HEBREW WORD STUDY – THE BULGE – BETEN – בטן Beth Teth Nun

Isaiah 13:18: “[Their] bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.”

The context of this verse is a prophecy for Babylon which would be destroyed by the Medes and Persians. We read about this event in the Book of Daniel. This is the story of Belshazzar a ruler of Babylon who was having a big party showing apparently no concern for the gathering storm going on outside. He felt fully confident that he would be able to ward off any attacks by the Medes and Persians encamped outside their city preparing for an attack. This party was, after all, dedicated to the gods of Babylon that Belshazzar put his faith. In fact, to demonstrate his faith in these gods he called for the sacred vessels from the Temple of Israel and he proceeded to desecrate them. Daniel had prophesied from the book of Isaiah that the Medes and Persians would destroy Babylon and even encouraged Babylon to surrender to the Medes and Persians. That quickly put him out favor with Belshazzar until Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall and knew only Daniel could read it. The message was simple, “the party’s over get ready.”

The passage tells us that “the bows shall dash the young men to pieces.” Actually, the word for bow is qesheth which means preparation and would more correctly within this context mean the bowsmen. These were the special forces of the Persian army. They depended upon quantity rather than quality in their attacks. They just aimed their arrows to the sky and let them fly, thousands upon thousands of arrows rained down on the citizens who were going about their business. They would launch their attack suddenly, so suddenly that people did not have a chance to run for shelter. Most of the homes in the city had courtyards that served as their kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom. It was usually surrounded by some flimsy fence. Privacy was not as cherished as it is in the modern Western world. Without air conditioning and modern techniques of ventilation people only had a small shelter to escape to in case of inclement weather. It was just too hot to sleep indoors at night and without modern lighting, the shelter served little value to live indoors where it was perpetually dark. So everyone, soldiers, civilians, men, women children animals were all exposed to a sudden onslaught. I mean suddenly you look up and here, raining down on you are thousands upon thousands of arrows that strike from all four corners of the city with no time to run for shelter

The word for dash to pieces in our Hebrew text is ratash which is really a loan word from the Akkadian language and in the Hebrew is felt by a linguist to be represented by the word sarat. which is a metathesis (a switch in the letter order) of the Akkadian word ratash. Ratash means to smash but sarat means to cut, to slice open, to stab which would be more in the context of an arrow piercing a body. So, the bowsmen will pierce the bodies of the young men. The word young men are the word na’ar with is a word for vigorous youth or young strong men. It is the young men that, like today, a nation looks upon to be their first line of defense.

They will have no pity on the fruit of the womb. This is understood that even unborn babies will suffer and then we read: “their eye will not spare children.” The bowsmen were like our fighter pilots and bombers of today. They do not see their targets, they just drop their bombs on assigned areas which may result in the death of non-combatants, including children. The archers who send their arrows into the air have no idea who, what, or if anyone will be harmed by them. They will not see where their arrows strike and they will never know if they killed a cow, a warrior, a noncombatant, or even a child. The Persians were a little more humane than the Assyrians or Babylonians. They did not kill, just to kill, they only wished to subdue the enemy. The Persian warriors were specifically instructed to not harm anyone who would willfully follow them back to Persian where they would be enslaved, except those who, like the Jewish people, were already enslaved by the Babylonians. These people would be set free so to speak and taken back to Persia to settle and build new homes and businesses. Their conquest was swift. Enemy soldiers were quickly put to death and any resistance met with the sword before they even had a chance to organize.

That is the background of this verse. We do find a wordplay in the verse that gives us some interesting insight into racham. The word womb used in the words fruit of the womb is the word beten which actually means the abdomen. Although there are some cases where it is a reference to the womb as in Genesis 25:24 when speaking of the birth of Esau and Jacob. In its Semitic root, it is a reference to something protruding from the center. It could be a wall or a pillar, it does not have to be organic. Yet, the word is also used for the body, stomach and/or belly. It is concluded that in this context it must refer to the womb as the passage suggest that even children suffered the fate of adults. What is surprising is that the word racham should have been used for womb instead of beten and the word chasad should have been used for pity or mercy rather than racham. This is a remez, a hint that there is a deeper meaning likely found in this case in a wordplay. The word racham means a mother’s love for an infant child that she carried in her womb. Not even the tender love of a mother for her unborn or newly born child would move the hearts of the warriors who attack. Not even that would stop their carnage.

A young newlywed couple clinging to each in love likely would not stop a warrior from the slaughter, but to kill a baby, a newborn baby might even give a hardened warrior pause. During World War II before the United States entered the war, foreign correspondents/photojournalists would send back photos from China taken when the Imperial Japanese Army waged war against China. There were many devastating photos but according to historians, the one photo that gripped the hearts of the American people causing them to rethink the United State’s position of isolation was a photo a baby, no more than a year old, sitting alone in the smoking ruins of a city crying. It is one thing to see pictures of fallen soldiers and even civilians who perish as collateral damage in a war devasted area. But the picture of living children alone and terrified creates a different set of emotions in the human being. It is even common knowledge that in prisons the prisoners who are most vulnerable to violence by other prisoners are those who were child molesters. Even harden criminals have little to no respect for a child molester. There is just something different in the psyche of the human being that wants to protect a small child or infant.

The word racham, the love from heaven itself, the love that created this world, the love that is buried deep within the human soul may have been used by God with intention in this passage. It was used to describe in the most ultimate terms the utmost cruelty, wanton disregard for life and lack of mercy that would be shown in the invasion that was to come to Babylon. The death of an innocent newly born child somehow strikes outrage even in the most hardened soul. That is because a baby, an infant is the most illustrative picture that God could give to help us even begin to understand the love of racham, the love that He has for us, the love that created this world.