All Flesh Will Come to Worship
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. 16 For Yahweh will execute judgment by fire and by his sword on all flesh; and those slain by Yahweh will be many. 17 “Those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves to go to the gardens, following one in the middle, eating pig’s meat, abominable things, and the mouse, they shall come to an end together,” says Yahweh. 18 “For I know their works and their thoughts. The time comes that I will gather all nations and languages, and they will come, and will see my glory. 19 “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. 20 They shall bring all your brothers out of all the nations for an offering to Yahweh, on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules, and on camels, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says Yahweh, as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel into Yahweh’s house. 21 Of them I will also select priests and Levites,” says Yahweh. 22 “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me,” says Yahweh, “so your offspring and your name shall remain. 23 It shall happen that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh will come to worship before me,” says Yahweh. 24 “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, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
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; to give his anger with fierceness, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
The last chapter holds judgment and mission in the same paragraph and does not separate them.
“For I know their works and their thoughts. The time comes that I will gather all nations and languages, and they will come, and will see my glory.
“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.
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, on horses, in chariots, in litters, on mules, and on camels, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says Yahweh, as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel into Yahweh’s house.
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,” says Yahweh.
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,” says Yahweh, “so your offspring and your name shall remain.
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,” says Yahweh.
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, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
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.
settled What this mark means