ISAIAH WAS a wordsmith. And the word he used translated “idols,” ʾĕlîlim, identifies the spiritual nature and origin of the idols he condemned. 

Dr. Christopher B. Hays, citing the work of A. T. Clay published in 1907, identified the origin of ʾĕlîlim as the name of the Mesopotamian deity Ellil, which was the Akkadian form of the Babylonian/Sumerian god Enlil. 

As Derek documented in The Second Coming of Saturn, Ellil/Enlil was the equivalent of the Canaanite father-god El, and thus “the abomination of the Ammonites,” Milcom (i.e., Molech). He was also known as Assur, chief god of the Assyrians, Dagon of the Philistines, Kronos of the Greeks, Saturn of the Romans, and probably Osiris of the Egyptians, among others. 

We believe this entity is also Shemihazah, leader of the sons of God in Genesis 6, whose rebellion created the monstrous Nephilim, the spirits of which became demons upon their deaths in the Flood of Noah. 

Isaiah, then, was condemning not carved blocks of wood or stone, but the demonic spirits they represented—the “gods” of the pagans whom the kingdoms of Israel and Judah continued to worship. 

We’ll see as we get deeper into the Book of Isaiah that the prophet understood the nature of the entities the Israelites were interacting with. The cult of the dead was alive and well in the time of Isaiah.