God’s Word for You
Isaiah 2:17-19 he rises to shake the earth
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, December 12, 2024
17 The pride of mankind will be brought low, the arrogance of man will be humbled, and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day. 18 Those worthless idols will totally disappear. 19 People will flee into caves in the rocks and into holes in the ground, to hide from the dread of the LORD and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth.
These verses reverse the thoughts of verses 10 and 11, with verse 17 and verse 11 matching one another with only minor changes. Here the prophet has brought in a poetic device known as assonance (very similar sounds, almost rhyme) to stress a point in the brief words of verse 18 (only three words in Hebrew). He says: “The worthless idols will totally disappear.” “Totally” is calil, and “worthless idols” (as we have seen in verse 8) is ‘elil (or plural, ‘elilim).
A difference from the earlier scene of judgment is that here the people flee to caves and holes. The Israelites hid in caves when the war against the Philistines went badly for them (1 Samuel 13:5-6). This was the time King Saul went ahead with an offering to the Lord without waiting (as he should have) for the prophet Samuel, and it was on account of this that he lost his kingdom and his life (1 Samuel 13:14). A throne will not be a place to hide when the Lord comes. There will be nowhere for man to hide on that day.
Job lived in the days of Isaac or Jacob, but on the other side of the Dead Sea in the land of Uz. There were many Amorites in the land in those days, primitive, violent men, some of them giants (the ancestors of Sihon, Og, and Goliath), some of them just miserable troglodytes. They were men who resembled the so-called primitive men who lived before the Great Flood, and whose artifacts gave rise to the term “stone age.” Job has no compassion for them, but he is appalled that in his afflicted state, even those cave-dwellers looked down their flat noses at him: “They mock me!” he cried, “men whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs… In the brush they gathered salt herbs, and their food was the root of the broom tree. They were banished from their fellow men, shouted at as if they were thieves. They were forced to live in the dry stream beds, among the rocks and in holes in the ground. They brayed (like donkeys) among the bushes and huddled in the undergrowth, a base and nameless brood, they were driven from the land. And now their sons mock me in song!” (Job 30:1-9). Holes in the ground are the last refuge of the outcast, but holes in the ground will not be places where anyone can hide when the Lord comes. There will be nowhere for man to hide on that day.
Isaiah returns to the use of assonance (or rhyme) at the end of verse 19 when he says, “when (the Lord) rises to shake the earth.” Although they are spelled differently, the words “shake” and “earth” sound very similar: ‘arots (shake), ‘arets, (earth). But rhyme and wordplay aside, the scene the prophet depicts is terrifying. “He rises” is not a reference to his resurrection from the dead, but to the Lord Jesus rising from his seat, as it were, at the right hand of the Father. Isaiah is describing the moment when, as we confess in the Creed, he moves from that seat, to his role coming again to judge the living and the dead.
When Christ returns to judge, the whole world will be shaken, and there will be no place for anyone to hide. The living will be called forward into his presence; the dead will be raised by the power of Jesus’ holy words and voice and they, too, will be called forward. This is the gathering of all people (Matthew 25:32). Paul warns us all: “We will all stand before God’s judgment seat” (Romans 14:10).
This is a part of what we can call “The Preparation for the Judgment.” This comes, of course, before the judgment itself. But when the day arrives, the first part of the preparation is that thrones will be brought out (Revelation 20:4) and “the Ancient of Days will take his seat” (Daniel 7:9). Following this, the people will be gathered, as we have already described. Then there will follow the separation of the gathered, which Jesus says will be like the separation of sheep from goats (Matthew 25:32). The point of that distinction is that those animals are easily told apart, and it will be clear to everyone where anyone should go. But that is not yet the judgment; the judgment is yet to come. There will yet need to be the investigation of each of the cases (every human being in the history of man), and “there will be no accuser for each person other than his own very deeds” (Basil the Great). The decision of each case, that is, for each sinner, will be reached by God, and then the decision or judgment will be published, made widely known (promulgated) for all to know, and declared to the person in question, either “Receive your inheritance” (1 Peter 1:4) or “Go, you cursed…” (Matthew 25:41). The sentence will then be carried out without any exception, postponement, appeal or retrial, as Jesus clearly says: “They will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).
This second coming of Christ should make all sinners quake with fear, to wretch and shake with terror, because the judgment is final and incontestable. But our fears are calmed by the soothing voice of our Savior Jesus, who rose from the dead and who will raise each of us from the dead as well, to enter into the place prepared for us and kept waiting for us. We who trust in Jesus can say with Paul: “There is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8). For us, he comes to smile, and welcome, and bless. We have nothing to fear. Behold, he comes.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.