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Isaiah 13:11 · World English Bible

Isaiah 13:11 Meaning I Will Punish the World

I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity. I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will humble the arrogance of the terrible.

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What does Isaiah 13:11 mean?

Pride is a swelling that makes a person feel larger than the truth, until he forgets that every power he leans on was only lent. The cure is to trace each strength back to its source: the strong arm, the sharp mind, the fear he inspires, all of it on loan and due back.

From the Sufism reading below.

Isaiah 13:11 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

SUFISM

Sufism

Pride is a swelling that makes a person feel larger than the truth, until he forgets that every power he leans on was only lent. The cure is to trace each strength back to its source: the strong arm, the sharp mind, the fear he inspires, all of it on loan and due back.

The One who ends this arrogance is not far off. He is the very ground the proud man stands on, and the hand that seems to bring him low is the same hand that first gave him everything to stand with.

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Live Isaiah 13:11 today

  1. Take one thing you are quietly proud of today, your memory, your health, your eye for detail, and trace it back to where it came from. You did not install it in yourself.
  2. Let someone correct you today without defending yourself. No explanation, no context, just hear it and say they may be right.
  3. When you have the upper hand, in a negotiation, with a slow support agent, with your kid at the dinner table, use less of it than you have. The power was lent to you, and so was theirs.

What strength do you treat as yours, forgetting you were handed it?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 9

Fill a cup past the brim and it spills, sharpen a blade too far and it dulls. Whatever is pushed to its extreme turns back on itself.

Stoicism · Epictetus

Nothing you call yours is truly yours, your body, your reputation, your position, all of it is borrowed and can be asked back. Hold it that way and losing it stops being a catastrophe.

Judaism · Pirkei Avot

Know where you came from and where you are going, and the swelling settles on its own. The reminder is not an insult, it is accurate.

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