Isaiah 24

Isaiah now widens his view from single nations to the whole earth. God judges a world that has broken His covenant, and every class and every pleasure is swept away. Yet a remnant sings His glory from the farthest lands, and the chapter ends with the LORD reigning in Zion.

Isaiah 24:1

The judgment is announced at once, and it is God’s own act. The LORD empties the earth and turns it upside down, and its people are driven out in every direction. This is not a local war. It is the whole land and all who live on it.

BSA: twist (“turn upside down”): The land is overturned like a bowl tipped over, so that nothing stays in its old order. scatter (“disperse”): People are flung out in all directions, with no place left to gather.

Hebrew: בּוֹקֵק (boqeq, H1238) — “emptying out.” Isaiah uses two similar-sounding Hebrew words, one for emptying and one for laying waste. The sound itself is harsh and drained, like a vessel poured out until it is bare.

Isaiah 24:2

Isaiah lists pairs of people: priest and layman, slave and owner, buyer and seller, lender and borrower. Every rank and every trade is named. No one is protected by position, wealth or religious office. The judgment falls on all alike.

BSA: priest (“spiritual leader”): Even those who serve God in public are not exempt from the judgment.

Isaiah 24:3

The destruction is complete: emptied and stripped. Isaiah stresses that this is no guess or fear of his own. The LORD has spoken. What God has said will happen, and the reader is meant to take it seriously.

BSA: plundered (“looted”): The earth is stripped of its goods as an army strips a conquered city.

Isaiah 24:4

The land itself seems to grieve. It droops like a dying plant. Even the exalted, the proud and powerful, fade with it. Creation shares in the fallout of human sin, and no height of status can escape.

BSA: mourns (“laments”): The earth is pictured as a mourner, grieving over what has been done to it. exalted (“high and mighty”): Those who stand highest are brought down together with the rest.

Isaiah 24:5

Here is the cause. The people have broken God’s laws, ignored His decrees and shattered an everlasting covenant. Their guilt has polluted the land they live on. Christians read the covenant differently, as God’s bond with Noah or His moral law known to all people. Either way, the judgment is deserved.

BSA: defiled (“polluted”): Sin stains the very ground, as though the land itself were made unclean. everlasting (“eternal, forever”): The covenant was meant to last, which makes breaking it far more serious.

Hebrew: בְּרִית עוֹלָם (berit olam, H1285) — “everlasting covenant.” A covenant is a solemn, binding promise, not a casual agreement. Calling it everlasting shows that God never meant it to expire, so the failure lies wholly with the people.

See also: Genesis 9:16; Numbers 35:33.

Isaiah 24:6

A curse devours the earth like a fire. Its people must carry their own guilt, and only a few remain. Notice that the few left are the first hint of hope. Even in the worst judgment, God leaves someone standing.

BSA: few (“a remnant”): The small number who remain are a remnant, a seed of what God will do next.

Hebrew: אָלָה (alah, H423) — “curse, a sworn penalty.” The word recalls the curses that follow breaking a sworn covenant. The disaster is not random. It is the promised result of covenant-breaking.

Isaiah 24:7-8

The first losses are the joys of ordinary life. The vineyard fails, the harp falls quiet, and the tambourines stop. Nothing is left to celebrate. Isaiah shows that a life built only on feasting and noise has nothing to stand on when judgment comes.

BSA: groan (“sigh”): The same people who once laughed now let out a deep sigh of grief. silent (“still, quiet”): The music does not fade slowly; it simply stops.

Isaiah 24:9

Songs end, and even the drink that once cheered people turns bitter in the mouth. What they trusted to lift their spirits now makes things worse. Pleasure cannot comfort people under God’s judgment.

BSA: bitter (“intensely unpleasant”): The drink that once pleased now repels, showing how hollow the old pleasures were.

Isaiah 24:10

The city is called a city of chaos, shattered and shut up. Houses are barred, whether from fear or because no one is left alive inside. The city stands as a picture of human society organized without God. It ends as an empty ruin.

BSA: chaos (“emptiness, formlessness”): The city’s life falls back into the shapeless void that existed before God gave order.

Hebrew: תֹּהוּ (tohu, H8414) — “formless emptiness.” This is the word used in Genesis 1:2 for the earth before God shaped it. Isaiah pictures human order dissolving back into that void.

See also: Genesis 1:2.

Isaiah 24:11

The streets fill with a crowd begging for wine. The very thing they cry for is gone. Gladness darkens into gloom and is driven out of the land. It is a picture of a society that finds itself empty at last.

BSA: exiled (“removed”): Joy is not just lost; it is sent away from the land like an outcast.

Isaiah 24:12

Only desolation is left of the city. Even its gate is smashed to pieces. The gate was the place of business, justice and public life in the ancient world. Its ruin means that everything the community depended on has collapsed.

BSA: gate (“a place of gathering”): The gate was where city life took place, so its ruin means the end of community.

Isaiah 24:13

The whole earth will be like an olive tree after it is beaten, or a vineyard after the pickers have gone through. Only a few scraps are left on the branches. It is a gentle picture with a sober meaning: a small remnant survives among the nations.

BSA: gleaning (“gathering remnants”): Gleaning is picking up what the main harvest left behind, which is a picture of the few who survive.

See also: Isaiah 17:6.

Isaiah 24:14

Suddenly the mood changes. The survivors lift their voices in joyful praise. They do not mourn but sing, and they proclaim the LORD’s majesty from the west. After judgment, God’s greatness is seen and celebrated.

BSA: west (“the sea, the Mediterranean”): The word points to the sea, so the praise rises from the far shores in the direction of the setting sun.

Isaiah 24:15

Isaiah calls people to glorify the LORD in the east and in the islands of the sea. From the sunrise to the far coasts, His name is to be honored. He is not only Israel’s God in name; He is to be praised wherever people live.

BSA: name (“identity, character”): To honor God’s name means to honor who He truly is, not just to say a word. islands (“coastlands”): These are the distant shores beyond Israel’s horizon, where praise will also be heard.

See also: Isaiah 42:10-12.

Isaiah 24:16

From the ends of the earth come songs honoring the Righteous One. Yet the prophet is heartsick, because he still sees treachery all around. He knows the full judgment has not passed. Joy and sorrow sit side by side in his heart.

BSA: Righteous One (“just, upright”): The praise goes to God as the one whose rule is perfectly right and fair. treacherous (“deceitful, unfaithful”): The word describes people who break faith, which matches the broken covenant of verse 5.

Hebrew: בּוֹגְדִים (bogedim, H898) — “those acting faithlessly.” The word means betrayal of a trust. Isaiah repeats it three times in the Hebrew, as if the betrayal piles up with no end.

Isaiah 24:17

Three words fall in quick succession: terror, pit, snare. Each one is a way to be trapped, and together they close every exit. The people of the earth cannot slip away from what is coming.

Hebrew: פַּחַד וָפַחַת וָפָח (pachad vafachat vafach, H6343) — “terror and pit and snare.” The three Hebrew words sound alike, almost like a drumbeat. The sound itself pictures danger closing in from every side.

Isaiah 24:18

Someone who runs from the cry of terror drops into the pit. Someone who climbs out is caught in the snare. There is no safe place by human effort. The heavens open and the earth’s foundations shake, so that all the world is shaken from top to bottom.

BSA: windows (“lattice”): The sky is pictured as having openings that can be opened to pour out what is stored above.

Hebrew: אֲרֻבּוֹת (arubbot, H699) — “windows, sluices.” This is the word for the openings of heaven in the flood story. Isaiah calls to mind that earlier world judgment.

See also: Genesis 7:11; Jeremiah 48:43-44.

Isaiah 24:19

The earth is broken, split and shaken, and the repeated word hammers the point home. The ground people trusted as the most solid thing they knew gives way under them. Only God Himself is truly unshakable.

BSA: split open (“rent asunder”): The ground is torn apart like cloth, leaving no safe footing.

Isaiah 24:20

The earth reels like a drunk man and sways like a flimsy hut in the wind. Its own rebellion is a weight too heavy for it to bear, so it falls and does not rise again. Sin finally crushes the world that carries it.

BSA: rebellion (“transgression, disobedience”): The word means a deliberate breaking away from rightful authority, and its weight is what finally crushes the earth.

Hebrew: מְלוּנָה (melunah, H4412) — “a night shelter, a hut.” The word describes a temporary lodging, like the watchman’s booth in a field. The great earth is shown to be as fragile as that.

Isaiah 24:21

On that day the LORD deals with powers in two realms: the host of heaven above and the kings of the earth below. Readers take the heavenly host to mean spiritual powers, and some also think of the heavenly bodies people worshiped. Either way, no authority, seen or unseen, stands above God.

BSA: punish (“visit”): God comes in person to call each one to account, so it is a real reckoning.

Hebrew: פָּקַד (paqad, H6485) — “to visit, to call to account.” The word means that God steps in to inspect and settle accounts. It can speak of rescue or of judgment, depending on what He finds.

See also: 2 Peter 2:4.

Isaiah 24:22

The guilty are herded together like prisoners in a pit and shut away. Their punishment comes after many days, so the judgment is neither hasty nor forgotten. God’s justice may wait, but it does not fail to arrive.

BSA: pit (“cistern”): A dry cistern was a common ancient prison, deep and impossible to escape.

Isaiah 24:23

The chapter ends in light. The sun and moon are put to shame, because the LORD of Hosts Himself reigns on Mount Zion in glory, in the presence of His elders. The greatest lights we know grow dim beside the King. Judgment gives way to His rule.

BSA: ashamed (“put to shame”): Even the brightest created lights are outshone by God’s own glory. reign (“as king”): God does not merely watch from a distance; He takes His throne and rules.

Hebrew: חָפְרָה (chafera, H2659) — “will be ashamed.” The word describes the blush of embarrassment. The sun and moon look pale next to the true source of light.

See also: Isaiah 60:19; Micah 4:7.