Isaiah 33:17-20

The Glory That Is Coming (Isaiah 33:17).

In stark contrast with all that has gone before is the destiny of God's true people. For them the future holds the promise of a permanent existence in the presence of God, of a permanent beholding of His glory, of a permanent experience of His presence, when all that is of the past will have been done away, and He has become all in all.

Analysis.

· a Your eyes will see the king in his beauty. They will behold a spacious land (a land of far distances) (Isaiah 33:17).

· b Your heart will muse on the terror. Where is he who assessed? Where is he who weighed? Where is he who counted the towers? (Isaiah 33:18).

· b You will not see the fierce people, a people of a deep speech which you cannot interpret, of a gibberish tongue that you cannot understand (Isaiah 33:19).

· a Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities. Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, a tent that will not be removed, the pegs of which will never be plucked up, nor will any of its guy ropes be broken (Isaiah 33:20).

In ‘a' their eyes will see the King in His beauty, and in the parallel they will see Jerusalem a quiet habitation which is perfectly safe and secure. In ‘b' they will recognise that they have nothing to fear from anyone any more, and in the parallel this includes strange foreign invaders.

Isaiah 33:17

‘Your eyes will see the king in his beauty.

They will behold a spacious land (a land of far distances).

Your heart will muse on the terror. Where is he who assessed?

Where is he who weighed? Where is he who counted the towers?

You will not see the fierce people,

A people of a deep speech which you cannot interpret,

Of a gibberish tongue that you cannot understand.'

This promise to the godly man sums up the future for the godly remnant. They will see the coming King in the splendour of His glorious beauty (compare Psalms 45:2), the king of Isaiah 32:1. They will behold a land spacious and free (in contrast with the tiny area then ruled from Jerusalem). They will look back and muse without fear on those of whom men were in terror, wondering how they could ever have been afraid of them, such as those fearsome men who assessed men to take them into captivity, those who weighed the tribute and decided what each would pay, making the burden heavy, those who elected which buildings should be destroyed, for to the godly man none of this will matter any more. He will be beyond it. To him these things will have become a thing of the past. For His trust is in God. And he will then have no involvement with foreign invaders and masters in exile and tribute collectors, who speak a gibberish tongue. He will finally be delivered from it all.

Intrinsically this looks first to the coming of the King and the deliverance He would bring. As they take His yoke on them and learn of Him, they will find rest to their souls (Matthew 11:28), but in the final analysis it looks to the coming to the everlasting kingdom, to the complete salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messianic king, and the glorious spaciousness of the new heaven and the new earth. While not stating so, this assumes the heavenly kingdom, and the resurrection of the dead in Isaiah 26:19, for Isaiah knew that all this could only be when Assyria had been destroyed and Babylon itself had been defeated and finally destroyed, and yet he promised it to the godly of his day who walked righteously and spoke uprightly. Thus it had to be after the resurrection he had described.

Isaiah 33:20

‘Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities.

Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation,

A tent that will not be removed, the pegs of which will never be plucked up,

Nor will any of its guy ropes be broken.

This further description confirms that we are speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem. Ezekiel thought in terms of a heavenly temple set on ‘a very high mountain' well away from Jerusalem, reaching up to heaven, with the city itself on the very outskirts of a ‘holy area' (40-48, see especially Isaiah 45:1). Isaiah has not quite reached that depth of vision but his wording suggests something similar, in as far as it was possible for someone with no real conception of a Heaven above to which men could go. Somehow he knew that this could be no earthly city. So Jerusalem has here gone back to being the Tent in the wilderness, but as having a heavenly permanence. It is the eternal dwellingplace of Yahweh.

And this was Zion/Jerusalem. ‘The city of our solemnities' connects it in thought with the earthly Jerusalem, for he is in these words speaking of the city where they celebrated their sacred feasts, the city of worship, but it has become something other than itself. Instead of a place of buildings it will have become a quiet dwellingplace, away from a tumultuous world, an everlasting tent, a new tabernacle where those who are holy meet with God (compare Isaiah 4:3). It will be a place apart from the earth as the tabernacle was apart from the camp, and yet a tent so permanent that its guy ropes will never break. It will be a permanent tabernacle which never moves from its site, for its pegs will never be uprooted. Once they see it they will have passed through the wilderness of history and have reached their final home.

The thought is not so much that of a return to the ‘ideal' time in the wilderness, when Israel was holiness to Yahweh (Jeremiah 2:2), although it includes that, but more that of a going on to something better and more permanent. Yet it is certainly not thinking of earthly permanence (compare Revelation 21:3). The very nature of a tent is against earthly permanence. It is a rejection of the idea of ‘the city'. It is calling men apart to God to a purity of relationship that rejects ‘civilisation'. And there they will see Yahweh in the fullness of His majesty and will be with Him. The writer to the Hebrews described it as ‘the true Tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not men' (Hebrews 8:2).

We may see in it a twofold future reference. Firstly the entering in of those who come to believe in Jesus Christ the king, who thus come under the Kingly Rule of God (Isaiah 33:22) and enjoy His personal presence with them, for they become His tabernacle, His dwellingplace; no longer of ‘the city'; in the world but not of the world; temporary on earth and yet with a permanence in Heaven, for they are even now citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20). And secondly the full fulfilment in the heavenly kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth, when they are with Him for ever and enjoy the full glory of His majesty and presence (Revelation 21:3).