C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Isaiah 13:4-5

Isa 13:4-5

The command of Jehovah is quickly executed. The great army is already coming down from the mountains. “Hark, a rumbling on the mountains after the manner of a great people; hark, a rumbling of kingdoms of nations met together! Jehovah of hosts musters an army, those that have come out of a distant land, from the end of the heaven: Jehovah and His instruments of wrath, to destroy the whole earth.” Kōl commences an interjectional sentence, and thus becomes almost an interjection itself (compare Isa 52:8; Isa 66:6, and on Gen 4:10). There is rumbling on the mountains (Isa 17:12-13), for there are the peoples of Eran, and in front the Medes inhabiting the mountainous north-western portion of Eran, who come across the lofty Shahu (Zagros), and the ranges that lie behind it towards the Tigris, and descend upon the lowlands of Babylon; and not only the peoples of Eran, but the peoples of the mountainous north of Asia generally (Jer 51:27) - an army under the guidance of Jehovah, the God of hosts of spirits and stars, whose wrath it will execute over the whole earth, i.e., upon the world-empire; for the fall of Babel is a judgment, and accompanied with judgments upon all the tribes under Babylonian rule.