Isaiah 2 – The Mountain of God

“Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths’.”

~Isaiah 2:3 (NRSV)

Prior to seeing things as they actually are in his beloved Jerusalem, Isaiah prophesies a vision of the future house of God. All peoples will come to this mountain of God; to the light of the Lord’s teaching and to walk in his path alone. Then Isaiah proclaims the judgments that will proceed from the hand of God in the meantime.

No day ever seen will quite measure up to the Day of the Lord to the unveiling of the New Jerusalem.

Learning To Be Watchful Slaves

Observe the modern connotations of slavery in terms of the slave trade and the trafficking of humanity. We are called to be abolitionists, certainly of slavery. Yet, we are called, ironically, to be slaves—douloi in Greek.

We are to be watchful slaves, as Jesus pointed out in his parable in Luke 12:35-40.

We are to be dressed for action with our lamps lit, so when our Master comes home from the wedding banquet we may be ready to open the door for him. Because the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour, we must be ready.

Most of Isaiah 2—certainly the latter two thirds—speaks of such a time when all things will have changed. To picture the world in an entirely unworldly way; that is to be our pre-concept. Nothing we know now of experience will compare with what we will know then.

What Will The Day Of The Lord Be Like?

We can but imagine. We can but toy with the idea, as we read Isaiah 2:5-22, of what that Day might look like, and be like to experience.

Certainly, the Lord will come against all evil and cast it, and its wicked activities, into oblivion. All idols shall utterly pass away. The wicked will enter caves in the rocks and climb into holes in the ground.

But not only that, when the future house of the Lord finally does prevail, God’s ways will truly and resolutely become our ways. He will teach us and we will be able to follow perfectly, at last.

The best hope of all, regarding the coming Day of the Lord, is the fulfilment of the promise: all pain will be swept away and all spiritual perfection will be known.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.