Back to the archive

Verse of the day Waiting

A cloaked watchman stands at the parapet of an ancient stone wall before dawn, looking out over a dark plain as the horizon faintly pales.
This image was made for EmberKeeper. It is an imagined scene, not a photograph of a biblical place, person or event.

“Watchman, what is left of the night? Watchman, what is left of the night?” The watchman replies, “Morning has come, but also the night. If you would inquire, then inquire. Come back yet again.”

Isaiah 21:11-12 Berean Standard Bible

He does promise morning. He also says the night is coming, and tells them to come back and ask again.

Someone is shouting up from the hills of Seir, in the dark, and asking the same question twice. Watchman, what is left of the night?

It is the question of anyone who has been awake too long waiting for something to end. How much more of this is there.

The watchman’s answer is short, and it refuses to be simple. Morning has come, but also the night.

The first half is real. He is not withholding hope, and morning is not a figure of speech here. But he will not say it on its own. The same sentence that announces the dawn says the dark is not finished, and for this caller, in this chapter, that is the honest report. Isaiah 21 is a sequence of oracles against the nations. Whatever Dumah was, it was not being promised an easy season.

Then comes the part that is almost never quoted. If you would inquire, then inquire. Come back yet again.

He does not send the questioner away, and he does not pretend the question has been settled. He tells him to keep asking and to return. A watchman stands at his post through the whole night, and this one assumes the person below will need to come back more than once.

That is more useful to hear than a guarantee. Morning is real. So is the night. You are allowed to keep coming to the wall and asking how long, and nobody up there will think less of you for asking twice.

Why this passage

Context checked: Isaiah 21 is a run of short oracles against the nations, Babylon in 21:1-10, Dumah in 21:11-12 and Arabia in 21:13-17. The caller is in Seir, the hill country associated with Edom (Genesis 36:8), so this is not Israel asking. The lookout image continues from 21:6-8. Where Dumah was is uncertain. Usually quoted as a promise that morning is coming, with "but also the night" and the invitation to keep asking left off.

Scripture in English is from the Berean Standard Bible, which its publisher placed in the public domain on 30 April 2023.