But I will arise upon them, Sayeth Jehovah of hosts; And I will cut off from Babel Record and remnant, And scion and seed, Saith Jehovah: Yea, I will make it the bittern's heritage, Marshes of water! And I will sweep it with sweeps of destruction, Sayeth Jehovah of hosts.
ISAIAH xxiv. (DATE UNCERTAIN).
The twenty-fourth of Isaiah is one of those chapters, which almost convince the most persevering reader of Scripture that a consecutive reading of the Authorized Version is an impossibility. For what does he get from it but a weary and unintelligent impression of destruction, from which he gladly escapes to the nearest clear utterance of gospel or judgement? Criticism affords little help. It cannot clearly identify the chapter with any historical situation. For a moment there is a gleam of a company standing outside the convulsion, and to the west of the prophet, while the prophet himself suffers captivity.[80] But even this fades before we make it out; and all the rest of the chapter has too universal an application--the language is too imaginative, enigmatic and even paradoxical--to be applied to an actual historical situation, or to its development in the immediate future. This is an ideal description, the apocalyptic vision of a last, great day of judgement upon the whole world; and perhaps the moral truths are all the more impressive that the reader is not distracted by temporary or local references.
[80] vv. 14-16, which are very perplexing. In 14 a company is introduced to us very vaguely as _those_ or _yonder ones_, who are represented as seeing the bright side of the convulsion which is the subject of the chapter. _They cry aloud from the sea_; that is, _from the west_ of the prophet. He is therefore in the east, and in captivity, in the centre of the convulsion. The problem is to find any actual historical situation, in which part of Israel was in the east in captivity, and part in the west free and full of reasons for praising God for the calamity, out of which their brethren saw no escape for themselves.
With the very first verse the prophecy leaps far beyond all particular or national conditions: _Behold, Jehovah shall be emptying the earth and rifling it; and He shall turn it upside down and scatter its inhabitants_. This is expressive and thorough; the words are those which were used for cleaning a dirty dish. To the completeness of this opening verse there is really nothing in the chapter to add. All the rest of the verses only illustrate this upturning and scouring of the material universe. For it is with the material universe that the chapter is concerned. Nothing is said of the spiritual nature of man--little, indeed, about man at all. He is simply called _the inhabitant of the earth_, and the structure of society (ver. 2) is introduced only to make more complete the effect of the convulsion of the earth itself. Man cannot escape those judgements which shatter his material habitation. It is like one of Dante's visions. _Terror, and Pit and Snare upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth! And it shall come to pass that he who fleeth from the noise of the Terror shall fall into the Pit, and he who cometh up out of the midst of the Pit shall be taken in the Snare. For the windows on high are opened, and the foundations of the earth do shake. Broken, utterly broken, is the earth; shattered, utterly shattered, the earth; staggering, very staggering, the earth; reeling, the earth reeleth like a drunken man: she swingeth to and fro like a hammock._ And so through the rest of the chapter it is the material life of man that is cursed: _the new wine_, _the vine_, _the tabrets_, _the harp_, _the song_, and the merriness in men's hearts which these call forth. Nor does the chapter confine itself to the earth. The closing verses carry the effect of judgement to the heavens and far limits of the material universe. _The host of the high ones on high_ (ver. 21) are not spiritual beings, the angels. They are material bodies, the stars. _Then, too, shall the moon be confounded, and the stars ashamed_, when the Lord's kingdom is established and His righteousness made gloriously clear.