Season 6, Podcast 77, Isaiah 24:1-23, “The Last Days.”

Season 6, Podcast 77, Isaiah 24:1-23, “The Last Days.”

It is almost as if everything thus far in Isaiah was leading up to Chapter 24. It is very hard hitting, the first three verses describing the devastation of the earth just before the Second Coming of Christ. Since I am relying upon the poetic structure of Isaiah, I shall sometime refer to a group of verses as a stanza. Ancient Hebrew poetry did not use the English structure that we are used to such as sentences, paragraphs, headings, punctuation marks, etc. It used parallelism. A unit of thought is often tied together by repetition, parallelism with variation. Notice in the following, the image begins and ends with the concept of emptiness. 

Isaiah 24:1-3

Behold, the Lord 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 lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word.

Great poetry such as the writings of Isaiah does not always explain itself. It uses images, often of ordinary things, and the reader is required to interpret the image. Notice the images of the above: empty, waste, upside down, scattered, utterly spoiled. All those images are images of total destruction. Also notice the parallel elements: people and priest; servant and master, maid and mistress, etc. Those images suggest that no class is spared, great or small. What happens when you turn a pitcher of water upside down? All the water pours out. In other words, everyone on earth is affected. There will be turmoil and chaos. The economic system will break down, order will break down, hierarchy will break down. The phrase “utterly emptied” suggests the totality of the destruction. 

It is a voice of warning. Those who have ears to hear will prepare for that day. Those who are not prepared will suffer total chaos. Water spills when the lid is not tight. These are signs of the times. Those who are prepared, however, not need to fear. That is the positive message. Those who are caught by surprise will be destroyed. Remember, though Isaiah is a prophet of doom, he is a messenger of hope to the faithful. The purpose of scripture is to prepare us for that day as well as prepare us against all the other calamities of life, what Shakespear called, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” 

The entire earth is affected

Isaiah 24:4

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

To mourn means to fall into deep sorrow. To languish means to lose vitality, to grow weak and feeble. Synonyms are wither, deteriorate, decline, shrivel, and decay. The earth symbolizes the physical earth which means terrible changes in weather. This is echoed by John the Revelator who also prophesied of end-time.

Revelation 7:1

And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.

Without the wind our entire ecosystem would change. We would have extreme temperatures. Pollination and seed distribution would be affected. Pollution would increase. Oceans would change. Many forms of life could not survive, and our own survival would be threatened. It is so devastating that the Lord sent another angel having the seal of the living God to command the four angels: 

Isaiah 7:3

Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.