Isaiah 60 Footnotes

60:19-20 Taking this expression literally, Isaiah would be picturing a major disruption of the solar system in which life on the planet would not survive. The sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies often have a symbolic function in Scripture. Isaiah was comparing God’s light and the light of these bodies; their radiance, in the physical sense, cannot compare with the holy radiance of the presence of the Lord. The same thought recurs in the Bible’s final pages, where the Jerusalem from heaven is illuminated not by the sun and moon but by the “glory of God” (Rv 21:23). Isaiah was looking ahead to that time.