12:11-13
The whole land will become a wasteland. It talks of swarms of destroyers, but also the sword of the Lord, turned against His own city. “No one will be safe”. The people would work hard, but to no avail. Why? Because of the anger of the Lord. If a people have turned against God no lasting change will come about until that people repent. We need to take the Lord’s anger seriously. Scripture says that God is slow to anger, it does not say that He never angers. This means that when God is angry we have really gone too far.
12:14,15
We now get a hint of hope. The nations that would plunder Judah and Jerusalem were evil as well. In the end they would be uprooted for their own sin. At the same time Judah would be uprooted from among them, i.e. she would be rescued from captivity. There is judgement along the way, but salvation is God’s ultimate plan. Eventually the Jews would be brought back to their inheritance and to their own land.
12:16,17
There is also hope for all the nations. So there is judgement for all nations, and salvation for all nations. But see that this is conditional, they need to learn the (good) ways of God’s people, just as they taught Israel how to serve false gods. And they will be established among God’s people. So this salvation is not a “letting people off”, but a bringing of people into God’s kingdom. It is a teaching them to obey all Jesus’ commands (Matt 28:19,20). Salvation involves becoming Christlike. The only true unity is unity in Christ (Eph 2:11-22).
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