Biblion Bible Commentary
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All Flesh Will Come to Worship
Isaiah 66:15-24
15 For, behold, Yahweh will come with fire, and his chariots will be like the whirlwind; to give his anger with fierceness, and his rebuke with flames of fire. · WEB
Survivors are sent to nations that have never heard, foreigners are made priests, and the book ends without softening anything.
For, behold, Yahweh will come with fire, and his chariots will be like the whirlwind Isaiah 66:15.
The last chapter holds judgment and mission in the same paragraph and does not separate them.
The time comes that I will gather all nations and languages, and they will come, and will see my glory Isaiah 66:18.
I will set a sign among them, and I will send those who escape of them to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to far-away islands, who have not heard my fame, nor have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the nations Isaiah 66:19.
The clearest missionary sentence in the Old Testament. Survivors are sent, and the destinations are named — Spain, Africa, Asia Minor, Greece, the far coasts — and defined by what they lack: they have not heard and have not seen. The book that opened with an indictment of one city ends by dispatching messengers to people who have never heard the name.
They shall bring all your brothers out of all the nations for an offering to Yahweh... as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel Isaiah 66:20.
The nations do not merely come; they carry the scattered Israelites home, and the returning exiles are described as the grain offering.
Of them I will also select priests and Levites Isaiah 66:21.
The most radical clause in the book. Priesthood belonged to one family of one tribe, by descent, without exception — and of them refers to the foreigners of the previous verses. The promise of chapter fifty-six Isaiah 56:7 is carried to its end.
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me... so your offspring and your name shall remain Isaiah 66:22.
The heavens and earth summoned as witnesses in the second verse of the book Isaiah 1:2 are here remade, and their permanence — the reason they were qualified to testify — becomes the measure of how long the people last.
It shall happen that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh will come to worship before me Isaiah 66:23.
The last picture of the new creation is a congregation, meeting on a schedule, and the day named is the one this book has kept returning to Isaiah 56:2 Isaiah 58:13. It is placed in the new heavens and the new earth, and the worshipers are all flesh.
They will go out, and look at the dead bodies of the men who have transgressed against me; for their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched Isaiah 66:24.
The book ends on a rubbish tip. The imagery is of the refuse fire outside a city, where what has been discarded is consumed — the worm and the flame are described as unstopping rather than the bodies as unburning, and what is looked at is dead bodies. Jesus quotes the line three times in one passage Mark 9:48.
It is not a comfortable ending and the book does not arrange one. Sixty-six chapters that opened with a father whose children had rebelled close with a worshiping world and a place outside it, and nothing is softened on the way out.
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