Isaiah 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah's message about Judah and Jerusalem opens with a picture of the last days, when the mountain of the LORD's house is raised above all others, nations stream to it for instruction, and war is given up for farming. The chapter then turns to the present state of the house of Jacob: filled with practices from the east, fortune-telling, silver, gold, horses, chariots, and idols made by human hands. The rest of the chapter announces a day when the LORD of Hosts comes against everything proud and lifted high (people, trees, mountains, towers, walls, and ships), so that the LORD alone is exalted, idols vanish, and people hide in rocks and caves. It closes with a call to stop trusting in man, who has only breath in his nostrils.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • Isaiah son of Amoz saw a word.
   • The word he saw concerned Judah and Jerusalem.
2. 2:2
   • In the latter days the mountain of the LORD's house will be firmly established.
   • It will be set at the head of the mountains.
   • It will be lifted above the hills.
   • All the nations will stream to it.
3. 2:3
   • Many peoples will go and speak.
   • They will say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD.
   • They will say: let us go to the house of the God of Jacob.
   • They say he will teach them some of his ways.
   • They say they will walk in his paths.
   • Instruction will go out from Zion.
   • The word of the LORD will go out from Jerusalem.
4. 2:4
   • He will judge between the nations.
   • He will decide disputes for many peoples.
   • They will hammer their swords into plowshare blades.
   • They will hammer their spears into pruning knives.
   • Nation will not lift up sword against nation.
   • They will not learn war any more.
5. 2:5
   • The speaker addresses the house of Jacob.
   • The speaker says: come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
6. 2:6
   • The LORD has abandoned his people, the house of Jacob.
   • They are full of practices from the east.
   • They practice divination like the Philistines.
   • They join with the children of foreigners, though whether this means striking bargains with them or being satisfied by them is unclear.
7. 2:7
   • Their land is full of silver and gold.
   • There is no end to their treasures.
   • Their land is full of horses.
   • There is no end to their chariots.
8. 2:8
   • Their land is full of idols.
   • They bow down to the work of their own hands.
   • They bow down to what their own fingers have made.
9. 2:9
   • Humankind is brought low.
   • Man is humbled.
   • The speaker says: do not forgive them.
10. 2:10
    • A command is given: go into the rock.
    • A command is given: hide in the dust.
    • The hiding is from the dread of the LORD.
    • The hiding is from the splendor of his majesty.
11. 2:11
    • The proud eyes of man will be brought low.
    • The haughtiness of men will be bowed down.
    • The LORD alone will be exalted in that day.
12. 2:12
    • The LORD of hosts has a day.
    • That day is against everyone proud and lofty.
    • That day is against everyone lifted up, who will be brought low.
13. 2:13
    • That day is against all the cedars of Lebanon that are lofty and lifted up.
    • That day is against all the oaks of Bashan.
14. 2:14
    • That day is against all the lofty mountains.
    • That day is against all the lifted-up hills.
15. 2:15
    • That day is against every high tower.
    • That day is against every fortified wall.
16. 2:16
    • That day is against all the ships of Tarshish.
    • That day is against all desirable craft, whether ships or precious imagery is meant.
17. 2:17
    • The loftiness of man will be bowed down.
    • The haughtiness of men will be brought low.
    • The LORD alone will be exalted in that day.
18. 2:18
    • The idols will completely pass away.
19. 2:19
    • People will go into caves in the rocks.
    • People will go into holes in the ground.
    • They do this from the dread of the LORD.
    • They do this from the splendor of his majesty.
    • This happens when he rises to terrify the earth.
20. 2:20
    • In that day a man will throw away his idols of silver.
    • In that day a man will throw away his idols of gold.
    • They made those idols for themselves to worship.
    • The idols will be thrown to burrowing animals and to bats.
21. 2:21
    • They will go into the crevices of the rocks.
    • They will go into the clefts of the crags.
    • They do this from the dread of the LORD.
    • They do this from the splendor of his majesty.
    • This happens when he rises to terrify the earth.
22. 2:22
    • A command is given: stop relying on man.
    • Man has only breath in his nostrils.
    • The question is asked: of what account is he?

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

"Saw" is the ordinary Hebrew word for a prophet receiving a message: prophecy was described as something seen, not just heard, so a spoken oracle could still be called a vision. Judah was the southern kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital; the northern kingdom, called Israel or Ephraim, was a separate state in Isaiah's day.

2:2

"LORD" printed in capitals stands in for the personal name of God in Hebrew, four consonants usually written YHWH. Ancient Jewish practice was to avoid pronouncing it and to say "the Lord" instead, and English Bibles keep that substitution. "The mountain of the LORD's house" is the temple hill in Jerusalem, a modest ridge in a region of far higher ground. The picture of it becoming the tallest peak is deliberately impossible geography. "The last days" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning roughly "in the after-part of the days", the time still to come at the far end of things. It marks a distant future without fixing a date.

2:3

Jacob was the ancestor whose twelve sons gave their names to the tribes; "the house of Jacob" and "the God of Jacob" mean the people of Israel and their God. Zion was originally the name of the fortified hill David captured in Jerusalem; by Isaiah's time it was used for the temple hill and for the city as a whole. "The law" here is Hebrew *torah*, which means teaching or instruction given by an authority, wider than a legal code.

2:4

A plowshare is the metal blade at the front of a plow that cuts the soil; a pruning hook is a curved blade on a handle for trimming vines. Both were made of the same worked iron as swords and spears, so the image is of weapons taken to the forge and reshaped into farm tools.

2:5

The "house of Jacob" means the people of Israel. Jacob was their ancestor, and God gave him the second name Israel.

2:6

"Filled with practices from the east" refers to imported ways of consulting the supernatural, reading omens, divination and the like, associated with Mesopotamia. The Philistines, who lived on the coastal plain to the west and were Israel's long-standing rivals, were likewise known for fortune-telling. "Clasp hands" renders a Hebrew idiom for striking a bargain or sealing a deal by hand, the way a handshake closes a contract. Some read it instead as producing children with foreigners; the Hebrew is compressed and both senses have been argued.

2:7

Horses and chariots were not farm animals but the expensive core of an army, imported from Egypt and the north. Listing them alongside silver and gold marks them as accumulated wealth and military self-reliance.

2:8

The Hebrew word used for idols here, *elilim*, sounds like the word for god, *el*, but means something like "worthless things", a deliberate pun that the English cannot carry.

2:9

The Hebrew verb translated "bows down" is the same one used a line earlier for bowing to idols, and it is also the ordinary word for being brought low. So the line can mean people of every rank bow before their images, or that everyone is humiliated; the ambiguity is in the original.

2:10

The hills of Judah were full of caves and rock shelters. When an enemy army came, people hid in them. Isaiah tells his listeners to hide the way they would from an invasion.

2:12

"The day of the LORD" was already a familiar phrase to Isaiah's hearers, meaning a day when God acts decisively in public. Popular expectation seems to have been that it would fall on Israel's enemies; the prophets repeatedly turn it against Israel itself. "LORD of Hosts" is a title meaning commander of armies, either heavenly ones or Israel's.

2:13

The cedars of Lebanon were the tallest and most valuable timber in the region, used in palaces and temples; the oaks of the Bashan plateau, east of the Sea of Galilee, were the other proverbially great trees. Both stand here for anything conspicuously tall and admired.

2:15

A fortified wall is a city wall built for defense, with towers set into it. Towers and walls were the visible measure of a city's security.

2:16

"Ships of Tarshish" were large deep-water merchant vessels, named for a distant trading port whose location is uncertain, possibly in Spain. The phrase came to mean ocean-going cargo ships generally, the symbol of long-distance wealth. The second phrase is obscure in Hebrew: it means something like "desirable craft" or "objects of delight," which is why translations differ between fine ships and fine works of art.

2:20

Moles and bats live in the dark holes and caves people are fleeing into. Throwing the images there means abandoning them in exactly the places their owners are crawling to hide.

2:22

"Breath in his nostrils" is a Hebrew way of saying a human being is only a breathing creature, alive on borrowed air and easily stopped, set against the God just described. The closing question asks literally what he is to be reckoned or valued at.