Isaiah 34:1

Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people,.... Not the people of the Jews, as some, whose utter destruction, after their rejection of the Messiah, is here thought to be prophesied of;

Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it.

ISAIAH CHAPTER 34 God’ s fury and wrath against his church’ s enemies, . Their land utterly desolate, . The certainty hereof, and duration, ,17. Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people; let the people of all nations take notice of what I am about to say and do, as that wherein they are generally concerned, and by the consideration whereof they may, if they will, be instructed, and so delivered from the calamity here denounced. All things that come forth of it, Heb. all the offsprings of it; either, 1. All the trees and fruits, and other productions of it; for it is usual with the prophets, by a figure, to turn their speech to these senseless creatures. Or, 2. All the inhabitants of the world, as the Chaldee and other ancients restrain and understand this general expression; which also is emphatical, and admonisheth the proud and insolent sons of men of their mean and obscure original, that how great and glorious soever they may seem to themselves or others, yet in truth they are but a better sort of mushrooms springing out of the earth; for dust they are, and unto dust they must return, as was said, .

Isaiah 34:1 Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it.Ver. 1. Come near, ye nations.] In this chapter and the next, the prophet, for the terror of the wicked, and comfort of the godly, summeth up what he had said before concerning the destruction of the enemies and the restoration of the Church. Eusebius, with many other ancients, will have this chapter to be understood to be the end of the world and the last judgment; and further saith that Plato hath taken this place of the prophet Isaiah into his writings, and made it his own. Litera vero huius vaticinii de extremo iudicio non loguitur; but this cannot be the literal sense of the text, saith Scultetus. The Jewish doctors will needs understand these two chapters as a prophecy of their return into the Holy Land, when once Idumea shall be destroyed; and for this they allege Lamentations 4:22, which yet proveth it not. De Praep. Evang., lib. xi.

XXXIV. (1) Come near, ye nations, to hear . . .—The two chapters that follow have a distinct character of their own. They form, as it were, the closing epilogue of the first great collection of Isaiah’s prophecies, the historical section that follows (Isaiah 36-39) serving as a link between them and the great second volume, which comes as an independent whole. Here, accordingly, we have to deal with what belongs to a transition period, probably the closing years of the reign of Hezekiah The Egyptian alliance and the attack of Sennacherib are now in the back-ground, and the prophet’s vision takes a wider range. In the destruction of the Assyrian army he sees the pledge and earnest of the fate of all who fight against God, and as a representative instance of such enemies, fixes upon Edom, then, as ever, foremost among the enemies of Judah. They had invaded that kingdom in the days of Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:17). The inscriptions of Sennacherib (Lenormant, Anc. Hist., i. 399) show that they submitted to him. They probably played a part in his invasion of Judah, in his attack on Jerusalem, analogous to that which drew down the bitter curse of the Babylonian exiles (Psalms 137:7). The chapters are further noticeable as having served as a model both to Zephaniah throughout his prophecy, and to Jeremiah 25, Jeremiah 46:3-12, Jeremiah 50, 51, parallelisms with which will meet us as we go on. The prophecy opens, as was natural, with a wider appeal. The lesson which Isaiah has to teach is one for all time and for all nations: “They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.” There rises before his eyes once more the vision of a day of great slaughter, such as the world had never known before, the putrid carcasses of the slain covering the earth, as they had covered Tophet, the Valley of Hinnom, after the pestilence had done its work on Sennacherib’s army. (Comp. as an instance of like hyperbole, the vision of the destruction of Gog and Magog, in Ezekiel 39:11-16.)

CHAPTER XXXIV The prophet earnestly exhorts all nations to attend to the communication which he has received from Jehovah, as the matter is of the highest importance, and of universal concern, 1. The wrath of God is denounced against all the nations that had provoked to anger the Defender of the cause of Zion, 2, 3. Great crowd of images, by which the final overthrow and utter extermination of every thing that opposes the spread of true religion in the earth are forcibly and majestically set forth; images so very bold and expressive as to render it impossible, without doing great violence to symbolical language, to restrain their import to the calamities which befell the Edomites in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, or in that of any other potentate, or even to the calamities which the enemies of the Church have yet suffered since the delivery of the prophecy. Edom must therefore be a type of Antichrist, the last grand adversary of the people of God; and consequently this most awful prophecy, in its ultimate signification, remains to be accomplished, 4-15. The Churches of God, at the period of the consummation, commanded to consult the book of Jehovah, and note the exact fulfilment of these terrible predictions in their minutest details. Not one jot or tittle relative even to the circumstances shadowed forth by the impure animals shall be found to fail; for what the mouth of the Lord has declared necessary to satisfy the Divine justice, his Spirit will accomplish, 16, 17. This and the following chapter 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 of God consequent upon the execution of those judgments. The event foretold is represented as of the highest importance, and 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, that is, all those that had provoked to anger the Defender of the cause of Zion. Among those, Edom is particularly specified. The principal provocation of Edom was their insulting the Jews in their distress, and joining against them with their enemies, the Chaldeans; see Amos 1:11; Ezekiel 25:12; Ezekiel 35:15; Psalms 137:7. Accordingly the Edomites were, together with the rest of the neighbouring nations, ravaged and laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar; see Jeremiah 25:15-26; Malachi 1:3-4, and see Marsham, Can. Chron. Saec. xviii., who calls this the age of the destruction of cities.

1–4. The announcement of the world-judgment, introduced by a proclamation addressed to all nations. The peoples are invited to come near, as if for debate (ch. Isaiah 41:1, Isaiah 48:16, Isaiah 57:3), but really to hear their doom. Cf. ch. Isaiah 1:2; Deuteronomy 32:1; Micah 1:2. all that is therein] Better, the fulness thereof (R.V.);—the same word as in ch. Isaiah 6:3. all things that come forth of it] The word is used (1) of vegetation, the produce of the earth, (2) of a man’s issue: here, apparently, by a mixture of metaphors, of mankind as springing from the earth.

Come near, ye nations, to hear - That is, to hear of the judgments which God was about to execute, and the great purposes which he was about to accomplish.

1-3. Come near, ye nations — All mankind is summoned, including all creation in the high poetic ideal, to witness the final fate of all Jehovah’s foes.