1 Behold, Yahweh makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants of it.
She is empty, void, and waste. The heart melts, the knees knock together, their bodies and faces have grown pale.
I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and will dry up the pools.
They will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Thus says the Lord Yahweh: When the whole earth rejoices, I will make you desolate.
The cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be a desolation; and you shall know that I am Yahweh.
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 hewn down, and your works may be abolished.
A third part shall you burn in the fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled; and you shall take a third part, and strike with the sword round about it; and a third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them.
I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.
The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off [their leaves].
On the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yes, on all the houses of joy in the joyous city. For the palace shall be forsaken; the populous city shall be deserted; the hill and the watch-tower shall be for dens forever, a joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks;
For the fortified city is solitary, a habitation deserted and forsaken, like the wilderness: there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches of it.
Yahweh will bring on you, on your people, and on your father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria. It will happen in that day that Yahweh will whistle for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. They shall come, and shall all rest in the desolate valleys, in the clefts of the rocks, on all thorn-hedges, and on all pastures. In that day the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired in the parts beyond the River, even with the king of Assyria, the head and the hair of the feet; and it shall also consume the beard. It shall happen in that day that a man shall keep alive a young cow, and two sheep; and it shall happen, that because of the abundance of milk which they shall give he shall eat butter: for everyone will eat butter and honey that is left in the midst of the land. It will happen in that day that every place where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silver shekels, shall be for briers and thorns. People will go there with arrows and with bow, because all the land will be briers and thorns. All the hills that were cultivated with the hoe, you shall not come there for fear of briers and thorns; but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep."
I will lay it a wasteland. It won't be pruned nor hoed, But it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it."
Men shall go into the caves of the rocks, And into the holes of the earth, From before the terror of Yahweh, And from the glory of his majesty, When he arises to shake the earth mightily.
Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land in your presence, And it is desolate, As overthrown by strangers. The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, Like a hut in a field of melons, Like a besieged city. Unless Yahweh of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, We would have been as Sodom; We would have been like Gomorrah.
Yahweh preserves the foreigners. He upholds the fatherless and widow, But the way of the wicked he turns upside down.
Remember, I beg you, the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, If you trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples:
I said, I would scatter them afar, I would make the memory of them to cease from among men;
Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, which you have not known, you nor your fathers, even wood and stone.
Then Johanan the son of Kareah spoke to Gedaliah in Mizpah secretly, saying, Please let me go, and I will kill Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and no man shall know it: why should he take your life, that all the Jews who are gathered to you should be scattered, and the remnant of Judah perish?
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion: Greetings.
When they didn't find them, they dragged Jason and certain brothers{The word for "brothers" here and where the context allows may be also correctly translated "brothers and sisters" or "siblings."} before the rulers of the city, crying, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here also,
"Awake, sword, against my shepherd, And against the man who is close to me," says Yahweh of Hosts. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; And I will turn my hand against the little ones. It shall happen that in all the land," says Yahweh, Two parts in it will be cut off and die; But the third will be left in it. I will bring the third part into the fire, And will refine them as silver is refined, And will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, 'It is my people;' And they will say, 'Yahweh 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,