Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 23:13

"Behold, the land of the Chaldeans: this people was not; the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness; they set up their towers; they overthrew the palaces thereof; they made it a ruin." — Isaiah 23:13 (ASV)

Behold, the land of the Chaldeans. (Hebrew: land of Kasdim.) The prophet points to the destruction of one power that had resisted Assyria as an example of what Tyre might expect.

The Assyrian inscriptions record the conquests referred to. Sargon relates his victory over the “perverse and rebellious Chaldeans,” who had rebelled under Merodach-baladan (Records of the Past, vii. 41, 45). During these campaigns, towns were pillaged, and 80,570 men were carried away captive from a single city.

Sennacherib (ibid., p. 59) also boasts of having plundered Babylon itself and all the “strong cities and castles of the land of the Chaldeans”; and again, of having crushed another revolt under Suzab the Babylonian (ibid., i. 47-49).

The words that follow this survey are better rendered: This people is no more: Asshur appoints it for the desert beasts. They set up their towers, they destroy its palaces. In this rendering, the “towers” are those of the Assyrian besiegers attacking Babylon, and the “palaces” are those of the attacked.

These words, however, have often been interpreted differently, as pointing to the origin and migration of the Chaldeans. This view suggests they had scarcely any national existence until Assyria brought them into the plains of the Euphrates, and the English version seems based on this interpretation.

It is obvious, however, that such a fragment of ethnological history does not cohere well with the context and gives a less satisfactory meaning. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether this supposed history rests on any adequate evidence.