Isaiah 14:26-32 - The Lord has established Zion

14:26,27

This section closes with a declaration of the sovereignty of the Lord over all things. Nations rise up and imagine that they are all powerful. But it is the Lord who is all powerful, and it is He who has a purpose for all the earth. The purpose was set out in Genesis 1 and 2, and it is this purpose that will be fulfilled, and it is through Christ that it will be fulfilled. “His hand is stretched out over all the nations”, the Lord is not sleeping, He watches and He takes action, and He will take action. Notice the “all the nations”, the gods were all local gods, the one true God is Lord over all, and cares about all the world. And no one can annul the purpose of God. The devil may try, men may try, but they will not succeed.

14:28,29

A clear timeframe is put on this oracle, it was given in the year that King Ahaz died, Philistia may have seem to have got some relief, with a heavy oppressive power on her have its power broken. For something much worse was about to come. The only true way to relief is repentance.

14:30-32

While the Philistine rulers would be decimated, the poor would find pasture. Every dictatorial regime ends up oppressing the poor, even if they started on a “socialist” manifesto. The removal of wicked regimes by the Lord is not just a judgement upon them (though that is a crucial element), but also a transformation so that the poor are no longer oppressed. The change is also associated with the restoration of Zion. We need to understand the fullness of God’s plans for Israel. On the one hand there is a judgement upon their sin, and no hiding from the reality of her rebelliousness. On the other hand the goal is to restore Zion to be the people they were always meant to be. If we focus on only one of these aspects then we distort Scripture.