We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Does the Lord “Devastate” the Earth?
There is this passage that has sometimes been labeled “Isaiah’s Little Apocalypse” that proclaims how the Lord will “lay waste,” “destroy,” and “ruin” the earth. (The following builds on this previous post which identifies a dual speech pattern of God). It begins with:
The LORD is going to lay waste the earth
and devastate it;
he will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants (24:1).
Isaiah goes on to decry that “the earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered” (Isa 24:3) because it has been “defiled by its people” who “have disobeyed the laws” and “broken the everlasting covenant” (vs. 5). Isaiah declares that “a curse consumes the earth” and “its people must bear their guilt” (vs. 6). When free moral agents fall, all that is under their authority falls with them.
Thus far a reader would be justified in assuming that the Lord himself was going to bring about the massive destruction Isaiah speaks of. We get a very different impression, however, if we continue reading, for we soon discover how the Lord planned on bringing about this curse. Relying on the typical ANE conception of anti-creational forces as hostile waters, and using language that is reminiscent of the reversal-of-creation flood account in Genesis, Isaiah proleptically declares:
The floodgates of the heavens are opened,
the foundations of the earth shake.
The earth is broken up,
the earth is split asunder,
the earth is violently shaken (Isa 24:18-9).
These passages indicate that way Yahweh curses the earth is simply by removing the protection (the “floodgates”) that had previously kept hostile cosmic forces at bay. And it is important to notice that, while Yahweh allows these forces to carry out their malevolent designs as a consequence of people’s rebellion, there is no suggestion in this or any other passage that God wanted these forces to be the way they are or that God causes these forces to engage in this destructive activity. To the contrary, Isaiah immediately adds that, once this judgment is complete, Yahweh will “punish the powers in the heavens” and will once again “shut them up” in a “dungeon” and a “prison” (vs. 22).
Just as we have seen God does with violent kings and wicked nations, the sovereign God makes wise use of evil agents as he finds them. But we must never misinterpret God’s willingness to use wicked cosmic forces, wicked nations, and violent kings as indicating his approval of their violence. For as God does in this passage, and as we have seen him do throughout Scripture, once God is done allowing these agents to carry out their destruction, God turns around and punishes them for being the kind of agents he could use for this purpose.
In any event, though it is clear that Yahweh judges the earth in Isaiah 24 by merely withdrawing protection, Isaiah nevertheless depicts him as actively cursing the earth. This passage thus illustrates once again the dual speech pattern that we’ve been discussing. Reflecting his culturally conditioned mindset in which ascribing violence to God was considered the highest form of praise, Isaiah depicts Yahweh doing what in in truth merely allowed.
Photo credit: _Hadock_ via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgment
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Related Reading

Becoming Like the Accuser
When the Adam and Eve yielded to Satan and surrendered their God-given authority over the earth and animal kingdom (Gen 3), Satan became “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), the “ruler of the world” (Jn. 12:32; 14:31) and the “principality and power of the air” (Eph. 2:2) who “has power over the whole…

Where Psychology and Theology Meet
Guest post by Ty Gibson The biblical narrative reveals that God bears our guilt—not merely in the penal sense that Reformed theology asserts—but in the sense that He bears our misconceptions of His character as we project our sins upon Him. To the degree that fallen human beings find it psychologically impossible to bear the…

How NOT to be Christ-Centered: A Review of God With Us – Part II
In Part I of my review of Scott Oliphint’s God With Us we saw that Oliphint is attempting to reframe divine accommodation in a Christ-centerd way. Yet, while he affirms that “Christ is the quintessential revelation of God,” he went on to espouse a classical view of God that was anchored in God’s “aseity,” not…

Who is Responsible for Job’s Suffering?
In the prologue of the Book of Job, the author seems to ascribe the responsibility for Job’s affliction to Yahweh. For instance, Satan challenges God to “stretch out [his] hand and strike everything he has,“ believing that this would incite Job to curse God to his face (1:11). The fact that the Lord responds by…

Atonement: What is the Christus Victor View?
Most western Christians today understand the atonement as a sort of legal-transaction that took place between the Father and the Son that got humanity “off the hook.” The legal-transaction scenario goes something like this: God’s holiness demands that all sin be punished, which in turn requires that sinners go to eternal hell. The trouble is,…

The Cross Above All Else
The way to know what a person or people group really believes is not to ask them but to watch them. Christians frequently say, “It’s all about Jesus,” but our actions betray us. Judging by the amount of time, energy, and emotion that many put into fighting a multitude of battles, ranging from the defense…