Daily Posts

Scholars believe the events of chapters 38 and 39 happened before those of chapters 36 and 37.

Hezekiah’s warm welcome of the Babylonians was a problem because his showing off demonstrated pride in what he owned and what he had accomplished. Doubtless the main reason the envoys were there was to form an alliance with the king of Judah, and Hezekiah apparently did so without consulting God about it.

I have used Hezekiah’s approach to God in a moment of crisis as a model for my own prayers. When he received the message from the king of Assyria, he laid it out before God. I envision my own prayers as that: laying the situation out before God and letting Him decide what He wants to do about it rather than telling Him what He should do about it. That approach leaves Him free to change His mind or not without it causing a crisis of my faith when He doesn’t do what I want Him to do.

The beginning of chapter 35 is another one of those jumps from desolation to hope. This chapter is about transformation.

The question that remains about this passage is, to what time is the prophecy referring? It definitely speaks of a day yet to come, after Jesus returns for us. But I believe it is even broader than that, and refers to the difference Messiah’s coming makes. Thus, it would refer to the time from Jesus’ resurrection onward, which also encompasses Messiah’s kingdom in our current age. It teaches about the transformation Messiah makes in our lives now.

Consider the transformation of which it speaks.

• From parched to glad. Have you ever suffered a dry time in your life, when it feels like God is far off and there is no spiritual power? As the song says, we were made to thrive. Are you thriving spiritually, growing, bearing fruit, and giving shade to others?
• From wilderness to rejoicing and blossoming. The word “wilderness” did not bring to the original readers’ minds scenes like our nation’s purple mountain majesties or lush green forested hills. The wilderness of their land was very dry and rocky, unattractive in its monochrome drabness, threatening in its inability to support life. In a day when people depended on the land to produce what they needed to live on for the coming year, wilderness was not an appealing place. A human life can also be a wilderness. From drab and devoid of life, to blossoming beauty is a miraculous transformation. Are you blossoming as a result of Jesus’ transforming power in your life over sin and its effects?
• Shouting for joy speaks of uncontainable joy. Are you joyful?
• Lebanon was known for those wonderful highly-valued cedar trees; Sharon and Carmel were areas of great agricultural abundance in ancient Israel. These references speak of thriving, fruit-bearing abundance, and would further imply living the good life to the original readers. Spiritually speaking, this doesn’t refer to a life of ease and comfort, but it has its own appeal in stability, security, wisdom, faithfulness, and meaning. Is the life you’re living in Jesus’ transforming power the kind of life that appeals to others in these ways?
• Spiritual blindness and deafness spoken of throughout Isaiah, that keeps people from perceiving the truth and repenting, will no longer be a problem. Are you spiritually responsive to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, or are you satisfied with where you are spiritually?
• Streams of running water in the desert, pools of water instead of burning sand speak of relief, refreshment, and abundance in place of barrenness. The transformation is from lifeless to life-giving. Life includes growth and reproduction; do these characterize you?
• The Way of Holiness will be a highway, not a narrow way. This speaks of easy, swift and secure progress. This way will only be for those who already walk in the way of holiness, which encompasses purity and dedication to God. With no way for the unclean or wicked to journey on, they will not be welcome. Are you worthy of walking on that way in your current purity and dedication to God?
• No lion seeking someone to devour.
• Sorrow and sighing fleeing away, and instead the redeemed will be overtaken by everlasting joy and gladness.

This transformation is supposed to be true of our lives. Today’s reading is an opportunity for us to evaluate prayerfully how we have allowed Messiah’s power to transform us, and to seek God’s help in making any changes necessary to see that transformation realized in us. It’s also a reminder of how great is the salvation that God has provided for us in Jesus.

Isaiah 31 challenges us to consider in whom we trust. Here God is again finding fault with His people because they look to Egypt for help in times of distress instead of seeking His help. His going on and on about it could seem tiresome to us, or it could communicate to us that God truly and deeply takes offense at the refusal of His people to seek refuge in Him. The result of their seeking help from elsewhere will be that the men in whom they trust will stumble, and God’s people themselves will fall. For God can make the strong man panic, and terrify the many warriors. Although Isaiah doesn’t mention it, we must also consider that God can also make investments fail and jobs end and abilities fade. What we’re trusting in can stumble in its own fashion, causing us to fall.

Chapter 34 talks about God’s judgment on the nations, and yet He keeps referring to Edom. Recall that prophets we have read previously foretold complete destruction of Edom. In a previous post commenting on one of those prophecies, I provided links to photos of the land that was once Edom. Burning pitch may be an exaggeration of the desolation of that land, but it is certainly dry, and one can imagine from the pictures the heat of that dry land. No one except wildlife is living in those impressive structures or enjoying the luxuries their extraordinary innovation and industry gained them. As God has fulfilled His word to Edom, He can fulfill His word to bring utter destruction on any nation, and on all nations.

These chapters switch between pronouncements of judgement and images of what restoration will be like. It makes for difficult reading for us, but that organization effectively reveals to us that God is not all about judgment. For in the midst of His pronouncements of judgment He can’t help but break in with the encouraging promise of restoration to follow. It’s almost as if He can’t stand to speak too long about judgment without looking past it to what He intends for it to accomplish. The only way He can bear to talk about the destruction is to relieve it with periodic descriptions of the building up made possible by the tearing down. Rather than be annoyed or confused by the organization of these chapters, let’s rejoice in the hope with which the bad news of judgment is interspersed.

So in between the woes God pronounces in these chapters are descriptions of the day when a King will reign righteously…. I encourage you to make a list of all the characteristics of that rule. Which of them means the most to you? Verse 33:6 is precious to me. In the midst of big changes in my life, changes I have dreaded, changes that have me living like I never dreamed I’d live, God is the stability of my times. In the midst of lean times, He is a wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge. Surely there are descriptions in here to feed your soul in your present situation; if they are not clearly evident to you, please seek what God has for you today in these words meant to give hope.

There are a lot of difficult-to-understand passages here that might tempt us to give up on understanding prophecy. I hope to be able to give a better understanding without making this post too long. The message in Isaiah is too good to miss!

In chapter 28, the crown is a reference to the leaders of Israel, whom God is preparing to punish using a “strong and mighty agent” that He’s going to “cast down to earth with His hand.” (That agent would be Assyria, and that treading underfoot came in 722 B.C., as we read in II Kings 17.) Even the religious leaders were mocking the words of God sent through His prophets, believing they were too sophisticated to heed their messages. My Bible has the following footnote for verse 28:10: “These Hebrew monosyllables, imitating the babbling of a child, mock the prophet’s preaching.” Then in verse 13, “The Lord responds to their scoffing by imitating their mockery, to represent the unintelligible language of a conqueror.” The covenant with death they think they have made is the same lie people believe today, that death is not the awful thing it truly is, that it shouldn’t drive them to God for rescue. God’s glorious answer to that deception is Messiah. The man who continues to seek repose in such lies will find them inadequate to stretch out on, and too short to cover himself; he will be left exposed on the day he is confronted with the truth. Think about what a terrifying prospect that will be.

The cultivation object lesson in chapter 28 is teaching about the appropriateness of the infinitely wise God’s methods for bringing His rebellious people to the point where they bear worthwhile fruit. Plowing, sowing (which was done by scattering seed in those days), threshing, crushing the seed coating – cultivation is rough. It requires breaking up hard ground (are we hard ground?), scattering, beating and crushing. His methods at time seem harsh, but they aren’t unnecessarily so, and they don’t last any longer than necessary to bring the desired result.

Chapter 29 pronounces woe on the city of Jerusalem. In other places in prophecy God points out that there was still hope for Judah at this point in their history, for they were more faithful to Him than Israel was. However, they were only going through the motions, more devoted to their traditions and practices than they were to God Himself. They were too blind and stupidly drunk on their sin to be able to perceive the truth of their condition. Is that anything like God’s people today? In His addressing Jerusalem, the place where He dwelt, we can’t see a reference to the U.S. in this object lesson, but a reference to the Church – to us. Let’s not miss it by failing to perceive the truth as they did.

God had a remedy in mind for this inability to perceive the truth. He called it a “wondrously marvelous” remedy; we generally don’t see the necessary remedy as a wondrous work. For the remedy He describes is a tearing down, a leveling. For it seems that only in the “gloom and darkness” of his lowest point can man (or woman) look to God in a way that enables him to truly see. It is when we come to God needy that we are prepared to hear from Him. He’s not talking about hearing the babble and nodding our heads in response, but hearing in a way that changes us and compels us to obey.

Chapter 30 describes how His people were sinning: they were making plans without consulting Him, and they were seeking their security in Egypt instead of in God. Do we consider that awful sin? Those aren’t the biggies that generally come to mind when we think of sin; those are way down the list, so far down on the list that they may actually fall off the list in our estimation of sin. However, God judged His Old Testament people for such sin. He doesn’t consider it minor sin. Sin produces sin, and the sin piles up until it can no longer be confined, breaking out of whatever walls we think we’ve constructed to keep it curbed. Sin – any sin – is a problem.

God has a remedy for that sin and the destructive, useless mess it results in: repentance and rest, quietness and trust. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Resting in Him. Trusting in Him. He doesn’t want to plow us up, beat us, crush us forever; no, He “longs to be gracious” to us and waits to show us compassion. Why would we ever resist Him?

Hopefully we will give these prophecies careful thought, and give our own hearts, minds and lives careful thought in light of them. I pray that we long for God, rather than scratching the surface and settling for self-satisfaction, and that we will see ourselves as needy, so needy that we are driven to Him for rescue.

Phoenicia was the commercial power of the Mediterranean world in ancient times, and Tyre and Sidon were its chief cities. With a monopoly on shipping throughout the Mediterranean, Phoenicia was very wealthy, cultured and esteemed by all with whom she conducted business.  Her wealth bought her security. Tyre was considered particularly safe because it occupied an island off the coast and built security measures virtually impossible to breach from the water. No enemy dared to bother with that fortress. However, the fulfillment of the prophecy about the destruction of Tyre’s stronghold was fulfilled in 573 BC under Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and again in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great. As Isaiah 23 predicted, there was great anguish in the Mediterranean world at the fall of Tyre; anyone was vulnerable if Tyre could be breached.

Chapters 24 – 27 are pretty straightforward. I encourage you to read these chapters prayerfully, asking God to direct your thoughts to where He wants to teach you, and making a little time to contemplate what He shows you and what more He wants to show you.

Cush was south of Egypt, a powerful enough kingdom to take control of Egypt more than once in Egypt’s history. At the time of this prophecy they were in control of Egypt.

Egypt’s downfall was unimaginable because it had always been a world power. Apart from the Chinese, Egypt was the longest-lasting civilization in the world, stretching from around 3100 B.C. to just before Jesus’ life on earth when the Romans conquered it and drained its wealth and glory. That’s a history measured not centuries but in millennia! Remember that in Abraham’s day Egypt offered a refuge of abundance and stability when Canaan suffered famine; it had been a place to which God’s people looked whenever they were in trouble. History reveals that an Assyrian king did defeat Egypt and take the throne in 671 B.C. Notice that God didn’t foretell Egypt’s destruction, but a downfall, a plague, and their turning to Him so that He can heal them. Of course we know that Egypt has waxed and waned, but has always existed. Isn’t it amazing that after all the history with Egypt, God wanted to heal them instead of destroy them?

The prophecy of the downfall of Egypt probably made the prophecy about the breaching of Jerusalem’s walls believable to some of Isaiah’s readers, but Judah was still counting on God’s presence in their midst inside the Most Holy Place of the Temple, to protect them. They failed to comprehend that their Temple worship based on the Law given through Moses, was not going to shield them from destruction.

To the first readers of this book, if God truly accomplished what He said He would do in these prophesies, He would be doing astounding acts. History shows that He did them. Let’s not forget that God is capable of astounding acts even at the international level.

Babylon wasn’t a threat to the remaining kingdom of Judah at the time this was written. They inhabited modern Iraq, and were growing into a power worthy of confronting the Assyrians (with God’s help, raised up to be His instrument of judgment on the Assyrians), but we haven’t heard anything about them in the history we’ve read in Kings and Chronicles as of yet. They would rise to overthrow the Assyrians and take over and even enlarge the vast empire Assyria had built. When they did, their overthrow would be inconceivable. So the prophecy here is remarkable. Coming at a time before Babylon had even risen to power, in a way this prophecy foretells not only the end of Babylon, but what a great power it would become, as well.

The Day of the Lord is a day of unimaginable destruction. We know that we expect some of the catastrophes described here to happen in the end times in preparation for a new earth. So this prophecy is telling about that time still to come. An army coming from the ends of the heavens, all the heavenly lights darkened, world-wide punishment, earthquakes shaking the earth from its place – this speaks of the final destruction spoken of in Revelation. Yet this prophecy is about Babylon. The fall of that empire was not accompanied by heavenly wonders or earthquakes, but it was earth-shaking to the people who experienced it. The end of the Babylonian empire was so devastating it was like the end of the world. So the destruction foretold here applies to two distinct times:  metaphorically describing the end of the Babylonian empire, and literally describing the end times yet to come. Relating the two gives us a greater understanding about the fall of Babylon.

Verses 14:12-15 describe Satan’s experience. I don’t know how scholars know that, but it is accepted by Bible scholars that this passage refers in part to Satan. The whole counsel of Scripture corroborates this account.

The peoples whose destruction was foretold in these chapters were people like us: they loved their children; they desired the good things life had to offer and worked to build a good life for themselves; they wanted security. Many of them doubtless felt secure in their walled cities, worshiping the gods that were supposed to protect them as they supposedly had protected their ancestors for centuries. As God revealed to His prophet Isaiah, they would be gone – not having faded away over time, but destroyed suddenly. These passages make dull reading for us because the people they talk about are so far gone that they have been long forgotten and are unknown to us. They were not dull reading to Isaiah’s first readers, because they knew these peoples well, had suffered destruction at their hands at times in their history, and ongoing threats from them. Our lack of knowledge of them is proof of God’s power over mankind, and His willingness and ability to judge.