Nothing better brings out the wide reaching nature of Old Testament prophecy than Isaiah’s treatment of Jerusalem and Zion. Sometimes it very much has to do with the reality of the day, at other times it is clearly looking forward into the distant future when God will make all things right. We may briefly analyse it as follows:
The Different Aspects Of Jerusalem and Zion.
While the Jerusalem in 3). developed into a spiritual concept of Jerusalem, it is the Jerusalem in 4). that brings out the metaphysical idea that lay behind it. In looking at these verses we will only consider those of the cited verses which specifically and clearly cannot be taken literally. In 1.26-27 Zion is seen as needing to be refined, and has in mind something larger than itself. It represents all the righteous who respond to God, who will be redeemed, in contrast with those who rebel and forsake the Lord. It has in mind God’s overall plan for all His people seen in terms of Zion. Thus it goes beyond a literal Zion.
In 2.1-2 we have the picture of a Jerusalem which becomes the centre of the world’s response to God because ‘the mountain of the Lord’s house’ has been ‘lifted up to God’. It is the nearest that someone in Isaiah’s day could come to the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem in Galatians 4.21-31, a Jerusalem to which all God’s people of all nations would respond. (There was in Isaiah’s time no conception of a heaven to which men could go. To the nations round about heaven was for ‘the gods’, a mysterious place of god-like activity. To philosophise about it would only have resulted in confusion. The prophets kept the people’s minds firmly on this earth). And from this exalted Jerusalem God’s truth would go out to the world, and to it the people of the world would respond. Its fulfilment was again connected with the work of the Apostles as they went out from Jerusalem. They represented a Jerusalem lifted up to God, and fulfilled its ministry (and they were the temple of God - 2 Corinthians 6.16). A sensible consideration of what is described soon indicates that it is not describing a literal possibility, unless one of God’s aims was that we all become mountaineers. A Jerusalem temple on a mountain peak lifted up above all the mountains would be virtually inaccessible for the majority of people, and certainly not a place to which the nations could flow. It is rather intended to be a picture of the future spiritual impact of God’s message on the world from the Temple of the Holy Spirit, God’s people..
In 4.2-6 we have the picture of the remnant of God’s people who have been refined and have become genuinely holy so that the whole of Jerusalem would be completely holy. It thus represents the full making holy of all God’s people. That it is not to be taken literally comes out in the picture that follows with ‘Mount Zion’ being covered with a cloud by day and a shining flaming fire by night, as with the Tabernacle of old, with all being covered by a canopy and a pavilion protecting both from heat and storm. As simply a physical description it would be facile, with Jerusalem being under a permanent umbrella/parasol, in spite of the fact that storms are not a feature of Jerusalem. The significance of it is clearly that the people of God, having been made fully holy, will enjoy the assurance of God’s manifested presence, and will be sheltered from all that could harm them. In this description we really have a picture of the absolute holiness and full protection of God’s true people from all discomfort which, while having spiritual lessons for today, could only find its complete fulfilment in the everlasting kingdom, for only there will we be fully protected from the storms of life and know His permanent presence.
In 24.23 we learn that the sun and moon will be ashamed because of the overwhelming glory of God revealed on Mount Zion as the Lord reigns over the world, revealing the physical fullness of His glory (enough to thwart the sun and moon) to His attendants. The fulfilment of this is described in Revelation 22.3-5 where it has in mind the everlasting kingdom. Only perfected man could live with such glory. It certainly bears no resemblance to what we are told about the suppose millennial kingdom, which would hardly be seen as failing (as we are told it will) in the face of the fully revealed presence of God.
In 35.10; 51.11-12 Zion is to be the place of everlasting joy where His people obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away. Taken literally this can only apply to the everlasting kingdom.
In 52.1 Jerusalem is to be so holy that neither the uncircumcised or the unclean can ever enter it. In other words the whole city will have become the equivalent of the inner court of the Temple, with nothing unclean or uncircumcised being allowed to enter. But in physical terms no one could live in such a Jerusalem, for in order to fulfil the terms there could be no menstruation, no sexual activity and no contact with the dead. Furthermore, unless all Gentile worshippers are to be physically circumcised (nowhere ever suggested), it would make it exclusive to Jews. How then could all nations flow to Mount Zion? (2.2). It can only therefore be describing an ‘ideal’ state of affairs and have in mind the final purity of the people of God.
A description of the new Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth in Isaiah 65.17-25 is a clear example of something that could not occur on this earth. There there will be no more weeping and no more crying (compare Revelation 21.3-4), even though, if millennialists are to be believed, their children are dying at one hundred years old. What strange parents they would have. But of course verse 20 does not mean that. What verse 20 is promising is that there will be no infant mortality, and no lives which are cut short in their prime. That will, of course be because there will be no more death (Revelation 21.4).
But what of the sinner and the hundred year old child? Is it not strange that the sinner dies at one hundred years old, and the child does so as well. If taken literally this would signify that the only sinners who will die are children. But that is not the idea at all. What it is really saying is that no sinner would even want to be there, which is why if they lived there for a hundred years they would be seen as, and see themselves as, accursed. Every year would be a curse to such a person, never mind a hundred years. In other words what it is really indicating is that no sinners would be there by choice, which indicates that they would not be there at all. As regards the one hundred year old child, that is a figment of Isaiah’s imagination. In a vivid way it is stressing that children will not die. Consider the fact that even in the age of extreme longevity in Genesis 5 adulthood was reached at the usual age. Imagine a child in nappies for thirty years! What he is therefore saying is that death for children (which was a common feature of those days) will be so impossible to conceive that even if it lived as a child for a hundred years it would not die before that age was reached. Of course, by the time it had reached one hundred years it would no longer be a child, and so the question of its death as a child at that age does not arise. Thus his words are a picturesque and emphatic way of saying that there will be no sinners there (nothing uncircumcised or unclean - 52.1) and there will be no infant mortality, because no death. Such a method of speaking may not suit our prosaic western minds any more than did some of the teaching of Jesus about hating our fathers and mothers in order to be disciples. But it would have caused no difficulty for the people to whom Isaiah was speaking.
He then goes on to speak of the fruitfulness of their lives and that there would be no purloining, misappropriation or wasted labour. Furthermore their requests to God would be heard instantly and there would no longer be any death or cruelty in nature. The picture is one of perfection (something which many millennialists would spoil by reintroducing animal sacrifices). Here indeed we have what can only be the everlasting kingdom.
Finally we have the picture of ‘Jerusalem’ in Isaiah 66.18-24. He will gather their ‘all nations and tongues’, and ‘they will come and see My glory’. We can compare here Luke’s words ‘there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under Heaven’ (Acts 2.5) and it is made clear there also that they spoke different tongues. The language is very similar. And in both cases people who have escaped idolatry then flock out of Jerusalem in order to take God’s truth to the nations who do not know God (Isaiah 66.19), and both make the Jews an ‘offering to the Lord’, in Acts by bringing them to salvation. The point of the chariots, litters, asses and horses in Isaiah is that they are the equivalent of a ‘clean vessel’. Thus the aim is to present them clean before the Lord. Many will become ministers (priest and Levites) of the Lord. And from then on all flesh will come to worship before the Lord. This was so wonderfully fulfilled in Acts that it is tempting to see that as the whole fulfilment, but in the end true worship at its best will only take place in the everlasting kingdom.
Millennialists who see the visit of all nations to Jerusalem as taking place every seven days, and on every first day of the month, have of course to see it as being made by their representatives simply for logistical reasons (which is not what it says), while they also have difficulty with reconciling it with Zechariah 14 where the nations only come yearly to the Feast of Tabernacles. Those who simply see it as portraying true worship of God in both cases do not have that dilemma.
It is clear from all this that Isaiah has two strings to his bow, the one which deals with the real Jerusalem and what will happen to it, and the other which deals with a metaphysical and idealistic Jerusalem, which the New Testament sees as a heavenly Jerusalem. This method of interpretation does of course apply to all the prophets.
