Judgment on the Nations
Come near, O nations, to listen; pay attention, O peoples. Let the earth hear, and all that fills it, the world and all that springs from it. The LORD is angry with all the nations and furious with all their armies. He will devote them to destruction; He will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood. All the stars of heaven will be dissolved. The skies will be rolled up like a scroll, and all their stars will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like foliage from the fig tree. When My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, then it will come down upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction.
The sword of the LORD is bathed in blood. It drips with fat—with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the wild oxen will fall with them, the young bulls with the strong ones. Their land will be drenched with blood, and their soil will be soaked with fat.
For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a time of retribution for Edom’s hostility against Zion. Her streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch. It will not be quenched—day or night.
Its smoke will ascend forever. From generation to generation it will lie desolate; no one will ever again pass through it. The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it.
The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction. No nobles will be left to proclaim a king, and all her princes will come to nothing. Her towers will be overgrown with thorns, her fortresses with thistles and briers. She will become a haunt for jackals, an abode for ostriches. The desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and one wild goat will call to another. There the night creature will settle and find her place of repose. There the owl will make her nest; she will lay and hatch her eggs and gather her brood under her shadow. Even there the birds of prey will gather, each with its mate.
Search and read the scroll of the LORD: Not one of these will go missing, not one will lack her mate, because He has ordered it by His mouth, and He will gather them by His Spirit. He has allotted their portion; His hand has distributed it by measure. They will possess it forever; they will dwell in it from generation to generation.”
Where was Edom and why would God want to destroy it completely? Edom was one of the neighboring countries to the east of Israel. When Moses was leading the Israelites, the Edomites refused to allow them to pass through their land. Subsequently, Edom waged war on Israel several times, combining with Syria to attack both the Northern and Southern kingdoms. The Edomites were descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael, so they were distantly related to the Israelites. The downfall of Edom was also prophesied in the Book of Obadiah. Eventually, the Nabateans defeated the Edomites, who moved southward. When the Edomites moved into Judah, they were known as Idumeans, and King Herod who tried to kill the baby Jesus was an Idumean. The remaining Idumeans were wiped out when the Romans captured Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
God is not a God of war, but a God of peace. While there are times when truth and righteousness must be defended, God hates wars waged only for the purposes of looting and destruction. God also hates it when relatives stand by and refuse to help their suffering brothers and sisters. This prophecy is another one that operates in two different time lines. The first time – line concerns the country of Edom. Eventually, Edom was destroyed completely and reduced to a desert inhabited by wild animals and creatures of the night. But there is a second part of the prophecy concerning all the nations of the earth.
“The LORD is angry with all the nations and furious with all their armies. He will devote them to destruction; He will give them over to slaughter. Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood. All the stars of heaven will be dissolved. The skies will be rolled up like a scroll, and all their stars will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like foliage from the fig tree.”
The earth is not going to last forever. At some point, Messiah will return and earth as we know it will end. Armies will be devastated and their bodies left to rot because there will be nobody to bury them. The stars of heaven will be dissolved and fall. God even has Isaiah include a graphic description of the stench these rotting bodies will give off! In those times, people buried their dead immediately; for anybody’s body to rot without burial was a shameful thing to be feared.
Why would a righteous holy God give such horrible prophecies? God hates bloodshed. Those who shed blood for the purpose of conquest will be punished. Someday, God will bring an end to the earth as it has existed and there will be a new heaven and a new earth full of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
APPLICATION: “This world is not my home. I’m just apassin’ through. If heaven’s not my home, then Lord, what will I do? The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.” The guitar player skillfully accompanied the singers. But the congregation was not occupying a church building; instead, these men were prisoners at the Central Prison in Tamale, Northern Region, Ghana, and they were sitting under an awning, exposed to heat and rain. Many of these men had never heard the Gospel before they were incarcerated. In that prison were men who were highly educated as well as men who were illiterate; education and position had failed to protect them. Each one of these men was longing for the day he would regain freedom, but now they were looking to a better hope, the hope of eternal life. As the friend who had invited us preached, his words entered hearts, giving them the courage to continue to be faithful under their harsh living conditions.
As Isaiah points out in this chapter, earth will not last forever. God is promising that one day, the earth as we know it will disappear, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. But not everyone who has existed will enter that heaven. God is holy, and He cannot tolerate sin. We are sinful by our very natures, and there is nothing that we can do that is good enough for us to earn our way into heaven. This is why Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had to come as a man and die a shameful death, shedding his blood as the ultimate blood sacrifice for our sins. But we must believe that we are sinners and accept what Jesus has done for us; apart from that, we remain in our sins.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, we confess that we are sinners and that by ourselves, there is nothing we can do to make up for our sins. Thank You for sending Jesus to die in our place so that if we believe on Him, we will be saved. Lord, we believe, but help our unbelief. We give You permission to change our hearts and our lives. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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