Isaiah 34:16

"Seek ye out of the book of Jehovah, and read: no one of these shall be missing, none shall want her mate, for my mouth, it hath commanded, and his Spirit, it hath gathered them. And he hath cast lots for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall possess it forever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein."

What is this "book of Jehovah" that Isaiah here invited his audience to seek out and read? It can be none other than the book of the sacred Old Testament, including such things as the writings of Moses in the Pentateuch and that of any of the minor prophets who had preceded Isaiah, and also such other of the sacred writings that then existed; and this line here in Isaiah 34:16 shows that Isaiah knew that his own writings would be attached to that "book" and become a part of it. We do not believe that when Isaiah wrote this that he was, in any sense, suggesting that his prophecy alone was "the book of Jehovah."

"Jehovah himself has cast the lot determining that this land shall belong to the wild animals (or demons). "They shall possess it forever" (Isaiah 34:17). For lo these two thousand years the land of Edom has been the possession of creatures that inhabit the desert and ruins left by man."[11]

The great theme here has been the final judgment, due to fall eventually upon Adam's rebellious and headstrong race. God's indignation has not diminished, and the eternal justice of this was commented upon thus by Payne:

"Every foe of God will one day be utterly banished from the scene. God's children cannot be forever at the mercy of their enemies, here epitomized as Edom. Those who have hounded and harassed them cannot remain forever unpunished. The day of recompense and vengeance is sure to come."[12]

God also has a score to settle with men who fully deserve the indignation and vengeance of our Heavenly Father. He created us in harmonious fellowship with himself in the Paradise of Eden; but man decided to become a servant of Satan, lost his estate and his glorious inheritance, and then set about to take away even the knowledge of God's existence from his posterity. That resulted in a world filled with violence, which God terminated in the Great Deluge.

Beginning over again in the family of Noah, the very knowledge of God was once more in danger of disappearing from the earth, as indicated by the Tower of Babel, which situation God terminated again by confounding the languages of men and by the selection of a "chosen people" who were commissioned to keep alive the name and knowledge of the Heavenly Father until the Messiah would be born.

But the Jews failed to live up to their assignment, and proved to be no better than the Gentiles, from whom God had separated them. As Paul wrote in the first two chapters of Romans they were in no way superior morally to the Gentiles; and when the promised Messiah finally came, they hated him and arranged his murder.

In the current dispensation, the "fullness of the Gentiles" is in the process of having come in; and then the great calamities of that awful period preceding the final judgment will come to pass according to the prophecies; and then will appear that "Day which God has appointed, upon which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has appointed, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he raised him from the dead!" (Acts 17:31).