Isaiah 33: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter opens with a warning to a destroyer who has not yet been destroyed, then turns to a prayer for the LORD's help. It describes ruined roads, broken agreements, and a land in mourning, followed by the LORD's announcement that he will now act. It asks who can live near a consuming fire and answers with a list of honest conduct, then pictures Jerusalem as a secure tent with the LORD as its judge, lawgiver, and king.

Claim by Claim

1. 33:1
   • Woe is pronounced on the one who destroys.
   • The destroyer has not himself been destroyed.
   • Woe is pronounced on the one who deals treacherously.
   • No one has dealt treacherously with the traitor.
   • When the destroyer finishes destroying, he will be destroyed.
   • When the traitor finishes dealing treacherously, others will deal treacherously with him.
2. 33:2
   • The speakers ask the LORD to be gracious to them.
   • The speakers say they have waited for the LORD.
   • The speakers ask the LORD to be their arm every morning.
   • The speakers ask the LORD to be their salvation in the time of trouble.
3. 33:3
   • At the noise of the tumult peoples fled.
   • At the LORD's lifting himself up nations were scattered.
4. 33:4
   • Your spoil will be gathered the way the locust gathers.
   • Men will rush upon the spoil as locusts rush to and fro.
5. 33:5
   • The LORD is exalted.
   • The LORD dwells on high.
   • The LORD has filled Zion with justice and righteousness.
6. 33:6
   • Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times.
   • There will be strength of salvation.
   • The fear of the LORD is his treasure.
7. 33:7
   • Their valiant ones cry out in the streets.
   • The messengers of peace weep bitterly.
8. 33:8
   • The highways lie desolate.
   • Travelers on the road have ceased.
   • He has broken the covenant.
   • He has despised the cities.
   • He regards no man.
9. 33:9
   • The land mourns and languishes.
   • Lebanon is ashamed and withers.
   • Sharon has become like a desert plain.
   • Bashan and Carmel shake off their growth.
10. 33:10
    • The LORD says he will now arise.
    • The LORD says he will now be exalted.
    • The LORD says he will now lift himself up.
11. 33:11
    • You will conceive chaff.
    • You will give birth to stubble.
    • Your breath is a fire that will devour you.
12. 33:12
    • The peoples will be like burnings of lime.
    • They will be burned in the fire like thorns that have been cut down.
13. 33:13
    • Those who are far off are commanded to hear what the LORD has done.
    • Those who are near are commanded to acknowledge the LORD's might.
14. 33:14
    • The sinners in Zion are afraid.
    • Trembling has seized the godless.
    • They ask who among them can dwell with the devouring fire.
    • They ask who among them can dwell with everlasting burnings.
15. 33:15
    • The one described walks righteously.
    • The one described speaks what is upright.
    • The one described rejects gain got by oppression.
    • The one described shakes his hands free from taking a bribe.
    • The one described stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed.
    • The one described shuts his eyes from looking on evil.
16. 33:16
    • That man will dwell on the heights.
    • Fortresses of rock will be his stronghold.
    • His bread will be given to him.
    • His water will be sure.
17. 33:17
    • Your eyes will see the king in his beauty.
    • Your eyes will behold a land stretching far away.
18. 33:18
    • Your heart will muse on terror.
    • You will ask where the one who counted is.
    • You will ask where the one who weighed is.
    • You will ask where the one who counted the towers is.
19. 33:19
    • You will not see the fierce people.
    • That people's speech is too deep to be understood.
    • That people's tongue stammers and cannot be understood.
20. 33:20
    • Zion is to be looked upon as the city of our appointed feasts.
    • Your eyes will see Jerusalem as a quiet dwelling place.
    • Jerusalem is a tent that will not be taken down.
    • Its tent pegs will never be pulled up.
    • None of its cords will be broken.
21. 33:21
    • There the majestic LORD will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams.
    • No galley with oars will go there.
    • No majestic ship will pass by there.
22. 33:22
    • The LORD is our judge.
    • The LORD is our lawgiver.
    • The LORD is our king.
    • He will save us.
23. 33:23
    • Your ship's ropes hang loose.
    • They cannot hold the base of the mast firm.
    • They cannot spread the sail.
    • Then a great quantity of spoil will be divided.
    • The lame will take plunder.
24. 33:24
    • No inhabitant will say, I am sick.
    • The people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.

Words Worth Explaining

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

33:1

The "destroyer" is not named anywhere in the chapter. Isaiah is speaking during the period when Assyria, the dominant empire of the day, was overrunning the small kingdoms of the region, including Judah, and taking tribute from them; ancient and modern readers alike have generally taken the unnamed power to be Assyria. "Woe to you" is a set formula, the cry raised at a funeral, used here as an announcement that doom is coming.

33:2

The Hebrew text here reads "be their arm every morning" (as the King James has it); many manuscripts and early translations read "our arm," which is the sense the rendering follows. "Arm" is a standard Hebrew figure for strength in action, the way we might say "muscle."

33:4

Locusts were the region's most familiar agricultural disaster: a swarm could settle on cultivated land and strip it bare within hours. "Young locusts" are the wingless immature stage, which advances on foot in a dense mass. Who is plundering whom in this verse is genuinely unclear in the Hebrew: it can be read as the enemy's plunder being swept up by Judah, or as Judah's goods being swept up by the enemy.

33:5

Zion was originally the name of the fortified ridge in Jerusalem; it came to stand for the whole city, its temple, and its people.

33:6

"The fear of the LORD" is a fixed Hebrew phrase meaning reverent awe and the loyalty that goes with it, not fright. It describes an attitude, close to what we mean by holding something in awe.

33:7

The "messengers sent to make peace" are diplomatic envoys, sent to negotiate terms or pay tribute in the hope of avoiding invasion. Their weeping means the mission has failed.

33:8

The "agreement" is a treaty between states. Such treaties were sworn before witnesses and before the gods of both parties; breaking one was the gravest kind of bad faith. The Hebrew of the traditional text reads "he has despised the cities" (as the King James has it); a manuscript found at Qumran reads "witnesses," differing by one letter, and that is the reading followed here.

33:9

These are the four most fertile and famous landscapes known to Isaiah's hearers: Lebanon, the mountains north of Israel covered in great cedar forests; Sharon, the rich coastal plain; Bashan, the high grazing land east of the Jordan; and Carmel, the wooded ridge running down to the sea. Naming all four together is a way of saying the whole land, at its best, has failed.

33:11

Chaff is the papery casing blown away when grain is threshed; stubble is the stalk-ends left standing in a field after harvest. Both were proverbially worthless and both burn instantly, the point of the image.

33:12

Limestone was burned in kilns at very high heat to make lime for plaster and mortar; what came out was a white powder. Thorn scrub was the usual fuel, since it was worthless for anything else and caught fire fiercely.

33:14

The King James "hypocrites" does not mean pretenders here. The Hebrew word means someone godless or morally polluted. Verses 14–16 follow a form used at the temple gates: a question about who may enter God's presence, answered by a list of conditions. Psalms 15 and 24 use the same pattern.

33:15

Shaking out the hands was a physical gesture of refusal, showing the palms empty. "Hearing of blood" means listening to talk of shedding blood, being party to a plot against someone's life.

33:16

A fortress is a strong, protected place. People in hill country fled to cliffs and caves that soldiers could not easily climb.

33:17

"The king" is deliberately open: it can be read as the human king of Judah, seen in splendor again once the siege is lifted, or as the LORD himself, called king in verse 22. "A land that stretches far away" contrasts with the shut-in view from a city under siege, where the horizon ends at the enemy's lines.

33:18

These are the enemy's occupation officials, remembered with relief once they are gone: the scribe who registered what was owed, the officer who weighed out the silver of the tribute, and the officer who surveyed the city's defensive towers, either to assess them for attack or to count them for the levy.

33:19

Assyrian officials spoke Akkadian, and their empire drew troops from many nations. To Hebrew speakers an unknown language sounded like meaningless stammering, the same idea behind the Greek word "barbarian," coined from the sound of foreign speech.

33:20

The "appointed feasts" were the annual festivals at which Israelites were expected to travel to Jerusalem. The image that follows is of a nomad's tent: a tent stays put only as long as its pegs are driven in and its guy ropes hold, and a tent is by nature something you strike and move on from. Saying this tent will never be moved says the city will never again be uprooted.

33:21

Great capitals of the region (Nineveh on the Tigris, Babylon on the Euphrates, Thebes on the Nile) were built on broad rivers that gave them water, trade, and a defensive moat. Jerusalem had no such river. The saying here is that God will supply what a river supplies, without the drawback: a navigable river is also the road by which an enemy's warships arrive.

33:22

Judge, lawgiver, and king name the three functions of a ruler in the ancient world: settling disputes, issuing binding decrees, and commanding in war.

33:23

The image shifts abruptly to a ship whose rigging has gone slack, and the Hebrew does not say whose ship it is: it can be read as the enemy's vessel disabled, or as Judah pictured as a crippled ship that is nonetheless given the spoil. "Even people who cannot walk well will carry some off" means the victory is so complete that no fighting is needed to collect the plunder.

33:24

In Hebrew usage, physical sickness and unforgiven guilt were commonly spoken of in the same breath, as two aspects of a community's condition; the two halves of this verse are set side by side for that reason.