Isaiah 24:1-6

IV. JUDAH AND JUDGMENT - Chapter S 24 - 27
A. JUDGMENT ON JUDAH'S ENEMIES, CHAPTER 24
1. JUDGMENT IS SURE

TEXT: Isaiah 24:1-6

1

Behold, Jehovah maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.

2

And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer; so with the seller; as with the creditor, so with the debtor; as with the taker of interest, so with the giver of interest to him.

3

The earth shall be utterly emptied, and utterly laid waste; for Jehovah hath spoken this word.

4

The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the lofty people of the earth do languish.

5

The earth also is polluted under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.

6

Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are found guilty; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.

QUERIES

a.

Is Isaiah 24:1 to be understood literally or hyperbolically?

b.

Why mention all the vocations in Isaiah 24:2?

c.

How was the earth polluted?

PARAPHRASE

Behold, the Lord is about to bring into judgment the whole world of worldliness. Human governments and institutions which have attempted to thwart God's redemptive program and usurp His sovereign reign over man will be utterly emptied of their hold upon man. They will be made a vast wasteland of emptiness compared to His kingdom. Human potentates and human schemes, high and low, rich and poor, powerful and weak will all be dealt with. God is no respecter of persons. God is going to deal a death blow to man's attempt to take over the world. The Lord has spoken this word, and it shall be so! The world and its worldly rulers mourn at their demise. They suffer! They refuse to believe and therefore do not understand. The earth is profaned and polluted through the rebellion and sin of these people. Laws are violated and fear of God is scorned. The structures of society collapse, and all that is good is defiled. This curse of God's moral judgment has devoured man's carnal scheme to usurp Him. The downfall of their schemes proves their guilt. Such a judgment consumes multitudes. Only a few men of faith shall escape it.

COMMENTS

Isaiah 24:1-3 EXTENT OF JUDGMENT: These Chapter s (24-27) form a close connection with the preceding prophecies against the nations (13-23). They are a climactic conclusion to those prophecies. Isaiah is now uniting into one, as it were, all those enemies of God's people which he had previously (13-23) discussed individually. Judah will also be included because many of her people have rebelled against God's sovereign rule. After this widespread judgment upon man's worldly attempts to rebel against God (and incidentally, the same picture is found in Isaiah 2:12 ff), there will come a world-embracing salvation (Isaiah 25:6-8; Isaiah 26:9; Isaiah 26:21; Isaiah 27:1; Isaiah 27:6), with the result that the remnant saved from the four corners of the earth will praise the glory and majesty of God, and many will come from the ends of the earth to worship the Lord in Zion (Isaiah 24:15-16; Isaiah 27:13).

Isaiah 24:1 reminds us of God's scattering mankind at the Tower of Babel. There man sought to unite all his worldly power to build a tower and assault the gates of heaven. It was a rebellious attack upon the sovereignty of God. After that mankind attempted to unite itself in world-empire status, usurp the Creator's directions and rule, and take over the creation to exploit it for its own selfish purposes. One empire after another attempted thisAssyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. But God triumphed over this scheme of man to wrest the rule of mankind from Him. He did so by establishing His own kingdom among men. It was when this kingdom was established that the ruler of this world was cast out (John 12:31; John 16:11) and that God triumphed over them in Christ (Colossians 2:15). Our comments in the Introduction to Isaiah, Vol. I, and Daniel, Chapter s 2, 7, 8, 9, are relevant to this section of Isaiah. We believe the judgments predicted in these Chapter s (Isaiah 24-27) are the same judgments pronounced in Daniel against world-empire rule, and thus their fulfillments began when the church was established. They will have their consummation when Christ returns at His Second Coming, but man's attempt (actually the devil is behind it all) to take over the world and usurp God's rule was judged and defeated at the cross and the empty tomb. God scattered that attempt. He knocked that image down, ground it to dust and blew it away (cf. Daniel 2). And He did it in the days of the fourth world empire by establishing His eternal kingdom, the Church.

As Isaiah 24:2 points out, human stature and rank makes no difference to God. All those involved in the great human rebellion will be defeated. All will be judged according to their response to the Sovereign Creator and His program of redemption. Human rulers and the ruled alike must submit to Jehovah. No pillar of humanly conceived society or culture will be able to save man. All man's structures are vulnerable to the inevitable judgments of moral rebellion.

The judgment is inevitable because Jehovah is a God of Absolute Holiness and Justice. He is absolutely Moral. His creation is moral and is morally structured. His word is Absolute Truth. When that word is disobeyed, profaned and rejected, the inevitable consequences are falsehood and moral disintegration. God has spoken! It will come to pass!

Isaiah 24:4-6 CAUSE OF JUDGMENT: The cause of the judgment is moral rebellion and disobedience. The judgment takes the form of moral pollution and disintegration of societal structure. The word pollution is a translation of the Hebrew word khanepah. It is used to denote defiling, profaning, or exploiting something until destroyed. To languish is to lose strength or vitality and to droop, wither and fade. Isaiah predicts that the lofty people of the earth will languish when God's judgment falls upon human schemes to usurp His rule. The lofty people are those pagan rulers and nations (Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander the Great, Caesar and their modern-day counterparts) who think to dethrone God, thwart His redemptive work and accomplish through carnal resources what they have decided man needs.

The earth is pictured as mourning and fading away as a flower fades away. Wars, pestilences, famines, diseases are results of the sins of the people and are causing this wasting away. The sinfulness of men has polluted the earth. Falsehood brings moral disobedience. Moral disobedience inevitably brings social disintegration (cf. Romans 1:18-32). This moral malady of man has been transferred to the earth itself so that it is also polluted. Injustice pollutes society (cf. Numbers 35:29-34). Murder cannot go unpunished (nor other injustices) without polluting society! When man (who has been made lord of creation by the Creator) deliberately chooses falsehood and moral anarchy, he communicates to the creation beneath him the pollution of his own moral failure, with the result that the polluted earth reacts in judgment upon him to his own destruction.

When man selfishly exploits, wastes, profanes and spoils what God has created to be good, he eventually finds he has perverted and cursed himself. He suddenly awakens to the fact that he is the guilty culprit. This discovery repeats itself nearly every 200-300 years. Man in greed and pride perverts animate and inanimate creation until he destroys his culture and societal structure, He realizes that good men and good things are in the minority. He realizes that he is responsible for his own predicament, But where does he turn? Still, men will not repent! (cf. Revelation 9:20-21).

QUIZ

1.

What connection is there between Chapter s 24-27 to 13-23?

2.

Why did God scatter the inhabitants of the earth?

3.

When did God scatter them?

4.

Who did God scatter?

5.

How was the earth and mankind polluted?

6.

What connection does the pollution have to the curse devouring the earth?