Isaiah 24: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah announces that the LORD will strip the earth bare and scatter everyone who lives on it, with no group spared: priest and people, master and servant, lender and borrower all share the same fate. The reason given is that the earth's inhabitants have broken the laws, the decrees, and the everlasting covenant, so a curse has consumed the land and left only a few people. Music, wine, and celebration stop; the city is left in ruins; and terror, pit, and snare wait for everyone who lives on the earth. The chapter ends with the LORD punishing the powers above and the kings below, then reigning on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem before his elders.

Claim by Claim

1. 24:1
   • The LORD empties the earth.
   • The LORD lays the earth waste.
   • The LORD distorts the surface of the earth.
   • The LORD scatters the inhabitants of the earth.
2. 24:2
   • What happens will fall alike on everyone.
   • It will be with the people as with the priest.
   • It will be with the servant as with his master.
   • It will be with the maidservant as with her mistress.
   • It will be with the buyer as with the seller.
   • It will be with the lender as with the borrower.
   • It will be with the creditor as with the debtor.
3. 24:3
   • The earth will be utterly emptied.
   • The earth will be utterly plundered.
   • The LORD has spoken this word.
4. 24:4
   • The earth mourns.
   • The earth withers.
   • The world languishes.
   • The world withers.
   • The exalted people of the earth languish.
5. 24:5
   • The earth is polluted under its inhabitants.
   • The inhabitants have transgressed the laws.
   • The inhabitants have violated the statute.
   • The inhabitants have broken the everlasting covenant.
6. 24:6
   • Therefore a curse has devoured the earth.
   • Those who dwell in the earth are held guilty.
   • Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned.
   • Few men are left.
7. 24:7
   • The new wine mourns.
   • The vine languishes.
   • All the merry-hearted sigh.
8. 24:8
   • The mirth of the tambourines has ceased.
   • The noise of those who exult has stopped.
   • The joy of the lyre has ceased.
9. 24:9
   • They will not drink wine with song.
   • Strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.
10. 24:10
    • The city of chaos is broken down.
    • Every house is shut up so that no one may enter.
11. 24:11
    • There is an outcry for wine in the streets.
    • All joy has grown dark.
    • The mirth of the land has departed.
12. 24:12
    • Desolation is left in the city.
    • The gate is battered into ruin.
13. 24:13
    • It will be like this in the midst of the earth, among the peoples.
    • It will be like the beating of an olive tree.
    • It will be like the gleanings when the grape harvest is finished.
14. 24:14
    • They lift up their voice.
    • They sing for joy.
    • They shout aloud over the majesty of the LORD.
    • They shout from the sea, which may also mean from the west.
15. 24:15
    • Therefore glorify the LORD in the fires, though the word may instead mean in the east or in the regions of light.
    • Glorify the name of the LORD, the God of Israel, in the coastlands of the sea.
16. 24:16
    • From the ends of the earth we have heard songs.
    • The songs give glory to the righteous one.
    • The speaker said, My wasting away, my wasting away.
    • The speaker said, Woe to me.
    • The treacherous have dealt treacherously.
    • The treacherous have dealt very treacherously.
17. 24:17
    • Terror, pit, and snare are upon you, inhabitant of the earth.
18. 24:18
    • Whoever flees from the sound of the terror will fall into the pit.
    • Whoever climbs up out of the pit will be caught in the snare.
    • The windows on high are opened.
    • The foundations of the earth shake.
19. 24:19
    • The earth is utterly broken apart.
    • The earth is split open.
    • The earth is violently shaken.
20. 24:20
    • The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard.
    • The earth sways like a hut.
    • The earth's transgression is heavy upon it.
    • The earth falls.
    • The earth will not rise again.
21. 24:21
    • In that day the LORD will punish the host of the height in the height.
    • In that day the LORD will punish the kings of the ground upon the ground.
22. 24:22
    • They will be gathered together as prisoners are gathered into a pit.
    • They will be shut up in a prison.
    • After many days they will be visited, which may mean punished or attended to.
23. 24:23
    • The moon will be confounded.
    • The sun will be ashamed.
    • The LORD of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem.
    • There will be glory before his elders.

Words Worth Explaining

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

24:1

"The LORD" printed in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided pronouncing it and said "the Lord" instead; English translations have followed that practice ever since.

24:2

"Usury" means interest, the extra money a lender charges a borrower. A priest was a worship leader at the temple who offered sacrifices for the people. The list makes one point: no job or rank keeps anyone safe.

24:3

The Hebrew word rendered "land" here is the same word rendered "earth" in verse 1 (erets). It can mean the whole planet, the inhabited world, or one particular country. Isaiah uses it about a dozen times in this chapter and never settles the question, so the disaster reads at times like a world-wide collapse and at times like the ruin of a single country.

24:4

The Hebrew of the last line is uncertain. It can mean "the exalted ones among the people of the earth waste away", the great and powerful, or, with the same consonants, "the height wastes away along with the earth," that is, the sky fades along with the ground.

24:5

A covenant is a binding agreement sworn between two parties, with stated obligations and stated penalties for breaking it, the standard form for ancient treaties between a king and his subjects. Which "everlasting covenant" is meant here is disputed: the agreement made with Noah and all living creatures after the flood, which was for all humanity, or the law given at Sinai, which was for Israel alone.

24:6

"Curse" here translates a Hebrew word (alah) that means specifically the penalty clause of a sworn agreement, the punishment the parties called down on themselves if they broke their word. It is the legal consequence of verse 5, not random misfortune. The word rendered "burned" is also read by some as "grown few" or "scorched pale"; the sense of the line is that the population has dwindled.

24:7

"New wine" is a distinct Hebrew word (tirosh) for the freshly pressed juice of the current harvest. It stands for the year's crop at its most abundant, so saying it "dries up" means the harvest itself has failed.

24:8

The instrument is a small hand-held drum, a wooden hoop with a skin stretched over it, played mostly by women at celebrations and victory dances. It had no metal jingles like a modern tambourine.

24:9

"Strong drink" translates shekar, a fermented drink made from something other than grapes, barley beer, or drink made from dates, figs or honey. It is regularly paired with wine to mean "every kind of alcohol."

24:10

The Hebrew word behind "chaos" is tohu, the same word used for the formless emptiness of the world before creation in Genesis 1:2, and elsewhere for a trackless desert or for something worthless. The city is not named, and readers have proposed everything from Babylon to Jerusalem; Isaiah leaves it as any city, or every city.

24:12

The gate of an ancient walled city was more than a doorway: it was a fortified structure with chambers where markets were held, legal cases were tried and elders sat in council. Smashing the gate means both that the defenses have fallen and that public life has ended.

24:13

Both pictures are of harvest leftovers. Olives were gathered by beating the branches with poles, and the law told owners not to go over a tree a second time; grapes were picked once and the stragglers left behind. What remains in either case is a scattering of fruit high in the branches, a vivid way of saying that only a scattered handful of people survives.

24:14

"From the sea" means from the west. Hebrew names directions from the standpoint of someone facing the sunrise, so the Mediterranean, lying west of Israel, simply is "the sea" and its name serves as the word for that direction.

24:15

The Hebrew here (urim) literally means "in the lights" or "in the fires," which is why the King James Version has "in the fires." Most take it as the region of light, meaning the east, to pair with the west of verse 14, but the reading is genuinely uncertain. "The islands of the sea" translates a word for the coastlands and islands of the Mediterranean, the far edge of the known world from Israel's point of view.

24:16

"I am wasting away" renders a Hebrew phrase (razi-li) found nowhere else; it may come from a root meaning "waste away," or from one meaning "secret," giving "I have a secret." Translators simply have to choose. In the last line the Hebrew hammers one root three times, bogedim bagadu baged, a deliberate piling up of the same sound that English can only approximate. "The Righteous One" can also be read as a plural, "the righteous."

24:17

The three Hebrew words (pachad, pachat, pach) chime together, an effect lost in translation. They describe one hunting technique: beaters drive the animal forward with noise, it stumbles into a covered pit, and a net waits for anything that gets out.

24:18

"The windows of the sky" is flood language. In the older Hebrew picture of the world, a solid dome held back the waters above, and hatches in it let the rain through; the same phrase describes the start of Noah's flood in Genesis 7:11.

24:20

The comparison is to the temporary shelter, branches and cloth over a frame: that a watchman put up in a field or vineyard to guard the crop, and abandoned once the harvest ended. It sags and leans in the wind, and nobody repairs it. The King James Version's "cottage" meant a rough hut, not a house.

24:21

"The army of powers in the heights" translates "the host of the height." In Hebrew this phrase covers the stars and the heavenly beings thought to stand behind them; surrounding nations worshiped these as gods, and the line sets them in parallel with the kings on the ground, powers above and powers below, both answerable.

24:22

The "pit" is a cistern, a bottle-shaped tank cut into rock for storing water; an empty one made a ready-made holding cell with no way to climb out. The last verb (pakad) is deliberately open: it can mean punished, or attended to, or released. Hebrew readers have taken it both ways, so it is left here as "dealt with."

24:23

Hebrew calls the moon "the white one" and the sun "the hot one" here rather than using their ordinary names, and both were worshiped as deities across the ancient Near East. "The LORD of Hosts" means the LORD commanding armies, the same word for "host" as in verse 21. Mount Zion is the ridge in Jerusalem where the temple stood. "His elders" are the senior men who represented the community; the King James Version's "ancients" meant elders, not ancient things.