{"id":7584,"date":"2016-05-14T00:05:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T07:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7584"},"modified":"2016-05-13T10:51:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T17:51:07","slug":"the-day-of-the-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/05\/14\/the-day-of-the-lord\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day of the Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"

Behold, the day of the LORD comes,
\nCruel, with both wrath and fierce anger,
\nTo lay the land desolate;
\nAnd He will destroy its sinners from it.
\nFor the stars of heaven and their constellations
\nWill not give their light;
\nThe sun will be darkened in its going forth,
\nAnd the moon will not cause its light to shine.
\n\u201cI will punish the world for its evil,
\nAnd the wicked for their iniquity;
\nI will halt the arrogance of the proud,
\nAnd will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
\nI will make a mortal more rare than fine gold,
\nA man more than the golden wedge of Ophir.
\nTherefore I will shake the heavens,
\nAnd the earth will move out of her place,
\nIn the wrath of the LORD of hosts
\nAnd in the day of His fierce anger.
\nIt shall be as the hunted gazelle,
\nAnd as a sheep that no man takes up;
\nEvery man will turn to his own people,
\nAnd everyone will flee to his own land.
\nEveryone who is found will be thrust through,
\nAnd everyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
\nTheir children also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
\nTheir houses will be plundered
\nAnd their wives ravished. (Isaiah 13:9-16)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Prophesies are often given as poetry to increase their emotional impact. God\u2019s judgment against Babylon is rendered even more horrific thanks to that choice.<\/p>\n

Like the Assyrians before them, the Babylonians were guilty of harming God\u2019s chosen people. So the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persians within the lifetime of Daniel the prophet, who had been carried to Babylon and served under Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s grandson, who saw a hand writing on the wall, would die at the hands of Cyrus and his Persian army.<\/p>\n

Most of the time the words translated \u201cworld\u201d and \u201cearth\u201d refer not to the planet, but rather a land\u2014in this case, the land of Babylon. The \u201cday of the Lord\u201d is used to describe any time of God\u2019s judgment. In this case, Isaiah employs this language against Babylon, predicting its downfall. The darkening of the stars, moon and sun that he describes are literally fulfilled in the destruction of the city: the flames that consume it, and the smoke that rises, blacken the sky\u2014just as Southern California loses sight of the sun and moon during those periods when the fires rage every autumn. Isaiah had doubtless witnessed a few cities burn and so described the experience very vividly.<\/p>\n

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Behold, the day of the LORD comes, Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, To lay the land desolate; And He will destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not give their light; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7586,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7584\/revisions\/7586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}