Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 21:2

"A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous man dealeth treacherously, and the destroyer destroyeth. Go up, O Elam; besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease." — Isaiah 21:2 (ASV)

A grievous vision ... — The verse contains, so to speak, the three tableaux that came in succession before the prophet’s gaze:

1. The treacherous dealer, the Assyro-Chaldæan power, spoiling and oppressing, breaking treaties, and, as its kings boasted (Habakkuk 2:5; Records of the Past, vii. 42, 44), “removing landmarks.”
2. The summons to Elam and Media to put an end to this tyranny.
3. The oppressed peoples ceasing to sigh, and rejoicing in their liberation.

Elam appears here as combined with Media, which is named in Isaiah 13:17 as the only destroyer of Babylon, and this has been urged as evidence of a later date. As a matter of fact, however, Sargon at this very time was carrying on a fierce war against Elam (Records of the Past, cvii. 41-49) as well as against Media (ibid, p. 37). In Ezekiel 32:24, Elam is numbered among the extinct nations, but the name, in any case, reappears as applied to the Persians, though they were of a distinct race.

It was, even as a mere forecast, perfectly natural that the two should be associated together as the future destroyers of the Nineveh and Babel empires, which to the prophet’s eye were identical in character and policy. The advance described as “from the wilderness” implies a march of at least part of the Medo-Persian army down the Choaspes and into the lowland of Chuzistan, bordering on the great Arabian desert.