Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 24:1

"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.