Isaiah 34:1 - Meaning and Application

Here we have a prophecy, as we often have a history elsewhere, of the Lord’s wars. We can be sure that all his wars are righteous and successful. As God’s world, he does good to it. But as the world is also under Satan’s influence, Satan being called the god of this world, God fights against it.

First, the trumpet is sounded and war is announced, Isaiah 34:1. All nations must hear and pay attention, not only because what God is about to do deserves notice, as in Isaiah 33:13, but because they are all involved in it. God has a dispute with them, and he is coming out in wrath against them. Let them all take note that the great God is angry with them, his anger is against all nations, so let all nations come near and listen.

The trumpet is blown in the city (Amos 3:6), and the watchmen on the walls cry out, “Listen to the sound of the trumpet” (Jeremiah 6:17). Let the earth hear, and everything in it, because it belongs to the Lord (Psalm 24:1) and should listen to its Maker and Master. The world must hear, and all that comes from it, the children of men, who are earthly by nature, come out of it, and must return to it. Or else, even the lifeless products of the earth are called on, as if they might hear better than sinners whose hearts are hardened against God’s calls. “Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s case” (Micah 6:2). It is such a just case that the whole world may safely be asked to judge its fairness.

Second, the proclamation explains whom God makes war against and why (Isaiah 34:2, 8). The Lord’s anger is against all nations. They are all joined together against God and true religion, all serving the devil’s interests, so he is angry with them all, even with all the nations that forget him. He has long let all nations walk in their own ways (Acts 14:16), but now he will no longer stay silent. They have all enjoyed his patience, and now they must all expect to feel his judgment.

His fury is especially against their armies, first because they have used those armies to harm God’s people. They have shed blood, and so blood will be given to them to drink. Second, they trust their armies to help them stand against God’s justice and power. They look to them as their defense, so God’s fury will come on them first. Armies before God’s fury are like dry straw before a fire, no matter how many or how brave they are.

God also makes war for Zion, the holy city, the city of our appointed feasts, a picture of the church of God in the world. This is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, for vengeance belongs to him, and he is never wrong when he takes it (Romans 3:5). Just as there is a day of the Lord’s patience, there will also be a day of his vengeance. Though he is slow to anger, he will not wait forever.

This is also the year of recompense for Zion’s cause. Zion has a rightful complaint against her neighbors for the wrongs they have done to her, for their cruel and treacherous treatment, their defiling of her holy things, the ruin of her palaces, and the killing of her sons. She has left her cause with God, and he will plead it when the right time comes, the set time to favor Zion. Then he will repay her persecutors and oppressors for all the harm they have done. The case will be decided, Zion has been wronged, and in that wrong, Zion’s God has been wronged too. Judgment will follow that decision, and it will be carried out.

There is a set time in God’s plan for the deliverance of the church and the destruction of her enemies, a year of the redeemed, a year of recompense for Zion’s cause. We must wait patiently until then and judge nothing before the proper time.

Third, the way the war will be carried out is fixed, and its success is certain. The sword of the Lord is bathed in heaven, Isaiah 34:5. This likely refers to a custom of dipping or polishing a sword so it would be harder or brighter, much like sharpening or making it gleam (Ezekiel 21:9-11). God’s sword is bathed in heaven in his plan, his decree, his justice, and his power. Once that is so, nothing can stand against it.

It will come down. What God has determined will certainly be carried out. It comes down from heaven, and the higher the place it comes from, the heavier its blow will be. It will come down on Edom, also called Idumea, the people under God’s curse, doomed by that curse to destruction. Wretched forever are those who, by their sins, have made themselves the people of God’s curse, for the Lord’s sword will surely carry out the Lord’s curse. Those whom he curses are truly cursed. It comes down for judgment, to carry out judgment on sinners. God’s sword in war is always a sword of justice. Of the One whose mouth goes out a sharp sword, it is said that in righteousness he judges and makes war (Revelation 19:11, Revelation 19:15).

The nations and their armies will be handed over to the sword (Isaiah 34:2). God has given them over to slaughter, and then they cannot save themselves, nor can all their friends save them. Only those whom God hands over to slaughter are slain, because the keys of death are in his hand. In giving them over, he has, in effect, already destroyed them. Their ruin is as sure, once God has doomed them, as if it had already happened. God has, in effect, given all the cruel enemies of his church over to slaughter by this word, “He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword,” for the Lord is righteous (Revelation 13:10).

As that sentence is carried out, a terrible slaughter will be made among them (Isaiah 34:6). When the sword of the Lord comes with his authority, it does great execution. It is filled with blood, satisfied with the blood of the slain, and made heavy with their fat. When the day of God’s abused mercy and patience is over, the sword of his justice shows no mercy and spares no one. By sin, people have lost the honor of human nature and made themselves like beasts that die. So they are justly denied the kindness and respect due to human beings, and they are killed like animals. The slaughter of an army of men is treated like the butchering of a flock of lambs or goats, or the eating of the fat of rams’ kidneys.

No, the sword of the Lord will not only strike down the lambs and goats, the common foot soldiers in their armies. It will also bring down the unicorns with them, and the bullocks with the bulls, even though they are proud, strong, and fierce. The great men, the mighty men, and the chief captains (Revelation 6:15) will be as easy a prey as the lambs and goats. The greatest people are nothing before the anger of the great God.

See what bloody work will be done. The land will be soaked with blood, like rain that falls often and in great abundance. Their dust, their dry and barren land, will be made rich with the fatness of men slain in their full strength, as if with manure. Even the mountains, though hard and rocky, will be melted with their blood (Isaiah 34:3). These are bold, exaggerated descriptions, like John’s vision of blood up to the horses’ bridles (Revelation 14:20). They are used because they stir up fear, and because human language can barely describe the terror of God’s wrath. See what sin and wrath can do even in this world, and think how much worse the wrath to come will be. It will bring down the unicorns themselves to the bars of the pit.

This great slaughter will also be a great sacrifice to God’s justice (Isaiah 34:6). The Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and there the great Redeemer has his garments dyed with blood (Isaiah 63:1). Sacrifices were meant to honor God. They showed that he hates sin, requires payment for it, and that only blood can make atonement, that is, cover sin and satisfy justice. For that reason this slaughter comes, so that God’s wrath may be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, especially the wicked hatred of his people that the Edomites were known for.

In great sacrifices, many animals were killed, whole heaps of them, and their blood was poured out before the altar. So it will be in the Lord’s day of vengeance. The whole earth would have been soaked with sinners’ blood if Jesus Christ, the great propitiation, that is, the one who turns away God’s wrath by his sacrifice, had not shed his blood for us. But those who reject him, and will not make peace with God through that sacrifice, will themselves fall as victims to divine wrath. Lost sinners are forever sacrifices (Mark 9:48, 49). Those who do not sacrifice, which is the mark of the ungodly (Ecclesiastes 9:2), must themselves be sacrificed.

These slain will be hated by people as much as they once were feared. They will be thrown out, and no one will give them the honor of burial. Their stench will rise from their bodies, so that all people, by the foul smell as well as the terrible sight, may grow to hate sin and fear God’s wrath. They lie unburied so that they may stay as lasting reminders of divine justice.

The result of this slaughter will be total confusion and ruin, as if the whole order of nature were dissolved and melted away (Isaiah 34:4). All the host of heaven will pine away. The sun will grow dark, and the moon will look black, or even turn to blood. The heavens themselves will be rolled up like a scroll or parchment put away after use, or like something shriveled by fire. The stars will fall like autumn leaves. All the beauty, joy, and comfort of the defeated nation will be gone. Magistracy and government will be brought down, and all rule and authority except the sword of war will fall.

Conquerors in those days often wanted to lay waste the lands they took. This passage describes that kind of complete ruin with vivid figures of speech. Yet these words will also have a literal and full fulfillment at the end of time, when all things are dissolved. The judgments God now sometimes sends on sinful nations are pictures, warnings, and early signs of that last judgment. For that reason, these words are used here and in Revelation 6:12, 13. They are also used plainly, without figure, in 2 Peter 3:10, where we are told that the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the earth will be burned up.