Isaiah 24:1

DIVISION III

PROPHECIES RELATING TO THE ETERNAL JUDGMENT OF THE LAST DAY (Isaiah 24-27)

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH BY FIRE

God, having in previous prophecies denounced all of the great and powerful nations of the earth, "Now declares the judgments impending on the people of God themselves, for their wickedness and apostasy; and the desolation that shall be brought on their whole country."[1] Although some scholars still hold to this understanding of the chapter, our own opinion is that all four chapters of this division are a prophecy of the eschatological conclusion of the Christian dispensation, that is, the final judgment. Excellent reasons underlie this conclusion. First, there is the word `earth,' which occurs no less than "sixteen times in this very chapter."[2] Lowth and others have misunderstood this as a reference to Palestine only; but, Isaiah 24:4 makes it certain that `earth' here must mean `the whole inhabited world,' and not merely `the land' of Palestine."[3]

Hailey hesitated to apply this to the final judgment day and cited good reasons for not doing so. However, there is an undeniable reference here to conditions that elsewhere in the Bible are definitely associated with that Final Day. Although it may be freely admitted that the Final Day itself does not appear in the passage, many things undeniably "associated with that day" do indeed appear. For example, Isaiah 24:10 states that "the waste city is broken down"; and in Revelation 16:19, the Lord revealed that in the near conjunction with the final judgment, "the cities of the Gentiles fell." Also, "The earth shall stagger like a drunken man" and is "shaken violently" (Isaiah 24:19,20). Now read the description of the onset of judgment in Revelation 6:12ff. Even the sun and the moon appear "confounded" here (Isaiah 24:23) even as in Revelation.

In the light of all this, it appears that the proper resolution of the problem would be to understand these four chapters as describing the conditions on earth that shall immediately precede the last day.

Isaiah 24:1-3

"Behold, Jehovah maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. 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. The earth shall be utterly emptied, and utterly laid waste; for Jehovah hath spoken this word."

These words cover the same occasion mentioned by Zephaniah in the first three verses of his prophecy, where God declared that, "I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith Jehovah. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the birds of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea ... and I will cut off man from the face of the ground, saith Jehovah" (Zephaniah 1:2-3). The last clause here is equivalent to: "I will wipe this Adamic race off the face of the earth." What Isaiah prophesies here might indeed be the prelude to the ultimate destruction promised. As Cheyne said, "The mysteriousness of the language ought to be no difficulty for those who recognize the eschatalogical nature of the prophecy."[4]

Isaiah 24:2 foretells the demolition of all class and social distinctions. Compare this with the seven classes of all men given in Revelation 6:15: "kings, princes, captains, rich, strong, every bondman, and every freeman." Both passages say simply that "Nobody, but nobody is going to escape the final judgment."

Isaiah 24:3 speaks of the earth being utterly emptied and laid waste. Indeed this is not "the end"; but the earth shall indeed suffer as indicated here. "Rival armies have carried fire and sword all over it."[5] Environmentalists this very day are screaming that the pollution of the earth has already reached a danger point. Rawlinson pointed out that Jesus himself prophesied these very conditions: "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of war, but the end is not yet ... all these things are the beginning of sorrows" (Matthew 24:6-8). We might indeed apply these last words of Jesus' prophecy, "the beginning of sorrows" to these prophetic chapters of Isaiah.