Poems about Northern Powers: Introduction to Chapters 13–23:  Chapter 12 would have made a fine ending to a book, and perhaps it once did. Isaiah has warned Judah of calamity to come, then looked at the other side of trouble to the punishment of the troublers themselves and to the fulfillment of Yahweh’s purpose for Israel “in that day.” Isaiah 13 then marks a new start. The word oracle announces something new; this distinctive title will introduce most of the sections within this next major division of the book, chapters 13–23. To judge from the contents, massa’ does not necessarily suggest an oracle in the narrow sense of an actual word from Yahweh. It can be (among other things) an imaginative picture, a lament, or a poem—in other words, any kind of prophetic composition. In Isaiah, at …