Isaiah 13:21
21 But wild beasts of the desert [tsiyiy] shall lie [rabats] there;
and their houses [bayith] shall be full [male'] of doleful creatures ['oach];
and owls [bath] [ya`anah] shall dwell [shakan] there,
and satyrs [sa`iyr] shall dance [raqad] there. KJV-Interlinear
21 But desert creatures will lie
down there, And their houses will be full of owls, Ostriches also will live
there, and shaggy goats will frolic there. NASB
The key to this verse
is found in the opening words, the wild beasts of the desert, and that is found
in the word for desert, ‘tsiyiy,’ which refers to animals that live in dry and
desolate places.
That is how Babylon has
been described, as a desolate place supporting no human life, and no preference
for anyone to even want to live there.
Doleful creatures, is a
reference to the sounds of night animals. It’s their scurrying, their clamors,
their howlings, their screeches and yells and night howls.
Satyrs, is a term that
was typically used in mythology referring to deities in the form of monsters or
half man half animal type creatures and was generally used to describe a half
man half goat hairy type of beast, and thus describes wild and certainly not
domestic types of creatures.
The phrase, shall dance
there, is an idiom that refers to free and discrete interaction between these
animals, under cover of darkness, because they are all typically night animals
and scurry about and chattering during the night, and therefore out of the
sight of anyone that might be trying to observe them.
This verse further
describes the dramatic change of what was once a great and prosperous city and
region, that will become a dark and desolate area that will be populated only
by hideous wild animals who pretty much keep to themselves. A place where man once thrived, and now no
one wants to even visit, leaving it to the critters of the night.
