analysis reveals how they were able to appropriate and reapply the text fairly easily.

Though originally aimed against Assyria, Isa 14:24–27 is not strongly anchored in the Assyrian era. It speaks of a divine plan “concerning the whole earth” and “all the nations” (v. 26). Isaiah’s editors took it as an overture to the oracles against the nations that follow for nine chapters. So too, Ezekiel’s authors took this text as global in scope. They saw an inclusive vision here awaiting fulfillment in their own day.

Baruch Levine has pointed out the sweeping divine jurisdiction in vv. 24–27. Strikingly, the purview of God’s plan encompasses the “whole earth.” He notes that God’s universal sovereignty over “all the nations” here is extraordinarily monotheizing. The text essentially claims that God controls the workings of the universe. This fits an original setting, Levine suggests, in which Isaiah is pushing back against Sargonid rhetoric, specifically against the Assyrian emperor’s claims to be “king of the universe” and “ruler of [earth’s] four corners. ²⁰

The early apocalyptic texts of Ezek 38–39, whose core dates to the late sixth century BCE, refer to earlier prophecies of the onslaught against Israel of chaos and evil. I am convinced that what is in mind is the pure chaos and evil portrayed in Isaiah 14. It is Isaiah 14 to which the inner-biblical referencing embedded in Ezek 38:17 refers: “Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days?” Firstly, it is Isa 14:4b–21 that is at issue. The Ezekiel authors must understand Gog to be the utterly hubristic tyrant that Isa 14 taunts—the Shining One. The Isaian passage, as argued above, dates to 705–689 BCE, nicely fitting Ezek 38:17’s reference to a prophecy from “former days.” As discussed below, evidence in Ezek 32:17–32 confirms that Ezekiel was well familiar with the content and wording of Isaiah 14.

Like Gog (Ezek 38:6, 15; 39:2), the antihero of Isaiah 14 is no tool of divine judgment but an “oppressor,” a perpetrator of “unrelenting persecution” (Isa 14:4, 6; see Ezek 38:11–12). He unleashes chaos (cf. Ezek 38:20). Like the primordial “flood” (Isa 14:4 CEB), he lays the world waste (Isa 14:17). Also, like Gog the northerner (Ezek 38:15; 39:2), who haunts the depths of Zaphon, the Shining One is a northern demiurge, oriented on and coveting the “heights of Zaphon” (Isa 14:13). The Hebrew phrase in Ezek 38:15 usually rendered “remotest parts of the north” can also mean “mountain crevasses of the north,” specifically, “the recesses of [Mount] Zaphon” (NABR; see 1 Sam 24:3 [MT: 24:4]; Isa 14:15; Ezek 32:23). This verse along with Ezek 39:2 evokes images from across cultures of chaos monsters inhabiting tunnels and caves in the roots of mountains. One thinks of the Greek monster Typhon chained beneath Mount Etna, or, closer to home in the Psalter, of God’s breaking of the weapons of the chaos dragon right at the mountain of God in Ps 76:2–3. “There he broke the flashing arrows” (Ps 76:3).

Other, striking resemblances link Gog with the Shining One. Both exhibit “insolence” (Isa 14:4), aspiring to conquer the cosmos’s center (Isa 14:13; Ezek 38:12; 43:7). When defeated, both lie exposed on the field, Gog as predators’ food (Ezek 38:21; 39:4–5, 17–20), the Isaiah 14 tyrant as “loathsome carrion” (Isa 14:19 NJPS). Just as Gog’s dead mob stops up an entire valley (Ezek 39:11), the Shining One dies “covered with heaps of the slain” (Isa 14:19 NJB). As noted above, his “mass grave” (Isa 14:19 NLT) recalls the Assyrians’ disposal of the bodies of Lachish’s defenders in a heap.

Gog and Isaiah’s tyrant share more than an ignoble demise on the field of battle. Both fall on the field and then go down into Sheol’s ghastliness (Isa 14:9–11, 15–20; Ezek 39:11). The magnitude of his evil pretensions land the Shining One at the “bottom of the bottommost pit” (v. 15 VOICE), “the deepest part of the world of the dead” (v. 15 GNT). So too, Gog ends up devoured by Death. At least, that is one strong connotation of the verb ʿābar (“pass on”) in Ezek 39:11. The term describes passing children to Molech in the Hinnom Valley in Ezek 16:21; 20:26; 23:36–42 (see further below).

No longer invoked by the living, the Shining One suffers a “second death” in Sheol (as noted above). “Let him never be named [invoked], that offshoot of evil!” (Isa 14:20 NABR). Despite the hopes of Isa 14:20, the Shining One does return, at least according to Ezekiel 38–39, where, in a real sense, Sargon’s arrogant spirit returns from death to terrorize the living. Gog makes his end-time appearance at least partially in the guise of the ghoul of Sheol.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Fig 2.

King Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE) inspecting the booty after the battle against Elam. Stone bas-relief from the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Assyria. British Museum, London, Great Britain. Photo Credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.

Hays raises the possibility that Isa 14:19a originally spoke of Sargon as a vulture, an unclean bird and denizen of Sheol. ²¹ The hypothesis entails resolving the text problem in the verse by reading nešer (“vulture”) instead of the MT’s nēṣer (“branch,” see CEB, NIV). If the suggestion is adopted, Sargon’s incursion in the last days depicted in the Gog prophecies is truly zombie-like. Haunting the living in the form of such birds was a familiar tactic of the dead. Thus, the Sumero-Akkadian “Evil Demons” texts describe one ghoul who “always flies around at night like a bird in the dark.” ²²

On the topic of haunting, note how Meshech and Tubal, which Gog leads (38:2–3; 39:1), have been declared imprisoned in Sheol by Ezek 32:26–28. ²³ Along with Sargon’s forces, the unhallowed abyss of death has long been their home. The historical background here is the significant military devastation of Meshech and Tubal at the end of the eighth century BCE. They were both conquered by Assyria and invaded by the Cimmerians from southern Russia. Although long dead and resident in Sheol, Gog now brings them back to storm God’s people. A “Zombie Apocalypse” thus emerges in Ezekiel 38–39.

Strikingly, the original core of Ezekiel 32 probably focused on Meshech-Tubal, Assyria, and Elam (32:17–28). ²⁴ Elam fits in here since, like Sargon’s army and Meshech-Tubal, it suffered a massive military defeat during the era of Neo-Assyrian imperialism, particularly in 647–646 BCE. A relief from the north palace at Nineveh appears to depict the military catastrophe (Figs. 2 and 3). ²⁵

The theme in Ezekiel 32 of massive “hordes” of soliders’ corpses descending down into Sheol particularly fits Elam (see 32:24, 25), conjuring Elam’s massive defeat just mentioned, its defeat by Ashurbanipal in 646 BCE. Indeed, Ashurbanipal specifically boasts of permanently silencing the tumult of Edom’s hordes (see Luckenbill, ARAB, sec. 811). ²⁶ The repeated use of hāmôn (“horde,” 32:18, 20, 24, 25, 26, 31, 32) connects Ezekiel 32 directly to Ezek 39:11, 15, 16, which repeatedly apply the term “horde” to Gog’s dead armies, a great mass of decaying corpses.

Indeed, the shared theme of a horde of rotting battle casualties requiring quick burial links both Ezekiel 32 and 39 with Isa 14:19. All three texts envisage soldiers dragged away and dumped in a mass grave. The NJPS version of Ezek 32:20 reads: “Amid those slain by the sword Egypt has been dragged and left with all her masses.” The MESSAGE understands v. 20 to mean that Egypt will “be dumped in with those killed in battle.” “Drag her off!” the verse commands.

Like the Gog texts themselves, Ezek 32:17–32 also echoes Isaiah 14 in a number of ways. The later prophet is surely citing and reworking Isaiah 14 here. ²⁷ Ezekiel 31 had compared Egypt’s downfall to Assyria’s collapse, drawing on the imagery of Isa 10:33–34. Just so, the prophet now furthers the comparison with Assyria’s appalling fate by drawing on Isa 14:9–10. Marzouk notes the similar comparative questions in Ezek 31:2, 18, and 32:19. Block understands 32:17–32 as a resumptive exposition and expansion of 31:14–18. ²⁸

It is hard to ignore that both Isa 14:4b–21 and Ezek 32:17–32 depict Assyria in the deepest realms of Sheol, interred in “the recesses of the Pit” (Isa 14:15; Ezek 32:23). These two texts alone in the Hebrew Bible employ the phrase yarkĕtê-bôr. So too, Ezek 32 repeatedly echoes the idea of being “laid low” in death, laid flat and silent in Sheol (Isa 14:8, 11, 18–19; Ezek 32:19, 21, 28, 29, 30, 32). Indeed, Ezek 32:24–25 echoes the motif of underworld bedroom chambers (Isa 14:11). In ancient Judah, bench tombs were designed with beds in mind, often with headrests. ²⁹

Both Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 32 picture Rephaim—deceased royal ancestors (or “shades”), heroes of long ago—residing as living-dead souls in Sheol (Isa 14:9; Ezek 32:21). Both texts imagine the shades forming a welcoming party for the newly deceased. Isaiah 14:9–11 is especially clear that these royal dead rise from their underworld thrones to give welcome speeches, making the Assyrian king feel at home among the dead. The newly arrived royal figure would be expecting the oration to hail and validate him. The speeches should welcome him as one worthy of a place of honor. ³⁰

OPEN IN VIEWER

Fig 3.

A relief from the Palace of Ashurbanipal. The king and his queen feasting in the royal gardens following the defeat and death of the Elamite king. Late Assyrian, ca. 645 BCE. Nineveh, Assyria. Werner Forman Archive/ British Museum, London. HIP / Art Resource, NY.

The Ugaritic funeral ritual invokes divinized dead kings of varying prestige, inviting them to welcome dead King Niqmaddu down from the realm of the living into their powerful preternatural ranks. ³¹ Isaiah 14 immediately reveals a reversal of such expectations, however. Instead of affirmation, the Rephaim declare to the king, “So you too are [now as] impotent as we are” (v. 10 REB). This same reversal of hopes sounds in Ezek 32:21 (see the NLT), but with only a weak echo of the original parodic tone and content of Isaiah. One must strain to hear a mocking tone in most English translations, although the VOICE paraphrase captures it well: “Come on down and take your place among the uncircumcised pagans.”

A second passage from Isaiah 14, namely 14:24–27, is a significant background of Ezekiel 38–39, for it recounts divine plans to break a ferocious northern enemy. In both Isaiah and Ezekiel, God promises to destroy the northern enemy within the promised land’s borders, that is, in “my land” (Isa 14:25; Ezek 38:16), and specifically upon “my mountains” (Isa 14:25: Ezek 39:4, 17), which are understood as the Gottesberg, the cosmic mountain. ³² Both Isa 14:24–27 and Ezek 38–39 also share an emphasis on the driving sovereignty of God in history, which even borders on determinism (Isa 14:24, 27: Ezek 38:4; 39:2).

Conclusion: Isaiah 14 and the Birth of a Zombie Apocalypse

Ezekiel’s reuse of Isaiah 14 in the Gog prophecies of chs. 38–39 is a fine example of the intertextual origins of early biblical proto-apocalyptic prophecy. As Sweeney writes, allusions “play a key role in every proto-apocalyptic text.” ³³ Scribal visionaries approached earlier texts as knotty puzzles to be untangled. The Ezekiel writers were fascinated by such puzzles and were determined to unravel the nature of “the day of which I [God] have spoken” (Ezek 39:8). Forging a compelling new imagination constructed from allusions to preceding, authoritative texts, they illumined the mysteries of God as they penned Ezek 38–39.

Just as Isaiah’s editors reworked Isaiah 14 as a prophecy of Babylon’s fall (see Isa 14:3–4a, 22–23), so Ezekiel’s school redeployed the text to depict the end-time reversal of Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem. Sweeney notes how such editing “testifies to the fact that Isaiah’s prophecies were studied by later tradents so that conclusions could be drawn.” ³⁴ In Ezekiel 38–39, such conclusions reveal the end times.

Upon reflection, it appears fully natural that an apocalyptic religious imagination first arose in Israel within the Ezekiel group and its wider circle of adherents (e.g., Zechariah). ³⁵ Richly educated for duty as a Zadokite central priest of Jerusalem, Ezekiel exhibits sweeping familiarity with world mythologies and archetypes, which form the necessary building blocks of millennial visions. ³⁶ His priestly education may have begun as early as age three. ³⁷ Ezekiel is powerfully perceptive, right-brained, and endowed with a prophetic visionary’s capacity to peer beyond observable reality and perceive transhistorical structures and truths. These he communicates to us by employing mythic and archetypal language and images.

Consider Gog of Magog. As the “Shining One” of Isaiah returned from the dead and eschatologized, he is at once both mythic and realistic. When a visionary’s eye sees such a cardinal Isaian archetype appear incarnate within terrestrial reality as the chaos-monster Gog, an early apocalyptic revelation has occurred. Certainly Revelation, a full-blown apocalypse, had no doubt that Gog was an end-time fiend (see Rev 20:7–8). In Revelation 20, the prophecy of Isaiah 14 lives on, continuing its long, sweeping history of effects and consequences.