Isaiah 24
24
The Landscape Will Be a Moonscape
1-3Danger ahead! God’s about to ravish the earth
and leave it in ruins,
Rip everything out by the roots
and send everyone scurrying:
priests and laypeople alike,
owners and workers alike,
celebrities and nobodies alike,
buyers and sellers alike,
bankers and beggars alike,
the haves and have-nots alike.
The landscape will be a moonscape,
totally wasted.
And why? Because God says so.
He’s issued the orders.
4The earth turns gaunt and gray,
the world silent and sad,
sky and land lifeless, colorless.
Earth Polluted by Its Very Own People
5-13Earth is polluted by its very own people,
who have broken its laws,
Disrupted its order,
violated the sacred and eternal covenant.
Therefore a curse, like a cancer,
ravages the earth.
Its people pay the price of their sacrilege.
They dwindle away, dying out one by one.
No more wine, no more vineyards,
no more songs or singers.
The laughter of castanets is gone,
the shouts of celebrants, gone,
the laughter of fiddles, gone.
No more parties with toasts of champagne.
Serious drinkers gag on their drinks.
The chaotic cities are unlivable. Anarchy reigns.
Every house is boarded up, condemned.
People riot in the streets for wine,
but the good times are gone forever—
no more joy for this old world.
The city is dead and deserted,
bulldozed into piles of rubble.
That’s the way it will be on this earth.
This is the fate of all nations:
An olive tree shaken clean of its olives,
a grapevine picked clean of its grapes.
14-16a But there are some who will break into glad song.
Out of the west they’ll shout of God’s majesty.
Yes, from the east God’s glory will ascend.
Every island of the sea
Will broadcast God’s fame,
the fame of the God of Israel.
From the four winds and the seven seas we hear the singing:
“All praise to the Righteous One!”
16b-20 But I said, “That’s all well and good for somebody,
but all I can see is doom, doom, and more doom.”
All of them at one another’s throats,
yes, all of them at one another’s throats.
Terror and pits and booby traps
are everywhere, whoever you are.
If you run from the terror,
you’ll fall into the pit.
If you climb out of the pit,
you’ll get caught in the trap.
Chaos pours out of the skies.
The foundations of earth are crumbling.
Earth is smashed to pieces,
earth is ripped to shreds,
earth is wobbling out of control,
Earth staggers like a drunk,
sways like a shack in a high wind.
Its piled-up sins are too much for it.
It collapses and won’t get up again.
21-23That’s when God will call on the carpet
rebel powers in the skies and
Rebel kings on earth.
They’ll be rounded up like prisoners in a jail,
Corralled and locked up in a jail,
and then sentenced and put to hard labor.
Shamefaced moon will cower, humiliated,
red-faced sun will skulk, disgraced,
Because God-of-the-Angel-Armies will take over,
ruling from Mount Zion and Jerusalem,
Splendid and glorious
before all his leaders.
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Isaiah 24: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
Isaiah 24
24
The Judgment on the Earth
1Look! Yahweh is about to lay the earth waste
and is about to devastate it,
and he will twist her surface,
and he will scatter her inhabitants.
2And it shall be as with the people, so with the priest;
as with the slave, so with his master;
as with the female slave, so with her mistress;
as with the buyer, so with the seller;
as with the lender, so with the borrower;
as with the creditor, so with the one to whom he lends.
3The earth shall be utterly laid waste,
and it shall be utterly plundered,
for Yahweh has spoken this word.
4The earth dries up, it withers;
the world languishes, it withers.
The elevated of the people of the earth languish,
5and the earth is defiled beneath its inhabitants.
For they have transgressed laws;
they have passed by statutes;#Hebrew “statute”
they have broken the everlasting covenant.
6Therefore a curse devours the earth,
and the inhabitants in it suffer for their guilt.
Therefore the inhabitants of the earth burn,
and few men are left.#Literally “he is left a man of smallness”
7The new wine dries up;
the vine languishes.
All the merry of heart sigh;
8the joy of the tambourine has stopped.
The noise of the jubilant has ceased;
the joy of the lyre has stopped.
9They do not drink wine with song;
strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.
10The city of emptiness is broken;
every house is shut so that no one can enter;#Literally “from entering”
11there is an outcry over the wine in the streets.
All joy turns into darkness;#Literally “evening”
the joy of the earth disappears.
12Desolation is left in the city;
the gate is crushed into a state of ruin.
13For it shall be like this in the midst of the earth,
among the nations,
like the beating of an olive tree,
like gleanings when a grape harvest is at an end.
14They lift up their voices;#Hebrew “voice” they sing for joy;
they shout out from the west over the majesty of Yahweh.
15Therefore glorify Yahweh in the east,
the name of Yahweh the God of Israel in the coastlands of the sea.
16We hear songs from the edge#Literally “wing” of the earth:
“Glory to the righteous one!”
But I say, “Ruin to me!
Ruin to me! Woe to me!
The treacherous ones deal treacherously,
and the treacherous ones deal treacherously with treachery!”
17Terror and the pit and the snare are upon you, inhabitants#Hebrew “inhabitant” of the earth!
18And this shall happen:
The one who flees from the sound of the terror shall fall into the pit,
and the one who goes up from inside the pit#Literally “the middle of the pit” shall be caught in the snare,
for the windows from heaven are opened,
and the foundations of the earth tremble.
19The earth is utterly broken;
the earth is torn asunder;
the earth is shaken violently.
20The earth staggers to and fro like the drunkard,
and it sways like a hut,
and its transgression is heavy upon it,
and it falls and does not rise again.
21And this shall happen on that day:
Yahweh will punish the host of heaven in heaven,
and the kings of the earth on the earth.
22And they will be gathered in a gathering, like a prisoner in#Literally “on” a pit.
And they will be shut in#Literally “on” a prison and be punished after#Literally “from” many days.
23And the full moon will be ashamed
and the sun will be ashamed,
for Yahweh of hosts will rule on Mount Zion#Literally “the mountain of Zion” and in Jerusalem,
and before his elders in glory.
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