(Isa. 14:4–8)
“The traits and the behavior which Isaiah denounces as the worst of vices are without exception those of successful people … The very wickedest people in the Book of Mormon are the Zoramites. A very proud, independent, courageous, industrious, enterprising, patriotic, prosperous, people who attended strictly to their weekly religious duties with the proper observance of dress standards. Thanking God for all he had given them and bearing testimony to his goodness. They were sustained in all their doings by a perfectly beautiful self-image. Well, what is wrong with any of that? There is just one thing that spoils it all and that is the very thing that puts Israel in bad with the Lord… . and yet … By far the commonest charge Isaiah brings against the wicked is “oppression” ‘ashaq. The word means to choke, to grab by the neck and squeeze, grasp, or press, to take the fullest advantage of someone in your power, in short, to maximize profits. It is all centralized in “Babylon … the golden city, the oppressor,” (14:4). Which gives us instant insight into the social and economic structure of Isaiah’s world. It is a competitive and predatory society, “Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough. And (leaders) they are shepherds that cannot understand (they do not know what is going on): because everyone is looking out for himself —’they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter’” (56:11).
The charge applies to our own day when “… every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own God, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great which shall fall.” (D&C 1:16). Babylon had flourished long before Isaiah’s day and it was to flourish long after… . Its philosophy is no where better expressed than in the words of Korihor: “ … every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength … and whatsoever a man did was no crime” (Alma 30:17).
(Hugh W. Nibley, “Great Are the Words of Isaiah,” Sidney B. Sperry Symposium [Provo, Utah: Religious Instruction, BYU, January 28, 1978], 198–99.)
This section of the poem describes the beginning of the Millennium, when Satan will be bound and the earth will rest. The reference is to rulers who have come under the influence of Satan and not solely to Nebuchadnezzar or one of his successors. The binding of Satan at the beginning of the thousand years is also prophesied in the New Testament (see Rev. 20:1–3), the Book of Mormon (see 1 Ne. 22:26), and the Doctrine and Covenants (see 43:31; 88:110; 101:28). First Nephi 22:15 suggests that the prophecy of the binding of Satan used by Nephi may have been taken from Isaiah.
(Monte S. Nyman, Great Are the Words of Isaiah [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980], 85.)
There were three notable occasions when this verse was literally fulfilled for the Jews. The first was when they were liberated along with the rest of Israel from captivity and hard bondage under the Egyptians. The second was when they were liberated from the Babylonians by Cyrus and the Persians. The third has been in modern times when powerful dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini established a policy of slave labor camps for Jews, and said they would eventually exterminate all Jews coming within their power. In each of these instances the terrible desolation hanging over the people was suddenly lifted. It was virtually unbelievable at first. And so it will yet be when the Jews face their Armageddon. After much tribulation, it will suddenly end. As with the fall of ancient Babylon in a single night, so shall it be in the latter days. Their oppressors will dissolve into nothing just as the golden city of the Babylonians ceased to be a threat once the Persians had taken over.
(W. Cleon Skousen, Isaiah Speaks to Modern Times [Salt Lake City: Ensign Publishing Co., 1984], 276–277.)