Isaiah 34

34:1 Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye peoples: let the earth hear, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all things that come forth of it. For the LORD hath indignation against all the nations, and fury against all their host: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and the stink of their carcasses shall come up, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fade away, as the leaf fadeth from off the vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig tree. For my sword hath drunk its fill in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Edom, and upon the people of my curse, to judgement. The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the wild-oxen shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be drunken with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. For it is the day of the LORD’s vengeance, the year of recompence in the controversy of Zion. And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the pelican and the porcupine shall possess it; and the owl and the raven shall dwell therein: and he shall stretch over it the line of confusion, and the plummet of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and thistles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. And the wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wolves, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, the night-monster shall settle there, and shall find her a place of rest. There shall the arrowsnake make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: yea, there shall the kites be gathered, every one with her mate. Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall be missing, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line : they shall possess it for ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein.

Chap. 34. This chapter and the next make one distinct prophecy ; an entire, regular and beautiful poem, consisting of two parts—the first containing a denunciation of Divine vengeance against the enemies of the people or Church of God ; the second describing the flourishing state of the Church consequent upon the execution of those judgments. The event foretold is represented as of universal concern ; all nations are called upon to attend to the declaration of it ; and the wrath of God is denounced against all the nations who had provoked to anger the defender of the cause of Zion. Bp. Lowth.

This chapter presents a broadly comprehensive view of God’s judgments on guilty nations, of which Idumea is an instance and an illustration ; and the next a corresponding view of God’s blessings upon His people. The nations judged and punished in this chapter are contemplated as the bitter and determined enemies of God and of His people ; so that the exterminating judgments sent on them and the restoring mercies sent on His people are parts of the same Divine policy, manifestations of one and the same Divine Father, promoting the great ends of righteousness and well-being. The same contrast in deeds and in destiny is strongly put in two contiguous verses (3 : 10, 11), " Say ye to the righteous, it shall be well with him : for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked ! it shall be ill with him : for the reward of his hands shall be given him." The same good Father, because He is good and because He rules justly, awards to each class its destiny according to its doings and deserts. So in these two contiguous chapters, first the wicked, next the righteous, have their destiny portrayed.

Let it be noted that these two chapters (34 and 35) naturally close the series which began with chap. 13, grouping together the prophecies of Isaiah against idolatrous nations with whom the Jews came in contact, including also the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and indeed the southern kingdom as well so far forth as that kingdom was in apostasy and rebellion against God. In the portions that relate to Judah and Jerusalem, promises alternate with threatenings, indicating God’s thoughts of mercy and His purpose in regard to them to reclaim and save. But in the main this series of prophecies makes the judgments of God on wicked nations its central theme, and in this point of view it naturally culminates in the chapter now before us. In point of fearfulness and appalling grandeur, these images of destruction and desolation are unsurpassed. H. C.

The threatenings of chap. 34 are directed, first against the nations in general (verses 1-4), and then against Edom in particular (verses 5-15), with a closing affirmation of the truth and certainty of the prediction (verses 16, 17). The destruction of the enemies of Zion and the desolation of their lands are represented by the figures of a great sacrifice or slaughter, the falling of the heavenly bodies, the conversion of the soil into brimstone and the waters into pitch, and the inhabitation of animals peculiar to the desert. A.—This chapter is not a direct and simple delineation of the judgments that were destined to alight upon Idumea, but rather an ideal representation of the judgments preparing to alight on the enemies generally of God’s people, founded upon the approaching desolations of Edom, which it contemplates as the type of the destruction that awaits all the adversaries. P. F.

1. As usual with the prophet when any specially solemn and fearful announcement is to be made, he summons all earth to give attention. The call is to all the people and nations of the wide world. H. C.

4. The best explanation seems, however, to be that proposed by Pfeiffer in his " Dubia Vexata"—to wit, that as God is elsewhere described as having stretched out the heavens like a curtain, their destruction or any total change in their appearance would be naturally represented as a rolling up of the expanse. The context clearly shows that the terms used are not symbolical but poetical, and that here, as in chap. 13 : 10, the idea which they are all intended to convey is that of revolution, of sudden, total and appalling change. The imagery of the passage has been partially adopted in Matt. 24 : 29 and Rev. 6 : 13, neither of which, however, is to be regarded either as a repetition or an explanation of the one before us. A.—God’s terrible judgments upon the nations of men, sweeping them away into the gulf of doom, are thought of as changing the face of the earth, even as rolling up the curtain of the visible heavens and laying it aside would change the whole aspect of the blue concave above us. H. C.

As the centrifugal strength of the sun’s arm weakens, ethereal friction clogs the course of earth and the planets, so that they draw nearer in long spirals, and will some time fall into the sun, bringing in the collision a blaze of fire, in which they will melt and be consumed. Of such celestial disappearances, more than one has been observed; a notable instance being that of the star in the Northern Crown, which burst into blaze in 1866. The theories of today imply that this is the normal course of things throughout the universe—worlds falling together, to melt and perhaps emerge into new worlds and systems again. All this the Scripture has foretold; Isaiah declaring that “All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their hosts shall fall down, as the leaf falleth from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree;” and Peter, that the “heavens and the earth, which are now, are reserved unto fire,” that “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with ferrent heat, the earth also; and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” “Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Perhaps we have accounted the words of Revelation too exclusively abstract and figurative, and are summoned by the voice of modern science to notice and apply more confidently and literally the angel’s words to John, “These sayings are faithful and true.” J. B. Thomas.

Every world, whether sun, planet or satellite, has its appointed lifetime. By the arrangement of nature, a certain cycle of conditions must be completed, and the body has then reached a state of cosmical death. Our own planet is in the midst of visible changes, which carry it continually toward some finality which must constitute an end of the present terrestrial order. What we witness of terrestrial changes belongs to the planetary stage of cosmical being; but on a grander scale the other planets, and even the suns in the firmament, reveal the progress of a cycle of events which involves every cosmical body in the visible universe.

The world beneath our feet is growing cold. The time is approaching when no warmth will remain of all that store of heat which once lighted our planet to a state of incandescence. Undoubtedly the loss of the world’s inherent heat will exert an important influence on the population which occupy its surface. But a juncture of greater significance will arrive. The waters which belong to the earth percolate through the rocks and saturate the crust to a certain depth. At that depth the heat of the world’s interior is such that water is converted into vapor and returned toward the surface. With progressive cooling and progressive thickening of the cold crust, the volume of water required to fill the pores will continually increase. When the earth is cooled to the centre, the waters of the ocean will not be sufficient to satisfy them. The ocean will be drunk up. A cold crust nine hundred miles thick will absorb all the water belonging to our planet. Indeed, the atmosphere will follow the ocean in progress of retirement into the pores of a cold world, and the time must come when water and air will both be absent from the surface of our globe. Then the earth will have reached a stage which is a present reality in the life of our moon; for our satellite gives no sign of air or water, and hangs suspended in the heavens, simply a fossil world, unfolding its “nightly tale” of events impending over the future history of our own world.

What shall prevent the fires of the sun from dying out? Is there any heat so intense or any mass of heated matter so vast that time will not suffice to exhaust its force? The earth was once a sun; the moon was once a sun. The radiation which has reduced them from a solar temperature will bring dimness and feebleness to the powers of the great sun of our system. There is no process known by which the heat and light of the sun are perpetuated. The great source of warmth for the generations of animals and plants must inevitably become exhausted, and the sun will stand “blind and blackening” in the midst of space. Then will winter and midnight reign throughout the solar system. A. Winchell.

5. The best explanation is that of Calvin, who refers the expression to the Divine determination and foreknowledge. In the sight of God the sword, although not yet actually used, was already dripping blood. The sword is mentioned as a natural and common though poetical expression for any instrument of vengeance. A.—The imagination of the prophet gives the sword not only life, but a moral sense; the impulses of a righteous retribution. Idumea represents not itself alone—the ancient Edom—but all the malign, persistent, incorrigible enemies of God and of His earthly kingdom. H. C.—Miserable, forever miserable, are they that have by their sins made themselves the people of God’s curse; for the sword of the Lord will infallibly attend the curse of the Lord and execute the sentences of it; and those whom He curses are cursed indeed. It shall come down to judgment, to execute judgment upon sinners. God’s sword of war is always a sword of justice. H.

6. By poetic figure, the sword is here a beast or bird of prey, carnivorous, thirsting for blood, and satiating itself upon its slain. The point to be illustrated is the vastness of the slaughter and the terribleness of the doom visited upon these rebels against God and enemies of His throne. The “Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozrah,” in the sense of a vast slaughter. Bozrah is equivalent to Idumea, one of its great cities representing the whole country. H. C.

9. This verse, as Calvin well observes, announces nothing new, but repeats the same prediction under other figures, borrowed from the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, which throughout the Bible are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire (Jude 7). A.

9,10. In this description, the language is obviously drawn from the case of the doomed cities of the plain, and is therefore figurative. The results—the country lying waste from generation to generation and no traveller passing through it forever—have been wonderfully verified for many ages past and are so still. It would not be easy to find on the face of our globe a spot ever inhabited by man that is now so utterly desolate as this same Idumea, or one as to which there is so much testimony to show that for ages “no man has passed through it.” The latter fact is more remarkable because when Isaiah wrote and for some centuries subsequently its capital, Petra, was a great thoroughfare of travel and of commerce. The desolate land of Edom is a standing witness at this day, not merely of the truth and accuracy of this prophecy, but of the fearfulness of the doom which God visits upon the nation that distinguishes itself by its hostility to His own people, and in a yet broader sense, of the fearfulness of that final doom which awaits every persistent rebel in the world of retribution.

12. In harmony with the context which represents the land as utterly void of men and peopled only with such animals as dwell in the most dismal solitudes, this verse must be taken as a way of saying, not that there was an actual call from the people to their princes to assume the reins of government, but that there was neither government, princes nor people to call them.

16. This is obviously addressed to those who should live in the distant future and could compare the prophecy with its fulfilment. The prophet invites them to this comparison. Assuming that his own prophetic writings—this prophecy against Edom among the rest—are in “the Book of the Lord,” he calls upon men in the remote ages to look up this prophecy and read it. H. C.

We have here a striking witness to the high early estimation and sacred authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. Birks.—“The Book” may be this particular prophecy or the entire Scripture, without material change of sense. A.

There are traces in Isaiah of the existence in his time of a “Book of the Lord,” which was to be studied for its authoritative teaching, which in a future day (29:18) should be understood even better than it was then, which waited therefore for the fulness of its meaning, which was consequently prophetic in its character. And a like reference is made again to the same Book in a previous verse (29:11). It may be a matter of question whether the prophet in either case is speaking of his own book, as he certainly does in chap. 30:8, and probably in chap. 8:1, but there is no doubt as to the character he assigns to it, whether it be his own or the book of the law. There is here an indication of consciousness, on the part of the writer, of a work being then in process of formation, if not in a condition of completeness, to which men might appeal as to an ultimate authority, on account of its being somehow endowed with the Divine sanction. Leathes.

Seek ye the Book of the Lord, and read. Attested incontrovertibly by three distinct sources of proof—its wonderful origin and contents, the complete adaptation of its truths to every spiritual need of man, and its actual effects upon communities and individuals—the Bible presents itself as the utterance of God to man, demanding for its sublime disclosures man’s closest inspection, his most earnest, profound and habitual study. In these indisputable facts, upon which its claim is based, we find transcendent reasons why it should be thoroughly searched, why its truths and promises should be deeply pondered and personally appropriated by every soul to whom it speaks. The fact cannot be too often considered that all individual advancement in the Divine life, all legitimate acquisition, all healthful, permanent, spiritual progress and all Christian activity and efficiency are based of necessity upon the personal study, apprehension and application of these Divine truths; of necessity, because in these truths alone are found the grounds, the means and the motives of Christian faith, and hope, and love, of prayer and effort. B.

The Christian holds his Bible in a warm and sacred reverence. When he opens it he experiences a sense of pleasure; when he reads it, it is with a sense of satisfaction which rises to a mild exhilaration. It is delightful to him. He loves it, and a profane or critical hand laid upon it gives him pain. There is one element of worship in this feeling—viz., reverence. But a moment’s examination will show him that this is not reverence for the Book, but for God. It is God’s voice that reaches him through its pages, and he is thus brought into the Divine presence. The Bible is desired, revered, loved and cherished because it gratifies spiritual hunger. It is food for the soul. It is usually read as a preparation for prayer. It gives strength and elevation to the spiritual impulses and aspirations, increases confidence and faith in God, makes the soul stronger every way. The Christian who neglects to read his Bible soon finds himself becoming spiritually weak, despondent, irresolute, beset with all the symptoms of exhaustion. The minister who expounds the Scriptures to his people is said to “break the bread of life” to them, and the aptness of this metaphor, as setting forth the reality, is universally recognized. The people go away from the sermon with a feeling of refreshment. They have been fed and made strong for the duties and responsibilities, and filled with fortitude against the ills and sorrows of life. Now nothing is more natural than that we should come to love the Book as a book, and even to love a particular copy of the Book, because of associations which have, in the course of time, clustered around it. But this is not bibliolatry—there is no element of idolatry in it. Interior.

“Other things pertain,” says Cicero, “to times, and ages, and places, but books instruct youth, delight age, adorn prosperity, afford solace and relief to adversity, give pleasure at home, and do not burden abroad, they lodge with us, they travel with us, they rusticate with us.” With what force may all this be applied to the Book of God! This portable revelation may be the companion of all men, at all times, to all places. Instead of being confined, like the Sibylline Books, at the Roman capital, in a chest of gold, under an official custodian, every mariner may take it with him when he goes forth upon the sea; the traveller, far removed from the sound of the Sabbath bell and the voice of the living ministry, carries this wherever he goes; the emigrant, departing from his native land, is not separated from the revelation of God; it is in the hands of the child at school, of the old man at the head-springs of wisdom, the soldier takes it into camp and battle, the collier bears it down with him into the depths of the earth, and the prisoner, deprived of all human society, is not so lonely and forlorn as to be without this inspiration of the Almighty. We cannot conceive now of any circumstances so deplorable, no distance so great, no solitude so complete, in which this written revelation of God may not be accessible and available. W. Adams.

After many years spent in studying the Bible, and in teaching it both to the adult and the young, I find it hard to say how deeply I am impressed with the conviction that, to fairly master any one portion of Scripture, however small, is, for educational purposes, worth infinitely more than the widest desultory reading. A. M.