Project 119: Isaiah 2:1-5
| Project 119
The Mountain of the LORD
”This chapter of Isaiah is comprised of a vision of what God’s future salvation will look like. Because God’s temple had been built on a high mountain, Isaiah envisioned a coming day when its influence would be raised above every other holy place, even to the point that “all nations shall stream to it” (Isaiah 2:2). The temple would one day become an earthly meeting place where all persons would have the opportunity to realize the purpose of their creation and join in unbroken fellowship with God.
This vision was actually unheard of in Isaiah’s time. In the eighth century BC, most Jews would have been suspicious of other nations, and would have had every reason to be, given how so many of those nations had made life difficult for God’s people. But Isaiah’s prophecy points us to how God’s plan always supersedes the plans of mortal humans and even swallows them up, so that God is capable of even using world events and worldly rulers as instruments of His redemptive purposes. Later passages in Isaiah will reflect God’s choice of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia (all captors) to make God’s purposes a reality in Israel’s everyday affairs.
In the Bible, mountains are always places of revelation. They are also places of testing. In your life, think about those tests that God allows to come your way. How might you lean upon God in the midst of them so that you come to a place where your relationship with God is strengthened and your understanding of His mercy is made clearer? I don’t know of a better way for God “to teach us His ways…that we may walk in His paths” (Isaiah 2:3).
Isaiah 2:1-5 (ESV):
1 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be lifted up above the hills;
and all the nations shall flow to it,
3 and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.
5 O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord.