C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Isaiah 14:16-17

Isa 14:16-17

The prophet then continues in the language of prediction. “They that see thee look, considering thee, look at thee thoughtfully: Is this the man that set the earth trembling, and kingdoms shaking? that made the world a wilderness, and destroyed its cities, and did not release its prisoners (to their)home?” The scene is no longer in Hades (Knobel, Umbreit). Those who are speaking thus have no longer the Chaldean before them as a mere shade, but as an unburied corpse that has fallen into corruption. As tēbēl is feminine, the suffixes in Isa 14:17 must refer, according to a constructio ad sensum, to the world as changed into a wilderness (midbâr). Pâthach, to open, namely locks and fetters; here, with baithâh, it is equivalent to releasing or letting go (syn. shillēach, Jer 50:33). By the “prisoners” the Jewish exiles are principally intended; and it was their release that had never entered the mind of the king of Babylon.