Isaiah 66:24

24. They shall go forth The restored of the true Israel, embracing all devout Jews and converted Gentiles, constitute a vast host, enclosed within the walls of the typical, but now holy, Jerusalem. They have been collected from all regions of the earth. Already Jehovah has closed fiery judgment with apostate Israel, and has gathered the corpses of “the slain of the Lord” into the Hinnom valley (now called Gehenna) below, there to have unending consumption by unquenched fire and never-dying worm. The happy denizens of Jerusalem are called to go forth and survey the scene. The place, once by our prophet called Tophet, (Isaiah 30:33,) and more fully so called by Jeremiah, (Jeremiah 7:30-33; Jeremiah 19:6-15,) to which also our Lord alludes, (Mark 9:44; Mark 9:46; Mark 9:48,) was at one time the scene of Moloch worship; hence the name Tophet a drum beaten to drown the cries of infants sacrificed to Moab’s god, Moloch. Hence, too, the whole imagery here, that of illustrating the horrors of doom befalling apostates from the true God, and the future punishment to all who incorrigibly are defiant of Jehovah to the last.

For purposes of Isaiah’s profound drama, herewith closed, this is a fitting and legitimate monumental scene; on this, want of space does not allow enlargement. It is, moreover, with some grotesqueness, a didactic scene. Prediction is in the scene, the object of which is, first, the New Jerusalem of the world to come; and second, the eternal misery of condemned ones. The picture is drawn in figures from the present world figures from the present life adapted to the realities of the life to come. This, however, is just the distinction between the Old Testament and the New the former bringing down the life to come to the end of this life, while the latter does just the opposite. (This thought is due to Delitzsch.) He says: “The New Jerusalem of our prophet has indeed a new heaven above it and a new earth under it, but it is only the old Jerusalem of earth lifted up to its highest glory and happiness; whereas the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse comes down from heaven, and is therefore of a heavenly nature. In the former dwells the Israel that has been brought back from exile; in the latter, the risen Church of those who are written in the Book of Life. And whilst our prophet transfers the place in which the rebellious are judged to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem itself; in the Apocalypse the lake of fire in which the life of the ungodly is consumed, and the abode of God with men, are for ever separated. The Hinnom valley outside Jerusalem has become Gehenna, and this is no longer within the precincts of Jerusalem, because there is no need of any such example to the righteous who are for ever perfect.”