God Warns the Whole Earth of the Wrath to Come

These verses have an “already and not yet” aspect to them. In every generation God’s wrath moves out against all the godlessness and wickedness of every nation and individual, and God’s use of one wicked nation to punish another wicked nation has been a major theme of the tapestry of human history. When Hitler’s Nazi armies were slaughtering and being slaughtered by Stalin’s Soviet armies, it was a partial fulfillment of this prophecy. But the fullest and final fulfillment is yet to come; it will immediately precede the second coming of Christ, as we will see in a moment.

Isaiah 34:5-15

The prophecy of Isaiah 34 goes from the universal to the specific in one sense in verses 5-15, as the words focus on Edom, the ancient foe of Israel. Edom was the nation descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob. Edom was a literal, historical nation, frequently at war with Judah and Israel. Here they are called by God, “the people I have set apart for destruction” (v. 5). Verse 6 also specifically mentions Edom, as well as Bozrah, which was the capital city of that small nation.

Yet in Scripture, Edom (Esau) is also representative of the reprobates of the earth, those who live and die as rebels against God. In Malachi 1:2-4 God uses his consistent settled judgments against Edom as evidence of his electing love toward the Jews, the descendants of Jacob. The statement “I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau” (Mal 1:3) is chosen by the apostle Paul to teach the doctrine of unconditional election and reprobation in Romans 9:13. So in Isaiah 34 it is reasonable to see Edom as not only a historical nation but a representative one: God’s wrath falls on the reprobates from every tribe and nation on earth.

God declares that when his sword has “drunk its fill in the heavens, it will then come down on Edom and on the people I have set apart for destruction” (v. 5). So God will punish the satanic forces behind the reprobate nations on earth then descend to punish their earthly slaves. The slaughter will be overwhelming, as the prophecy uses gory sacrificial language to depict the carnage: there will be a “great slaughter in the land of Edom” (v. 6).

Significantly, verse 8 links the slaughter to God’s zeal to uphold Zion’s cause against her earthly enemies. Again and again, God makes plain his commitment to punish those who persecuted his people. In his complex plan he allows the “Edom” nations of the earth to trample his people for a time (Dan 7:23-26); but God ordains the final triumph of his people by his own personal intervention from heaven, ultimately in the second coming of Christ. Verses 9-10 depict the devastation of Edom in language that gives a foretaste of hell itself. The smoke rising forever from Edom’s burned-out land prefigures the smoke rising eternally from the lake of fire in Revelation 14:10-11. To fulfill his careful plan, God stretches out over Edom a measuring line of total destruction (Isa 34:11); the words are reminiscent of the total chaos of the universe in Genesis 1:2: “Now the earth was formless and empty.” In effect, God is saying he will speak Edom out of orderly creation; total desolation will be her lot.

Isaiah 34:16-17

The final insight from this terrifying chapter comes in understanding the eternal plan of God for all this destruction. Though the final verses speak of wild animals and birds nesting and finding mates, the real focus is on the “scroll” of the Lord (vv. 16-17). This is the language of the sovereign plan of God, a plan written down in detail before the foundation of the world. God has written his scroll, and every line will be fulfilled, including where “sand partridges” and “birds of prey” will mate and lay their eggs (v. 15).

Isaiah 34 prepares the earth for the second coming of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 24:29-31 Jesus quotes Isaiah 34:4 about the stars falling from the sky and the heavenly bodies being shaken. Revelation 6:12-17 is filled with similar images. When the sixth seal is broken, the stars fall to the earth like late figs from a fig tree, and the sky recedes like a scroll. Revelation 17:13-14 speaks of the ten earthly kings who submit to the antichrist (“the beast” of Rev 13) and who wage war against the Lamb (Jesus Christ) and his followers. Revelation 19:11-21 depicts plainly the second coming of Christ in this context, returning to rescue his people from the terror caused by the antichrist and his wicked henchmen, the “kings of the earth, and their armies” (v. 19) who are gathered to wage war against Jesus and his army. They are slaughtered without mercy by the sword coming from the mouth of Jesus as he rides on his white horse, descending from heaven. The gruesome chapter ends with the birds of the air coming to feast on the flesh of the wicked armies of the nations that assembled to fight Jesus. This is the final consummation of the themes of Isaiah 34:2, God’s wrath against all the unbelieving nations on earth.

Everyone must be warned to flee the wrath to come by trusting in Christ. The messengers of the gospel should regularly refresh their minds with how terrifying will be the wrath of God against his enemies and should warn the nations as Isaiah has done here. We should also understand the reasons for the universality of God’s wrath against the nations. There is not a political nation on earth that exists solely for the glory of God and of Christ. This should make every Christian be somewhat suspect of overweening patriotism. We must remind ourselves again and again that “our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:20). Finally, we should study the doctrine of the end times and the second coming of Christ and get ready for the vicious worldwide persecution that will accompany that age under the antichrist. We should get our children and our disciples ready for that suffering, confident of final triumph by the return of the King.