Isaiah chapter 33

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

WOE TO THE SPOILER—THE LORD EXALTED. 

HAVING drawn a glorious picture of Messiah's kingdom,, Isaiah turns and apostrophises the spoiler, prays to God as His waiting servant, and further depicts the judgment to come, resulting at last in Zion being " a quiet habitation," wherein is seen the King in his beauty, in the midst of those who, having been forgiven their iniquity, haveno more need to say, " I am sick." The spoiler most closely related to Isaiah's and Hezekiah'stimes was the Assyrian, whose operations under Sennacherib threatened the overturn of the Kingdom of David, in the names of the gods of Assyria as against " the God of Jerusalem." But,, as Isaiah by the Spirit spoke and wrote for all ages and generations of the future, as well as for his own, we arewarranted in regarding Sennacherib's invasion, the pointed " controversy of Zion" of his days, and the angelic smiting of his army, as a type of the greater invasion, the greater controversy, and the much greater overthrow of the Assyrian of the latter days. The Assyrian in Sennacherib's day " ceased to spoil," and was spoiled, when his army was decimated, and Israel appropriated its substance. Afterwards Babylon " ceased to spoil," and wa& spoiled by the Medes and Persians, whose leader, Cyrus, was a type of Christ. And of modern Babylon, which has spoiled the saints and the Jews for centuries, it is written: " He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity." " Reward her, even as she rewarded you." " Rejoice over her thou heaven,, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her" (Rev. xiii. 10: xviii. 6, 20). This is connected with the " war of the Lamb" (xvii. 14), and is related to the operations of the Northern Spoiler on the Mountains of Israel (Ezek. xxxviii.), which are the immediate cause of the revelation of the Lord at the seat of war as the manifestation of the Father's " presence" (v. 20). When Gog and his hosts " cease to spoil" they become a spoil, their hosts are given to the birds and beasts as Yahweh's "sacrifice," their bones are buried, and their weapons burned, and Israel " shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. xxxix. 10). This will be a quietus to the "Jewish Question." From the foregoing and similar scriptures, it is evident that Isaiah's picture of the ultimate fate of the spoilers includes the crisis of the latter days. So also does his prayer breathe the spirit of his brethren of the latter days:—" Ο Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee: be thou their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble." It is a test of the truth that it brings a man into sympathy with the prophets and apostles. The theologies of Christendom do not so. They deceive people as to their true estate, and delude them with false hopes, and therefore prevent them from waiting for Christ in the spirit of the prophets. It is this " tumult" and " scattering of nations" that Isaiah sees by the spirit in this place (verse 3). Yahweh arises to take the spoil of the " peoples" and " nations." This idea is not to be " endured " in the congregations of Christendom, but is rejected as a grossly carnal doctrine. They seem to forget, though they profess to believe, that " the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," and that He has expressly given it all into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ for distribution to his friends at his discretion. They are forward to remember, in a certain way, his sufferings and shame as depicted in Isa. liii., but when the Spirit, in the same place, says: " Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; hecause he hath poured out his soul unto death," they will not believe. But the unbelief of Christendom will not make the promise of God of none effect. Christ will avenge his people, and take the spoil of the nations just as surely as he suffered death, and as surely as his people have been spoiled among the nations. It would be encouraging to Hezekiah, in the presence of the Assyrian threatenings, to be assured that God would "fill Zion with righteousness and judgment/' and that "wisdom and knowledge should be the stability of her times, even the strength of salvation." Expositors who cannot see much beyond Isaiah's immediate surroundings seem to endeavour to exhaust the matter by referring it to Sennacherib and his operations. The " valiant ones who cry without, and the ambassadors of peace who weep bitterly," are to them Hezekiah's messengers reproached and insulted by the Assyrian. The " everlasting burnings" they regard as the Assyrians' destruction of the cities and villages of Judah. But while we may admit the application of the prophecy to those times proximately and as a type, we can by no means admit that it is therein exhausted, for Zion remains downtrodden by the Gentiles, and wisdom and knowledge are conspicuously absent. In a word, Christ is absent, and David's throne and kingdom are in the dust. For the prophecy to be fulfilled, it is evident to anyone who knows the gospel of the kingdom, that Christ must return from heaven and re-establish the throne and kingdom of David, according to God's everlasting covenant with David (2 Sam. vii.) This is the great crisis in which Yahweh " rises and is exalted" (verse 10), and in which the " everlasting burnings" are kindled that are prepared " for the devil and for his angels" (Matt. xxv. 41). At that time there will be many valiant ones that will " cry without," and many ambassadors of peace who will " weep bitterly." A connection is visible in this prophecy between the fate of " the sinners in Zion" and the external enemies of God. Both are alike obnoxious to the consuming fire of His indignation, and " our God is a consuming fire." Jesus associates the fate of disobedient professors with that of the external enemy, in the passage already quoted (Matt. xxv.). On another occasion, when he was in Jerusalem, in reply to a question, " Are there few that be saved ? " he spoke these words: " Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able, when once the master of the house is risen up (compare Isa. xxxiii. 10), and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us. And he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are. Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know not whence ye are, depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God, and ye yourselves thrust out" (Luke xiii.)· The " crying without," of which Isaiah speaks, has likewise reference to Jerusalem; to which "the Kingdom of God," of which Jesus spoke in the above passage, is to come. There are those who are citizens of Zion, and those who "are without," many of whom vehemently protest that they are within, the distinction between " within " and " without" having been lost in Christendom. At the crisis of which Isaiah speaks, the outsiders take the city, and for a while appear to have the best of the argument. But the Lord makes good his claim by the execution of judgments written, and they are expelled and consumed, and he enthroned, with his friends. And in the ensuing judgments, " the winepress is trodden without the city " (Rev. xiv. 20), which then becomes "a quiet habitation," as God has decreed. We perceive that there is thus a blending of the literal and metaphorical in the prophets, without in any way introducing confusion. Jerusalem is at once a literal city, and metaphorically " the bride, the Lamb's wife" (Rev. xxi. 9). And so there are at the crisis of Christ's arising to Judgment, literal enemies " without" the city walls, and dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, murderers, idolaters, and liars " without" the gates of the mystical city which represents the community of the redeemed. To this community belongs the literal city of God's choice when the Lord inherits Judah, his portion in the Holy Land, and chooses Jerusalem again (Zech. ii. 12). Thus we see the due relation of the literal and figurative in the word. 

The conceptions of the Powers of Christendom of the latter days, and their schemes for the disposal of Jerusalem, and for the establishment of universal empire, are described by God as "chaff," and "stubble," and the peoples as "the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up (to be) burned in the fire" (verse 12). And in view of this consumption the Spirit says: " Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done, and ye that are near acknowledge my might." And the question is asked, "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ?" And the answer is, " He that walketh righteously," &c. One of the features of the covenant that God made with David was that the sons of Belial should be all of them "as thorns thrust away," though they could not be abolished by human hands. But the man that should touch them should be pierced with a spear, and they should be utterly burned with fire in the same place (2 Sam. xxiii.). Isaiah had already spoken of this burning of thorns — whether the sons of Belial were of Jewish or foreign origin according to the flesh (vii. 24 : ix. 18 : x. 17 : xxx. 33). The apostle Paul also uses the same figure (Heb. vi. 8), where he speaks of apostates as thorns and briers, " whose end is to be burned." Much fearful nonsense has been preached over the expression " everlasting burnings." The preachers have gone wrong upon the character of the burning ; its locality ; the time of its manifestation ; its fuel and its duration. They have expatiated on the gruesome horrors of a " dreadful hell with everlasting pains," whose flames gave no light. Where this might be none of them can say; nor when it began to burn, if it ever did begin; only they are quite sure it will never end ! They say the immortal souls of the condemned are the subjects of the fire, though they do not attempt to explain how immaterial " souls" can be hurt by material flames. Against all their dismal fables the truth declares plainly the nature of the burning, its locality, the time of its kindling, the objects of its consumption, and the limitation of the punishment inflicted.

First then the burnings of " olam" or the age to come, are to consume the Lord's enemies — " the peoples," " the thorns" who rise up against him. These are very material foes, and their enmity of a very material kind. We see it as we look at Christ nailed to the cross, or at the blazing faggots that have consumed so many of his friends. When, therefore, we hear the mandate: " Reward her even as she rewarded you," we can gauge the experiences of the enemies of the Lord in time to come. We know what happened at the siege of Jerusalem, when the crucifiers of Jesus became the crucified all round the city till the wood gave out for the crosses. Thus God " destroyed those murderers and burned up their city." Thus even in that day u Yahweh's fire was in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem" (Isa. xxxi. 9). And this is the centre of the everlasting burnings spoken of for the future, when the Assyrian falls but not by the sword of man. Another siege and fire and brimstone of war pass over the city, and over the mountains of Israel at large. At a certain crisis, the rejected professors of Christ's name are dismissed from his presence to become fugitives and vagabonds in the earth like Cain, among the wars and fightings of that terrible time. In his picture of the judgment seat (Matt, xxv.), Jesus alludes to this, using the very expression of Isaiah (xxxiii. 14), for the " everlasting burnings " of the prophecy are the same as the " everlasting fire" of Christ's speech, and the objects of consumption the same in both cases. " The peoples," " the thorns cut up" " the devil and his angels," are all parallel expressions, and relate to those obnoxious to God's fiery judgments " when the Son of Man shall come in his glory " to cause the blessed to " inherit the kingdom prepared for them." The kingdom is to be on earth, in Palestine, in Jerusalem. And there will be the " everlasting burnings." But it must not be supposed that by this is meant that the fiery consumption is to be restricted to the land of Israel. Far from it, " for by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many" (Isa. Ixvi. 16). Fire and brimstone torment is prepared for the worshippers of the beast " in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb" (Rev. xiv. 9-11). If any in the European countries reject the warning proclaimed from Zion, war, pestilence, and tempest will be their portion till they are consumed. And as regards the future worship in Zion, when all flesh comes to worship before God, it is written: " They shall go forth and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh " (Is. lxvi. 24). It is from this last passage that Jesus takes the language recorded in Mark ix., when he forewarns his disciples of the fate of offenders in the fire of Gehenna. Gehenna fire consumed " carcases" outside Jerusalem. It did so in Christ's day and in the siege of Jerusalem, and will do so again when Christ returns. But the " carcase" of an individual having been consumed, the burning has ceased with regard to him, though many others follow him. But the individual transgressor's fate is inevitable; and because fresh fuel is always coming, and, during the remainder of the age of sin and death, fresh carcases are always becoming food for the worm and the flame, we have the expression, " their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched." But a time is decreed of God when there shall be no more fiery consumption, sin and death having been abolished. " The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. xv. 26). Hence an everlasting hell of deathless souls is a fiction. In fact, it is said, that " death and hell (hades) were cast into the lake of fire" (Rev. xx. 14). That is to say, in the post-millennial crisis of the distant future, after the last resurrection and judgment, the remainder of the rejected—the sons of death and the grave—will be finally swallowed up of " the second death." And then, it is added: " There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away" (Rev. xxi. 4). " There shall be no more curse" (xxii. 3). When there is "no more curse," the burning of olam, or " everlasting fire," is a thing of the past.

That the righteous are among these " everlasting burnings," though unconsumed by them, is evident from the prophet's question, and quite out of keeping with popular superstition. " Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire ? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ? " That is, who shall abide the fiery trial, and be counted worthy to ascend Zion's holy hill? The verb in the original is the same as that translated "abide" in Psalm xv., where these questions are asked and a similar answer given to that of the prophet. " He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil. He shall dwell on high." Under the law of Moses the spoil of the Midianites was purified : " Everything that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean; nevertheless, it shall be purified with the water of separation " (Num. xxxi. 23). This was not merely a hygienic process, but was a shadow of the purification of human vessels unto God's service. So it is written of Jacob (Isa. xliii. 2, 4). " When thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned. . . . Since thou wast precious in my sight thou hast been honourable." This, of course, refers to the elect, for the mere fleshly descendants of Abraham, unsubdued by the gospel, are neither precious nor honourable in God's sight, either individually or nationally, save that He will not destroy the nation for His great name's sake. Then again, Paul, in 1 Cor. iii., under the figure of a house, speaks of men and their building in God's house abiding the fire, or being destroyed by it, after the literal example of gold, silver and precious stones, or wood, hay and stubble. The gold, silver and gems are God's jewels, who abide the fire, when " the day cometh that shall burn as an oven," and the wicked are reduced to "ashes." The wicked are the "wood, hay, and stubble" of the situation, whose consumption shall, as Malachi says (ch. iv.), " leave them neither root nor branch." " Who may abide the day of his comirjg? and who shall stand when he appeareth ? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers soap " (Mai. iii. 2). These scriptures sufficiently illustrate the question of Isaiah in ch. xxxiii. 11-, which has been so strangely perverted in certain quarters. So when the " everlasting burnings" consume the " sinners" and "hypocrites," the true children of Zion "dwell on high," and " behold the king in his beauty"—" Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty, they shall behold the land of far distances." In the absence of the King, and during the times of the Gentiles, his saints and his nation are exiled from Palestine. It is to them " the land of far distances," to which, however, from the various points of their sojourning, their hearts and eyes turn longingly, as did Daniel's in Babylon. When the Lord arises to take his inheritance, they are invited to " Come and see." And then, "thine heart shall meditate terror," says Isaiah by the spirit. That is to say, the terrors of the King and his people will fall upon the world as did the terror of Joshua and Israel upon Jericho of old, as Rahab testified to the two spies (Josh ii.). The King girds his sword upon his thigh, and rides forth in majesty on behalf of the truth, meekness, and righteousness ; and his right hand accomplishes " terrible things;" and his arrows are sharp in the hearts of the enemy. Such is the picture of Psalm xlv. And then, truly, " Where is the scribe ? Where is the receiver ? Where is he that counted the towers ? " It was a question that Paul asked in his day, with reference to the logical position of adverse philosophers, scribes, and disputers (1 Cor. i. 20). But, though powerless before the apostle as to argument, they were potent enough for persecution, and at last took his life. But when the Lord arises to judgment where are they all ? The day of the subjection of prophets and apostles, and the friends of Christ in general to Greek and Roman barbarians will have passed away. " Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of deeper speech than thou canst perceive ; of a stammering tongue that thou canst not understand " (verse 19). Israel has had much of that experience. Moses told them they would, and it has come true (Deut. xxviii. 49, 50). Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, and other "fierce people" have desolated them. The Lord himself was crucified under an inscription in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And his saints and the Jews have been tormented among the " peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues" of so-called Christendom ever since the civilised world took his name in vain. But when he comes there is an end to all that. Christendom at present is exercising itself among other things over the question, Which of the " tongues" of Babel shall attain the distinction of becoming the universal language ? If Isaiah were believed they would not need to ask it. God who confounded tongues at Babel of old, and bestowed the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, has decreed that tongues "shall cease " (1 Cor. xiii. 8) through the operations of His providence in a Hebrew kingdom. And the preservation, and rise of the Hebrew tongue (which has actually displaced Latin in a University course in England), is an earnest that His promises will be fulfilled. Zion's times will bring Zion's language, which the Lord Jesus spoke to Paul on the plain near Damascus (Acts xxvi. 14), and which is referred to more than once in the book of Revelation (ix. 11: xvi. 16). The prophecy goes on: " Look upon Ζ ion the city of our solemnities (" set feasts " R.V. marg.) : thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down ; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken" (verse 20). There are many scriptures which thus appeal to " the children of Zion.'' Psalm xlviii., speaking of the same time, says, " Walk about Zion, and go round about her, tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following." In these palaces are held the " solemnities," or " set feasts," of which Isaiah speaks. (Compare Ezekiel xlv. 17 : xlvi. 9-11). " Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace. Ο Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows, for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off" (Nahum i. 15). This is the similar picture of a prophet contemporary with Isaiah. Among the Jews of the present day the tendency is to deny the restoration of sacrifice in the solemn feasts, even where faith in any restoration at all survives. While as to Christendom, the idea is scouted as mere Judaising fanaticism. Perhaps the best comment on this, is the fate of the incredulous lord in Samaria in Elisha's day, who was caused to see the miraculous deliverance of the city, but not permitted to taste of it, but was trodden to death in the gate (2 Kings vii.). " According to your faith be it unto you " is Christ's principle. The present generation has no faith in these divine promises, and therefore few indeed will participate in them. It will be a new experience indeed for Jerusalem to be " a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down." No city has such a record of disquietude and takings down. So terrible have been her multiplied overthrows that in many places about 80 feet of rubbish bury the original rock foundations. This again brings to mind the prophecy of Jeremiah, that the city shall be built again upon her own heap (tell—mound of ruins), and that " the palace shall remain after the manner thereof " (Jer. xxx. 18). Even "the valley of the dead bodies" is to be "holy unto the Lord for ever" (xxxi. 40). The fate of the mystical "holy city," or body of Christ, has been like that of the literal. It has been trodden under foot of the Gentiles for an appointed time, now expired (Rev. xi. 2). The day of its establishment and vindication is dawning. That there is this blending of the literal and figurative in Isaiah's prophecy in this place, is apparent from the concluding verses of chapter xxxiii. " There the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars ; neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our law-giver, the Lord is our king —he will save us. Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast; they could not spread the sail: then is the prey of a great spoil divided, the lame take the prey. And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick ; the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity." It will not seem incongruous to us to read of Yahweh being "unto us a place of broad rivers and streams" when we remember the figure that Isaiah uses to represent " the King of Assyria and all his glory." This he styles " the waters of the river strong and many," which overflowed Israel and Judah, filling ImmanueFs land (ch. viii.). Substitute for these " the waters of Shiloah," the King of Israel and all His glory, and we perceive the meaning of this beautiful figure. There will be literal rivers flowing down from the altar in the place of Yahweh's throne (Ezek. xlvii.), but these are another element in the situation, and are in turn a visible representation of the body of Christ out of which the water of life flows (John vii. 38; Rev. xxii. 1-2). Like the laver and the brazen sea of old, they will point to a substance other and higher than themselves. When Yahweh reigns and is clothed with majesty, it is said that He "on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea" (Psa. xciii.). Here the " many waters" are the hosts of the enemy. But in another place (Rev. xix. 6), they are symbolic in their " voice" of the <;great multitude" of the redeemed. On these waters passes " no galley with oars." That is to say, the one body is not subject to any military or clerical exploitation. There is nothing in their case answering at all to the dreadful figure of the body politic of k< Christendom"—" the waters where the whore sitteth" (Rev. xvii.). These " waters " are navigated by ** galleys" and " gallant ships" of all sorts, whose cargoes are specified in Rev. xviii. Rome's "merchandise" will not be borne on Yahweh's " waters." The saints in the days of their flesh will have seen enough of that. As to the literal waters that flow down from the temple to the Dead Sea, it does not at all appear that they will be navigable. Their course will be short, steep, and swift. True, there are to be great physical changes in the Land (Zech. xiv. 4-5); but it is evident from Ezek. xlvii. 11, that the Dead Sea level is not to be materially altered; and it is also evident that Jerusalem is still further to be elevated (Ezek. xl. 2 : xliii. 12). This necessitates the conclusion stated. As to the shipping of the " waters" of " Babylon the Great," its fate is wreckage. Literally at this crisis " the day of the Lord is upon all the ships of Tarshish" (Isa. ii.). He breaks the ships of Tarshish with an east wind (Psa. xlviii.): and mystically the shipping of Babylon is unable ta weather the storm of Yahweh's indignation, and becomes " a prey" to those upon whom it had pre}^ed in past times. The shipmen of mystical Tyre likewise in the latter days bring the British " ship of state" into " great waters," where it is ''broken in the midst of the seas" in the day when Yahweh shall gather the house of Israel from among the heathen, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the heathen (Ezek. xxvii. 26: xxviii. 25). However carefully they steer, the Powers are in full drift to total wreckage on the mountains of Israel that they may become a spoil for Christ and his brethren— " them that dwell before the Lord"—the people that are healed from their sicknesses, having been " forgiven their iniquity."