Isaiah 66:15 - Meaning and Application

These verses, like the pillar of cloud and fire, have one side dark for God’s enemies and rebels, and one side bright for his faithful people. They probably point first to the Jews held captive in Babylon. Some were sent there for their harm, and God threatens to deal with them in his case against them because they refused to be corrected (Jeremiah 24:9). Others were sent there for their good, and God would make that trouble work for them, bring them through it in time, and give them good days afterward.

Many of the phrases here fit that great period, but the prophecy clearly reaches farther. It looks to the judgment Christ came to bring once, and will bring again, into this world. It also points to the way his word draws a line between the precious and the worthless. Christ will appear to shame and frighten all who keep resisting him. At times he does this through earthly judgments. The Jews who stayed stubborn in unbelief were cut off by fire and by his sword. The ruin was wide, because the Lord was then dealing with all people, and since it was his sword, those killed are called his slain, offered up to his justice, and they will be many.

In the great day, God’s wrath will be his fire and sword against all who refuse to repent. His word, when it reaches a sinner’s conscience, burns like fire and cuts more sharply than any double-edged sword. Idolatrous people will especially face judgment in the day of wrath (Isaiah 66:17). Some of those who came back from Babylon may still have kept such forms of idol worship and superstition. They may have had idols in their gardens, not daring to set them up openly on the high places, and there they purified themselves before their idol rites, one after another, or, as the text reads, behind one tree in the middle, behind some idol named Ahad or Ehad. In honor of it, they ate pork, which God’s law clearly forbade, and other unclean things, including the mouse or something like it.

But the prophecy may also point to all the judgments God’s wrath will bring, according to his word, on stubborn sinners who mock him and live for the world and the flesh. They will all be consumed together. Heaven plainly excludes idolaters and anyone who practices evil (Revelation 21:27; Revelation 22:15). In the day of judgment, secret sins will be exposed and counted for, for God says, “I know their works and their thoughts” (Isaiah 66:18). He knows what people do, and he knows the reasons and motives behind it. That is why he is fit to judge the world, since he can judge the hidden things of people’s hearts (Romans 2:16).

He will also appear to comfort and delight all who stay faithful to him as he builds his kingdom in this world, the kingdom of grace, which is the beginning and promise of the kingdom of glory. The time will come when he gathers all nations and languages to himself, so they may come and see his glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 66:18). This was fulfilled when all nations were to be taught as disciples and when the gift of tongues was given for that purpose. Until then, the church had been limited to one nation, and God was worshiped in one language only. But in the days of the Messiah, the wall that divided people should be torn down, and those who had been strangers to God would be brought to know him and see his glory in the gospel, just as the Jews had seen it in the sanctuary.

First, some from the Jewish nation would, by God’s grace, be set apart from the rest and marked for salvation. God would not only raise a banner for gathering, to which the Gentiles would come (Isaiah 11:12), but he would also set a distinguishing mark on some among them, which is the meaning of the word here. Though the nation was corrupt and far gone, God would still set apart a remnant for himself, devoted to his service and used for his work. He would place a mark on them with sure and clear ownership, as he did in Ezekiel 9:4. The servants of God are sealed on their foreheads (Revelation 7:3). The Lord knows those who belong to him, and Christ’s sheep are marked as his.

Second, those who are set apart by God’s grace will be sent to invite others to share in that grace. Those who escape the unbelief that holds the rest of the nation captive will be sent to the nations to carry the gospel and preach it to every creature. People who have escaped the coming wrath should do all they can to rescue others, like brands pulled from a fire. God often chooses people for his errands who can speak with feeling and firsthand knowledge, and who can warn others of sin’s danger because they have nearly escaped that danger themselves.

They are sent to the nations named here, Tarshish, Pul, Lud, and others. It is not certain which lands are meant, and interpreters disagree. Tarshish may mean the sea in general, though some take it as Tarsus in Cilicia. Pul is sometimes a king of Assyria, so perhaps a region of that empire is meant. Lud is often taken to mean Lydia, a warlike people known for archers, as in Jeremiah 46:9. Tubal may be Italy or Spain, and Javan is usually understood as Greece, the Ionians. The isles of the nations, peopled by Japheth’s descendants (Genesis 10:5), are likely the distant coastlands that have not heard God’s name or seen his glory.

In Judah alone God was known for many ages, and there his name was great. Other lands sat in darkness, never hearing the joyful news or seeing the bright light. The text speaks of that sad condition with compassion, because it is a sorrow that any human being should be so far from his Maker as not to hear his name or see his glory. Because of this, those who are sent to the nations go on God’s mission, declaring his glory among the Gentiles. The Jews scattered among the nations would speak of God’s works among their own people and so draw many to join them, and they would also show God’s glory through the ordinances among them.

Some people from every language would take hold of the skirt of a Jew and plead with him to notice them, welcome them into his company, and wait a little while for them, saying, “We will go with you, because we have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:23).

In this way, God’s glory was partly made known among the Gentiles, but it was made known more clearly and fully by the apostles and the first preachers of the gospel. They were sent into all the world, even to distant islands, to proclaim the glorious gospel of the blessed God. They went out and preached everywhere, with the Lord working with them (Mark 16:20).

Many converts will also be made through this witness (Isaiah 66:20). They will bring all your brothers, since those who come as converts should be welcomed and received as brothers, as an offering to the Lord. God’s glory will not be declared to them in vain. They will be invited and guided to join themselves to the Lord. Those sent to them will succeed so well that there will be as much gathering to Jerusalem as there used to be at a major feast, when all the men from across the land were expected to come and not appear empty-handed.

Notice, too, the help they will be given for the journey. Some will come on horses, because they live far away and the trip is too long to walk, as Jews usually did when they went to their feasts. People of rank will come in chariots, while the old, the sick, and little children will be carried in litters or covered wagons. Young men will come on mules and swift animals. This shows their eagerness and zeal to come. They will spare no trouble or expense to get to Jerusalem. If some cannot ride on horses, they will come in litters. And those who can will hurry, riding on mules and swift beasts, unwilling to delay.

These words are figurative. All these different kinds of transport are piled up to show, as the learned Mr. Gataker says, the rich supply of every gracious help needed to bring God’s chosen people home to Christ. Everyone will be welcome, and nothing needed for their help or encouragement will be lacking.

This also shows the kind of people they will be when they come. They will not come, as before, to be those who make offerings at Jerusalem, but to be an offering to the Lord themselves. That must be understood spiritually, as being presented to God as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). The apostle explains this, and may even be referring to it, when he speaks of ministering the gospel to the Gentiles so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable (Romans 15:16). They will offer themselves, and those who bring them to Christ will present them as spoils won for him, now devoted to his service and honor.

They will be brought like the children of Israel who brought an offering in a clean vessel, with great care to make sure they were holy, cleansed from sin, and set apart for God. Converted Gentiles are said in Acts 15:9 to have had their hearts purified by faith. Whatever was brought to God was to be brought in a clean vessel, one set apart for holy use. God will be served and honored in the way he has appointed, through the ordinances he himself established, which are the right means for these spiritual offerings. When the soul is offered to God, the body must also be a clean vessel for it, kept in holiness and honor, not in sinful lusts (1 Thessalonians 4:4, 5). Converts to Christ are not only cleansed from an evil conscience, but also have their bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22).

This may also point, first, to the Jews, devout men, and converts from every nation under heaven, who came together to Jerusalem looking for the Messiah’s kingdom to appear (Acts 2:5, 6, 10). They came from every direction to the holy mountain at Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord, and many of them were brought to faith in Christ through the gift of tongues poured out on the apostles. There seems to be a close connection between that history and this prophecy. Later, the Ethiopian eunuch came to worship at Jerusalem in his chariot and took home with him the knowledge of Christ and his holy religion.

Second, it may point to the Gentiles, people from many nations who would be converted to Christ and added to his church. Though this is a spiritual gathering, prophecy often describes it as movement from one place to another. The apostle says of all true Christians that they have come to Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22). That helps explain this passage. It shows that all this outward display really means that they will be brought into the church by God’s grace and through the use of his means, as carefully, safely, and comfortably as if they were carried in chariots and litters. In this way God will persuade Japheth, and he will dwell in the tents of Shem (Genesis 9:27).

The passage also says that a gospel ministry will be established in the church, now that it has been enlarged by such a great number of members (Isaiah 66:21). God says, “I will take some of them,” meaning some of the proselytes, some of the Gentile converts, “for priests and for Levites.” They will minister in holy things and preside in religious gatherings, which is necessary for teaching, worship, and church order. Up to this point, the priests and Levites were all taken from the Jews and belonged to one tribe. But in gospel times God will take some of the converted Gentiles to minister in holy things, to teach the people, to bless them in the name of the Lord, and to serve as stewards of the mysteries of God, just as the priests and Levites did under the law. They will be pastors and teachers, or bishops, giving themselves to the word and prayer, and deacons serving tables. Like the Levites, they will also care for the practical work of God’s house (Philippians 1:1; Acts 6:2-4).

The apostles were all Jews, and so were the seventy disciples. The great apostle to the Gentiles was himself a Hebrew of Hebrews. But when churches were planted among the Gentiles, ministers were set apart from among them, elders in every church (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5). That made the ministry spread more easily and made it more familiar, and if not always more respected, at least more acceptable. By God’s grace, it could be hoped that people would be cured of the old prejudice that keeps a prophet from being honored in his own country.

God says, “I will take,” not all of them, though in a spiritual sense they are all made kings and priests to our God, but some of them. It is God’s work from the beginning to choose ministers by fitting them for service and drawing them to it, as well as to make them ministers by giving them their calling. “I will take them” means, “I will accept them, though they are Gentiles, and I will accept both them and their ministry.” This is a great honor and blessing to the Gentile church, just as it was to the Jewish church when God raised up prophets from their sons and Nazarites from their young men (Amos 2:11).

Finally, once the church and ministry are thus established, they will continue and be preserved from one generation to the next (Isaiah 66:22).

The change brought about by setting up the Messiah’s kingdom is a very great and wide change. It is like a new world, the new heavens and new earth promised earlier (Isaiah 65:17). Old things pass away, and all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). The old covenant that marked out one special people is set aside, and a new covenant, a covenant of grace, is established (Hebrews 8:13). We now serve in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way of the written law (Romans 7:6). New commands and new promises are given for both heaven and earth, and together they make a New Testament. This is the new heavens and new earth God will create, and it prepares the way for the final new heavens and new earth at the end of time (2 Peter 3:13).

This change is God’s own doing. He will create the new heavens and the new earth. He has the authority to give new rules and new ways of worship, and he has the power to make new worlds. It will also be a lasting change, one that will never need to be replaced. It will remain before him unchanged, because the gospel age will continue to the end of time and will not be followed by another covenant.

The kingdom of Christ is a kingdom that cannot be moved. Its laws and gifts cannot be shaken, but will remain forever (Hebrews 12:27-28). It will remain because it is before God, under his eye, care, and special protection. God will also keep a people for Christ. Their seed, and their name in them, will remain, meaning a continuing line of ministers and believers. As one generation passes away, another will come, and so the name of Christ and the name of Christians will remain on earth as long as the earth stands, and his throne will last as long as the days of heaven. The gates of hell, though they fight against the church, will not win, and they will not wear out the saints of the Most High.

The public worship of God in religious gatherings will be carefully and steadily kept by all who are brought as an offering to the Lord (Isaiah 66:23). These words are written in Old Testament language to show that, although the ceremonial law would end and temple service would stop, God would still be worshiped as regularly and acceptably as ever. Before, only Jews went up to appear before God, and they were required to attend only three times a year, and only the males. Now all flesh, Gentiles as well as Jews, women as well as men, will come and worship before God, in his presence, though not in the temple at Jerusalem, but in gatherings spread throughout the world. These meetings will be to them what the tabernacle of meeting was to the Jews.

God will record his name among them, and even if only two or three come together, he will be there, meet them, and bless them. They will enjoy these holy meetings often, every new moon and every Sabbath, not just at the three yearly feasts as before. There is no need for one fixed place, as the temple once was. Christ is our temple, and all believers meet in him by faith. Since the church now reaches so far, it is impossible for all to meet in one place. Yet it is fitting that there should be set times, so worship may be done regularly and often, and so that all Christian assemblies may show their spiritual fellowship with one another through faith, hope, and holy love.

The new moons and Sabbaths are mentioned because, under the law, the yearly feasts were kept at Jerusalem, but the new moons and Sabbaths were observed throughout the land, first in the schools of the prophets, and later in the synagogues (2 Kings 4:23, Amos 8:5, Acts 15:21). Christian assemblies seem to follow that pattern. Where the Lord’s Day is kept weekly, and the Lord’s Supper is celebrated monthly, and both are faithfully observed, this promise is fulfilled. There the Christian new moons and Sabbaths are kept.

Here we see that God is to be worshiped in solemn gatherings, and it is the duty of all, as they have opportunity, to attend them. “All flesh” must come. Though flesh is weak, corrupt, and sinful, let it come so that the flesh may be brought under control. In worshiping God, we present ourselves before him, and in a special way we stand in his presence. For this reason there ought to be fixed times for worship, and there are. We should see that it is both our duty and our good to keep those times faithfully and with care.

Their thankful sense of God’s special favor to them should be greatly increased when they consider the terrible doom of those who keep on in unbelief and sin and are destroyed in it (Isaiah 66:24). Those who have been worshiping the Lord of hosts and rejoicing before him in the goodness of his house will, to feel their own happiness more deeply, look at the misery of the wicked. These are people who have sinned against God, not only breaking his laws but breaking covenant with him and thinking they could stand against him. This may especially refer to the unbelieving Jews who rejected the gospel of Christ.

Their misery is pictured by a fearful battlefield, covered with the bodies of the slain, lying and rotting above ground, with worms crawling over them and feeding on them. If someone tries to burn them, they are so scattered, and the work is so foul, that it seems endless, and the fire is never put out. They are disgusting to everyone, and nobody wants to come near them. This is sometimes fulfilled in outward judgments, and perhaps nowhere more closely than in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation by the Romans, when more than two million people were killed in all, besides those who died by famine and disease.

It may also point to the spiritual judgments that came on the unbelieving Jews, which Paul describes (Romans 11:8). They became dead in sin, twice dead. The Jewish church became like a dead body of a church, and all its members were rotten carcasses. Their worm did not die, because their own consciences kept troubling them, and the fire of their rage against the gospel did not go out. That rage was both their punishment and their sin. They became, more than any other nation under the sun, an object of horror to all people.

But our Savior applies this to the endless misery and torment of stubborn sinners in the life to come, where their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched (Mar 9:44). The soul is immortal, and conscience will keep tormenting it. God’s wrath will also remain forever, and that makes the terror eternal.

What notice will be taken of this? Those who worship God will go out and look on them, and this will stir their own hearts with love for their Redeemer, as they see the misery they have been rescued from. Just as it will make the damned misery worse to see others in heaven and themselves left out (Luk 13:28), so it will also make the joy and glory of the blessed shine more brightly when they see what becomes of those who died in their sin. It will lift their praise when they remember that they themselves were like brands pulled out of the fire. Let the redeemed of the Lord, with deep humility and holy fear, sing their victorious songs to honor that free grace that has made them different.