In Isaiah, chapter twenty-one, verse two, “A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease.” Elam was located east of the Tigris River, and Babylon bordered on the north by Media and Assyria and on the south by the Persian Gulf. The Elamites were allied with the Medo-Persian army when Babylon was conquered in “those days” of the Old Testament. The Elamite city of Susa became the capital of the Persian empire.
A vision or prophecy, predicting the dreadful calamities for Babylon. In these words the prophet either describes the sin of the Chaldeans, for which God would send the following judgment upon them, namely, they persisted in the practice of treachery and rapine, to which they had been so long accustomed; or he speaks of the Medes and Persians, and represents them as paying the Babylonians in their own coin, and using the same treachery and violence toward them which they had used toward others.
Babylon had long oppressed and ravaged other countries, and it was now her turn to be oppressed and ravaged. Elam was an eminent province of Persia, bordering upon Media, and is here put for Persia in general. God here gives the Medes and Persians their commission to go up and take Babylon, and thereby to put an end to the sighs and groans of the captive people, and of other nations held in bondage, and oppressed by that tyrannical and cruel empire.
O Elam – the name of the country originally possessed by the Persians, and was called from Elam, a son of Shem, in Genesis ten, verse twenty-two. “The children of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.”