Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 24
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Isaiah 24
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Isaiah 24
"Behold, Jehovah maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof." — Isaiah 24:1 (ASV)
Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty ... — The chapters from 24 to 27, inclusive, are to be taken as a continuous prophecy of the overthrow of the great world-powers that were arrayed against Jehovah and His people. Of these, Assyria was then the most prominent within the horizon of the prophet’s view; but Moab appears in Isaiah 25:10, and the language, with that exception, seems deliberately generalized, as if to paint the general discomfiture in every age (and, above all, in the great age of the future Deliverer) of the enemies of Jehovah and His people. The Hebrew word for “earth” can also be rendered (as elsewhere) as “land”; but here the wider meaning seems to predominate, as in its union with “the world,” in Isaiah 24:4.
"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 creditor, so with the debtor; as with the taker of interest, so with the giver of interest to him." — Isaiah 24:2 (ASV)
It shall be, as with the people ... — In the apparently general classification there is, perhaps, in the last two clauses a trace of the prophet’s indignation at the growing tendency of the people to the luxury which led to debt, and to the avarice which traded on the debtor’s necessities. Israel, it would seem, was already on the way to become a nation of money lenders.
"The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the lofty people of the earth do languish." — Isaiah 24:4 (ASV)
The haughty people of the earth. —Literally, the heights, or, to use an English term with a like history, “the highnesses of the people.”
"The earth also is polluted under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant." — Isaiah 24:5 (ASV)
The earth also is defiled. —The verb is used of blood-guiltiness in Numbers 35:33, of impurity in Jeremiah 3:1-2; Jeremiah 3:9. It includes, therefore, all the sins that, in modern phrase, desecrate humanity. Taking the word in its wider range, each form of evil was a transgression of the everlasting covenant of Genesis 9:16.
"Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are found guilty: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left." — Isaiah 24:6 (ASV)
Therefore has the curse ... —The definite article may be either generic, the curse which always follows on evil-doing, or, more specifically, the curse of the Book of the Covenant, as in Leviticus 26:0;Deuteronomy 28:0. The curse is personified as a beast of prey or a consuming fire, ready to devour (Genesis 4:11).
They who dwell there are desolate. —Better, bear their punishment, or are dealt with as guilty.
Are burned. —The word determines, perhaps, the sense of the word “devour” in the previous clause. The curse, the symbol of the wrath of Jehovah, is the consuming fire that burns.
Jump to: