The sentence
1 See how Yahweh breaks
the land and makes it crack,
how he turns it upside down
and scatters its inhabitants,
2 priest and people alike,
servant and master, maid and mistress;
buyer and seller, lender and borrower.
As it will be with the creditor,
so will it be with the debtor.
3 Cracked is the earth,
worn out is the world,
for Yahweh has spoken.
4 The earth mourns and withers,
the world pines and fades,
both heaven and earth languish.
5 The land lies polluted,
defiled by its inhabitants
who have transgressed the laws,
violated the ordinances,
and broken the covenant.
6 Therefore a curse consumes the land
and its people burn for their guilt.
Few of its inhabitants are left.
( 7 The new wine mourns,
the vine pines away,
all the revelers groan.
8 The merry timbrels are stilled,
the noise of the revelers is over,
the harps and lyres are silenced.
9 No more will they drink wine with a song;
strong drink tastes bitter to the drinker.
10 The city of confusion is broken down,
every door is closed; you cannot enter.
11 In the streets they cry for wine:
all joy is gone,
all cheer has left the land.
12 The city is left in distress,
its ruined market is deserted.)
13 Some remain where nations have been
as olives after the beating of the trees,
as grapes after the vintage.
14 They lift up their voices and shout for joy,
from the vast lands they acclaim Yahweh.
15 People give him glory from the western islands:
“Islands, sing to Yahweh, the God of Israel!”
16 From the remotest part of the earth
we hear songs of praise:
“Glory to the Righteous One.”
Yet I said: “Woe is me! Woe is me! there is but treachery and traitors!”
17 Not at all!
Terror, pit and snare
await you, inhabitants of the earth.
18 He who flees at the cry of terror
falls into the pit,
and he who climbs out of the pit
gets caught in the snare.
For the floodgates of heaven are opened
and the earth shakes to its foundation.
19 The earth is broken into fragments,
the earth is in convulsion.
20 The earth reels like a drunkard,
it sways like a hut in the storm,
weighed down by its transgression,
and it falls, never to rise again.
21 On that day Yahweh will punish
the host of the heavens above,
and the kings of the earth below.
22 They will be gathered together
as prisoners are gathered in the pit;
they will be shut up in a dungeon
and after a time, punished.
23 Then the moon will be confounded
and the sun ashamed,
when Yahweh Sabaoth reigns
on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem,
and lets his Glory be shown to his elders.
------------------------------------------------------------
Comments Isaiah, Chapter 24
• 24.1 When Isaiah was announcing the coming of Emmanuel and a new “victory of Midian,” he was expecting this to happen soon. He could foresee that events were heading for a crisis in which God would give victory to his people.
However, after the exile, when the Jews had returned to Palestine and nothing was happening, many despaired because history was following its usual course. They lost trust in human power to bring about something really new and placed all their hopes in a divine intervention that would shake the world order.
This expectation is characteristic of the books termed “apocalyptic,” it is expressed in a part of the poems of chapters 24–27: they were inserted in the book of Isaiah a long time after him.
Verses 7-12 should be put in parentheses, as they are of the same spirit as 16:7-12, and break the thread of the poem. This apocalyptic chapter announces a cosmic intervention of Yahweh. The earth is ravaged but there are survivors in all the pagan peoples. These recognize the true God and sing his glory.
In 24:21-23: all nature is judged, the heavenly powers, cosmic spirits charged with the good order of the universe as well as the earthly kings charged with doing justice here below.