John Calvin Commentary Isaiah 13:8

"and they shall be dismayed; pangs and sorrows shall take hold [of them]; they shall be in pain as a woman in travail: they shall look in amazement one at another; their faces [shall be] faces of flame." — Isaiah 13:8 (ASV)

Pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them. The word צירים (tzirim), being ambiguous, the Greek translators render it ambassadors. But the comparison of a woman who travails, which is added immediately afterwards, sufficiently proves that it denotes pangs. For here, as if by a single word, he explains what he had previously said: that their hearts will be melted and their hands will be weakened; because, he says, they will be struck with terror and dismay.

From where does this terror come? From God. This kind of terror, for which there was no apparent cause, the ancients called a panic. They gave the name panes to apparitions and objects of this sort, by which people were terrified, even when there was no outward object that should have excited the terror. It was not without reason that they did so; but still they erred through gross ignorance, because they did not understand that it proceeded from God.

As a woman who travails. Regarding the inhabitants of Babylon, there was, indeed, just ground for fear when they saw that they were attacked by valiant and warlike nations. Yet the Prophet threatens that, though they were able to resist, they would still be like people who were half dead, because through the secret operation of God they fainted and fell down. To the same purpose is what he adds, Every one shall be amazed at his neighbor; this is like when people are agitated and stare around them in every direction. And not only so, but when no hope of safety is to be seen, they are like people who have lost their senses and abandon themselves to indolence.

Faces of flames their faces. This clause, in which he attributes to them faces of flames, expresses still more strongly the violence of the terror. Some think that it denotes shame, as if he had said in a single word, They shall blush; but this is too feeble. Isaiah intended to express something greater and more dreadful, for when we are in agony the face glows, and the pressure of grief makes us burn. Indeed, it would be treating the matter too lightly, when the calamity was so severe, to interpret these words as denoting shame. He describes a calamity so distressing that, on account of its severity, flames burst forth from the face, which usually happens when people are agonized by intense grief.

The comparison of a travailing woman denotes not only the intensity of the grief, but also the suddenness with which it seized them. As the calamity would be severe and violent, so Isaiah threatens that it will be sudden, and not without good reason. For the inhabitants of Babylon, protected by such strong defenses, would never have thought that it was possible for any trouble to reach or distress them.