The Terrible Vision (Isaiah 2:10-22).
This vision is in direct contrast with the Glorious Vision of Isaiah 2:2-4. On the one hand glory, now, on the other, judgment. Here we have a picture of the destiny of those who fail to respond to God's mercy.
The construction, at first simple, is in fact complicated. From Isaiah 2:10 to Isaiah 2:19 there is a build up from man fleeing to the rocks before the terror of Yahweh and the glory of His majesty (Isaiah 2:10), to his being mightily humbled and Yahweh exalted (Isaiah 2:11), to the final bringing down of all that men exult in (Isaiah 2:12-16), to a repetition of his being mightily humbled and Yahweh exalted (Isaiah 2:17), to a repetition of his fleeing to the rocks before the terror of Yahweh and the glory of His majesty (Isaiah 2:19), during which time the idols will pass away (Isaiah 2:18).
But then is added that He is arising to shake mightily the earth (Isaiah 2:19 b), which leads on to a further description of man's casting away his idols (Isaiah 2:20) and his fleeing to the rocks for a hiding place from the terror of Yahweh and the glory of His majesty (Isaiah 2:21), followed by a repetition of the fact that He is arising to shake mightily the earth. The whole picture is applied in Revelation 6:15-17 to the final day of wrath. The repetitions witness to the truth of the words and the certainty that they will come about.
‘Enter into the rock,
And hide yourself in the dust,
From before the terror of Yahweh,
And from the glorious splendour of his majesty.
The lofty looks of man will be brought low,
And the haughtiness of men will be bowed down,
And Yahweh alone will be exalted in that day.'
Note how the literary form is in couplets and then finally culminates in one great statement, ‘And Yahweh alone will be exalted in that day.'
At present these men are brought low before their idols and bow before them (Isaiah 2:9), and yet are proud and haughty before Yahweh, but the day is coming when the opposite will happen. It will be before Yahweh that all men will be brought low and will bow down. This will occur when He appears in His glory. For He is to appear in His true splendour as the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25), and His presence will be enough in itself to bring it about. None will be able to stand before Him. They will flee before Him and seek shelter in caves and try to bury themselves in holes in the dust because of their awareness of the glory of His majesty, and because of their fear of Him. For then they will indeed behold Him in His true splendour, as He is. In that day only One will be exalted, and that One will be Yahweh.
Their quest for a hiding place will, of course, be in vain. There will be no hiding place, just as there was no hiding place for man in the Garden of Eden at the approach of Yahweh there.
‘For there will be a day of Yahweh of hosts,
Against all that is proud and haughty,
And against all that is lifted up, and it will be brought low.
And against all the cedars of Lebanon,
Which are high and lifted up,
And against all the oaks of Bashan,
And against all the high mountains,
And against all the hills that are lifted up,
And against every lofty tower,
And against every fenced wall,
And against all the ships of Tarshish,
And against all pleasant imagery (literally ‘object gazed on').'
‘A day of Yahweh of hosts.' This is any day when Yahweh acts in judgment, when Yahweh ‘has His day'. It can be near or far depending on context. The description here would to some extent fit the approaching severe judgment by the Assyrians, for Lebanon, Transjordan (Bashan) and Tyre (ships of Tarshish) would all be affected by them, but Isaiah is later confident of delivery from Assyria, whereas the description here is final. And here it is Yahweh alone Who is exalted, and the idols utterly pass away. The context also places it in ‘the latter days' (Isaiah 2:2). It is therefore a picture of Yahweh's final days of reckoning, the opposite of Isaiah 2:2-4, of which the Assyrian invasion is but a foretaste.
It will be a day of accounting for ‘all that is proud and haughty, and all that is lifted up, and it will be brought low.' Thus primarily in mind is all that is exalted, depicted by means of objects mentioned mainly because they were famous for their proud status, the tall cedars of Lebanon and the strong oaks of Bashan of which they were so proud, the mighty mountains and the high hills on which they worshipped idols, the tall towers, and the strong walls from which men would shout defiance at the enemy, and in which they trusted to keep them safe, the tall-masted ships of Tarshish (Ezekiel 27:5-8; Ezekiel 27:25), manufactured from the great trees, and which were the great ships that went long distances, conquering the sea and returning with iron ore, (Tarshish means ‘refinery'), and then finally the magnificent imagery of great kings as depicted in their inscriptions, possibly having in mind especially their victory trophies. All this that man glories in will cease.
The ‘pleasant imagery' may be any large inscriptions such as those depicting gods, or those inscribed as trophies of victory, or may even be another word for another type of splendid ship in parallel with the ships of Tarshish (the meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain, but signifies ‘the object gazed on'). However the detail is clear. All that man gloried in and saw as most imposing and permanent would fall in that day, his tall and mighty trees toppling to the ground, his great mountain fastnesses brought low, his powerful fortifications overwhelmed and his mighty ships sunk. Nothing that we exult in will stand in God's final day.
‘And the loftiness of man will be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men will be brought low,
And Yahweh alone will be exalted in that day,
And the idols will utterly pass away,
And men will go into the caves of the rocks,
And into the dust of the earth,
From before the terror of Yahweh,
And from the glory of his majesty,
When he arises to shake mightily the earth.
In that day a man will cast away his idols of silver,
And his idols of gold, which they made for him to worship,
To the moles (‘rodents') and to the bats,
To go into the caverns of the rocks,
And into the clefts of the ragged rocks,
From before the terror of Yahweh,
And from the glory of his majesty,
When he arises to shake mightily the earth.'
Again there is twofold emphasis on man's pride being humbled, and here it is 'adam and 'enosh, mankind in general and men as frail and mortal, that are in mind (contrast Isaiah 2:9). And we then have twice more repeated the description of the glorious and majestic appearing of Yahweh (compare Isaiah 2:10-11), the threefold repetition emphasising its prime importance. This is describing the end of time. His appearance in splendour will be manifested to all. But now is added twice that He is arising mightily to shake the earth. The glorious appearing is accompanied by the mighty shaking. His appearing will deal finally with all man's pride and arrogance (Isaiah 2:12-17), and with all idols (elilim - ‘nonentities'), which will utterly pass away (Isaiah 2:18). They will be tossed to the rats in the dust,and the bats in the caves, in final recognition of their utter uselessness (Isaiah 2:20). God will be all in all.
Thus will idolatry cease, the gods of the nations be humiliated, tossed away and destroyed. Thus will proud man be humbled in a way far deeper than his self-humbling before the idols in Isaiah 2:9. Thus will men, the god-makers, seek to hide as man once sought to hide in the Garden of Eden, but while in Eden it was among the trees, which had been God's provision for him, here it is in caves, rocks and holes in the ground from which he had dug his gold and silver, the very gold and silver from which his idols were made. Anywhere will do to get away from the terrible vision.
The picture of man fleeing to his hiding places while casting away his gold and silver idols, made for him by men, is vivid. They have in the end proved useless. And why? Because the majestic splendour and glory of Yahweh has been revealed. Beside that nothing can stand. Beside that the gold and silver artificial splendour of the idols pales into total insignificance. Here is the true glory, the glory of God. The cry of the seraphim in Isaiah 6:3 is supremely fulfilled. ‘The whole earth is full of His glory'.
The huge contrast between the pictures in Isaiah 2:2-4 and Isaiah 2:10-21 brings out the constant contrast in Scripture between the triumph of God in His people and the fate of the remainder of mankind. On the one hand universal triumph and glory, on the other universal judgment and despair. The complicated interweaving of the fulfilment of Isaiah's words in history as they came to their own in the spreading of the Gospel, the establishing of the Kingly Rule of God and His constantly repeated judgments on nations, leading up to the final consummation in the future in the rapture and resurrection of God's people, the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ and the judgment of those in rebellion against God, followed by the everlasting heavenly kingdom, was outside the prophet's awareness. He presented all this in terms that could be understood. It was ‘the future' in ‘the latter days', that is ‘days far from now'.
The final lesson from this great vision is that every man must give an account of himself to God. While He is the Merciful God He is also the Terrible God. We must never treat lightly our responsiveness to Him lest it prove false at the last (Matthew 7:22). ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' (Hebrews 10:31) unless we do so through Jesus.
Final Comment (Isaiah 2:22).
‘Cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for in what way is he to be accounted of?'
This is one of the interjecting verses that we often find in Isaiah, although it fits into the chiasmus. Compare Isaiah 2:5; Isaiah 3:9-11. As there it connects what has been said with what follows. ‘Cease from' here means ‘do not look to, do not rely on'. He is saying that man, unlike God Whose breath is in Himself and permanent, is but an earthly creature who depends on breathing noseful by noseful for his life and whose breath can easily be taken away. He is not therefore to be counted on, or even taken into account, in a major crisis (Isaiah 3:1) or in the face of eternal things such as have been described (Isaiah 2:19). It is to God that man should look, not to men. He alone is dependable in the greatest crises. Those who rely on God rather than men will be better able to face the soon-coming crisis (chapter 3)
This is not to say that we should not depend on each other when difficult times arise, but rather stressing where final dependence must lie. The truth is that man may often well not have the solution, and that man is not always dependable, whereas God does always have the solution and is always dependable. For it is only God Who can breathe life into men.