1 Behold, Jehovah maketh the land empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad its inhabitants.
She is empty, and void, and waste; and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and writhing pain is in all loins, and all their faces grow pale.
I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the pools.
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of [the] nations until [the] times of [the] nations be fulfilled.
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee a desolation.
And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be a desolation; and ye shall know that I [am] Jehovah.
In all your dwelling-places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your sun-images may be cut down, and your works may be abolished.
A third part shalt thou burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled; and thou shalt take a third part, [and] smite about it with a knife; and a third part thou shalt scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
and will scatter them among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after them, till I have consumed them.
The land mourneth, it languisheth; Lebanon is ashamed, is withered; the Sharon is become as a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are stripped.
Upon the land of my people shall come up thistles [and] briars, yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city. For the palace shall be deserted, the multitude of the city shall be forsaken; hill and watchtower shall be caves for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks;
For the fortified city is solitary, a habitation abandoned and forsaken like a wilderness; there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume its boughs.
Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days which have not come since the day when Ephraim turned away from Judah -- [even] the king of Assyria. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah will hiss for the fly which is at the extremity of the streams of Egypt, and for the bee which is in the land of Assyria; and they shall come and settle all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and on all thorn-bushes, and on all the pastures. In that day will the Lord, with a razor which is hired beyond the river, with the king of Assyria, shave the head and the hair of the feet, yea, the beard also will it take away. And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep, and it shall come to pass, from the abundance of milk they shall give, [that] he shall eat butter; for every one that remaineth in the midst of the land shall eat butter and honey. And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] every place, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silver pieces, shall become briars and thorns: with arrows and with the bow shall they come thither, for the whole land shall become briars and thorns. And all mountains that have been dug up with the hoe -- thither will they not come, from fear of briars and thorns; and they shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of small cattle.
and I will make it a waste -- it shall not be pruned nor cultivated, but there shall come up briars and thorns; and I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
And they shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of Jehovah, and from the glory of his majesty, when he shall arise to terrify the earth.
Your country is desolate; your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers eat it up in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left, as a booth in a vineyard, as a night-lodge in a cucumber-garden, as a besieged city. Unless Jehovah of hosts had left us a very small residue, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
Jehovah preserveth the strangers; he lifteth up the fatherless and the widow; but the way of the wicked doth he subvert.
Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses, saying, If ye act unfaithfully, I will scatter you among the peoples;
I would say, I will scatter, I will make the remembrance of them to cease from among men,
And Jehovah will scatter thee among all peoples, from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; and thou shalt there serve other gods, whom thou hast not known, neither thou nor thy fathers, wood and stone.
And Johanan the son of Kareah spoke to Gedaliah in Mizpah secretly, saying, Let me go, I pray thee, and I will smite Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and no man shall know it: why should he take thy life, and all they of Judah who are gathered unto thee be scattered, and the remnant of Judah perish?
James, bondman of God and of [the] Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which [are] in the dispersion, greeting.
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, even against the man [that is] my fellow, saith Jehovah of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered, and I will turn my hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass in all the land, saith Jehovah, two parts therein shall be cut off [and] die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name, and I will answer them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 24
Commentary on Isaiah 24 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 24
It is agreed that here begins a new sermon, which is continued to the end of chap. 27. And in it the prophet, according to the directions he had received, does, in many precious promises, "say to the righteous, It shall be well with them;' and, in many dreadful threatenings, he says, "Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with them' (Isa 3:10, 11); and these are interwoven, that they may illustrate each other. This chapter is mostly threatening; and, as the judgments threatened are very sore and grievous ones, so the people threatened with those judgments are very many. It is not the burden of any particular city or kingdom, as those before, but the burden of the whole earth. The word indeed signifies only the land, because our own land is commonly to us as all the earth. But it is here explained by another word that is not so confined; it is the world (v. 4); so that it must at least take in a whole neighbourhood of nations.
Isa 24:1-12
It is a very dark and melancholy scene that this prophecy presents to our view; turn our eyes which way we will, every thing looks dismal. The threatened desolations are here described in a great variety of expressions to the same purport, and all aggravating.
Isa 24:13-15
Here is mercy remembered in the midst of wrath. In Judah and Jerusalem, and the neighbouring countries, when they are overrun by the enemy, Sennacherib or Nebuchadnezzar, there shall be a remnant preserved from the general ruin, and it shall be a devout and pious remnant. And this method God usually observes when his judgments are abroad; he does not make a full end, ch. 6:13. Or we may take it thus: Though the greatest part of mankind have all their comfort ruined by the emptying of the earth, and the making of that desolate, yet there are some few who understand their interests better, who have laid up their treasure in heaven and not in things below, and therefore can keep up their comfort and joy in God even when the earth mourns and fades away. Observe,
Isa 24:16-23
These verses, as those before, plainly speak,