Isaiah
2:1-4: Nations Gathered with Israel
The prophet Isaiah is challenging
a stubborn people caught in disobedience. He offers this world of hope in Isa
2:1-4. The entire section is called “a word from the LORD.” This marks it out
as an important message. This ḥāzā points to an utterance giving
divine insight (Lam 2:9; Ezek 7:26). It is a special disclosure from God.
Isaiah gives a message about
Judah and Jerusalem. He announces that the mountain of the LORD’s temple will
endure into the latter days (Deut 4:30; Jer 23:20; Ezek 38:16; Hos 3:5). This
time period for Isaiah is simply the last days of human history. He has no more
detailed calendar of events than this. This is when full deliverance finally comes
in all its fullness. IN that time, he declares, nations will stream to
Jerusalem. They will worship on the LORD’s high mountain and come to learn the
LORD’s standards. Zion will be the center for instruction. Literally, the Torah
will go out from there. Torah in this context is about God’s will and ways as
the previous parallelism shows. Cases will be settled among nations there.
Swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. They will
no longer train for war. The picture is of a world at peace before the one God.
All the nations, side by side, gathered before the one God. This reconciliation
to peace involves all the nations and Israel is at its center. Judah and Jerusalem
in the midst of the nations will have this role. In the context of the book,
such hope to come should lead to faithfulness within Israel now.
This is an important text. While
other Old Testament texts speak of judgment of the nations as righteousness
comes, this text pictures the aftermath and result of what God will bring,
righteousness, instruction, and peace. It is not a melding in of people, but a
gathering of nations who no longer battle as they had. Also significant is that
this note of hope comes at the beginning of the book. It is a note of introduction
that is to abide in one’s thinking as one moves through the book and all the
ideas it presents.
Another note from this text is
important. This redemption comes to this earth and this history. This is not a
dualistic vision of something happening above or in a newly created reality
emerging out of what had been. It is an account of God’s resolution of conflict
in the current stream of history and reality. Other Old Testament texts travel
this same road, speaking to this same reality (Isa 14:1-2; 45:22-23; 49:26;
56:7; 60:1-14; 66:18-21; along with the texts that follow). As Watts puts it, “Jerusalem
has an abiding place in God’s future.” (Darrell
L. Bock, “Israel’s Future as a Nation and Reconciliation,” in The Future Restoration
of Israel: A Response to Supersessionism, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Alan E.
Kurschner [McMaster Biblical Studies Series 10; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock,
2023], 91-92)
