Heights

In Isaiah 13:3, Yahweh commands and calls His holy warriors to go into battle. They are commanded and called to “My anger,” but they are called to this as those who are “jubilant in My height.” This last phrase is badly mistranslated in the NASB as “proudly exalting ones.” The phrase doesn’t refer to the pride of the warriors, but at their exultation in Yahweh’s exaltation.

Yahweh is “excellent” or “high” in many ways, but the word for “height” here is used in Deuteronomy 33 specifically of His excellency as the Divine Warrior (Deuteronomy 33:26, 29). Yahweh’s consecrated warriors exult in Yahweh their Commander.

Later in the chapter, the same word is used, this time of the “height” of the terrible (Isaiah 13:11). The passage points to competing heights: Yahweh’s excellence, in which His people rejoice, and the exaltation of the arrogant, which leads to cruelty and eventually to destruction.

These are the two great programs in history, Babel and Israel, competing heights.