Isaiah's Seven Nations
Isaiah 11:11 speaks of eschatological blessing for seven nations: Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar (Babylon), and Hamath.
Isaiah 13-19 speaks of judgements on seven gentile nations: Babylon, Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Damascus, Cush, and Egypt.
Isaiah 21-25 speaks of oracles against seven lands: Babylon, Dumah, Arabia, Jerusalem, Tyre, Sidon, and the earth.
The image of “seven nations” is meant to call our minds back to the “seventy nations” that were created after the Tower of Babylon incident in Genesis 10-11,1 and you’ll notice that the only nation that shows up in all three of these lists is “Babylon.”
This seems intentional because the Babylonian king spoken of in Isaiah 14 is arguably Satan, given he’s called a “morning star” (cf. Job 38:7), and he reverses the narrative arc of the Suffering Servant.2 If this is the case, then it fits perfectly with the fact that Deuteronomy 32:8 speaks of the Tower of Babylon incident as one in which the nations were given over to Satan and his demons. The point of Isaiah’s oracles seems to be: the nations will be brought down along with their true ruler, the Devil.3
This allusion is further supported by the fact that almost all of the nations mentioned in Isaiah 11-25 are explicitly found in the table of nations from Genesis 10: Assyria (10:11), Egypt (10:6), Pathros (10:14), Cush (10:6), Elam (10:22), Shinar-Babylon (10:10), Hamath (10:18), Philistia (10:14), and Sidon (10:15).
Whereas, in Isaiah 14:13-15, the Day Star tries to “ascend above the stars of heaven” but is “brought to the grave,” the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 52-53 willingly “pours out his soul to death” before He’s “exalted” to be with the Lord.
It’s worth mentioning that this is the very logic undergirding Revelation 20:1-3. The devil is “bound for a thousand years” in order that he “might not deceive the nations any longer.”