NOTES for Isa 24:1-23

Before us is a picture capable of causing deep sorrow. The land is devastated, and joyless scenes are everywhere. We see either the aftermath of an ecological catastrophe or the result of using weapons of mass destruction—in general, something of which we are abundantly capable today. It is therefore difficult to determine where the prophet is speaking in parables and where he has a literal vision of what human wickedness is capable of doing to the world the Lord has given us.

Yet even amid the man-made desert in which the surviving remnant of the people has once again found itself, we hear a call to praise the Lord. Even the utmost calamities, which have disfigured the world once created beautiful, cannot annul the triumph of the Lord and His truth. Precisely when it seems to many that the world is perishing, He will triumph and defeat the wicked kings who oppose Him.

At first glance, this speaks only of the Lord’s triumph in Jerusalem and in the Promised Land. But when we reflect, we also notice something else: the prophet’s gaze penetrates into a very distant age, when the power of sin on earth will be overthrown. There will be no more earthly kings, because the Lord Himself will become the only King.