Isaiah2chapter 2

Isaiah 2:1

The heading marks a new oracle, distinct from the vision named at 1:1, and chapters two through four run as one continuous poem under it. The same two poles frame the whole unit, the mountain of the Lord's house exalted above every mountain at the opening, and the day of the Lord humbling everything exalted at the close.

Isaiah 2:2-4

The mountain pictures Zion raised in status rather than in elevation, exalted above the hills by what happens there rather than by any change in geography, and the nations who come do so to be taught, he will teach us of his ways. Out of Zion shall go forth the law names Jerusalem as the source of instruction for the nations, not merely their destination. The oracle's most famous line, they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks, stands nearly word for word at Micah 4:3, verified, two prophets of the same generation carrying one shared oracle rather than one borrowing loosely from the other.

Isaiah 2:5-6

O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord echoes the nations' own invitation at verse three, come ye, and let us go up, turning the same call toward Israel itself. Verse six answers with the reason the call is needed, the house of Jacob is replenished from the east, filled with the divination Isaiah's contemporaries practiced, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, a people Israel had once been commanded to drive out rather than imitate. Pleasing themselves in the children of strangers names foreign alliance and intermarriage as one more form of the same unfaithfulness.

Isaiah 2:7-9

Their land also is full of silver and gold catalogues the nation's prosperity in three items, treasure, horses, and idols, each one a substitute for trust in the Lord. Horses and chariots without end recall the king's law at Deuteronomy 17:16, which forbade multiplying horses for exactly this reason, military strength sought instead of the strength the earlier chapter found lacking. The idols named last are self indicting by their own description, the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made, and both mean man and great man are found bowing to what their own hands built.

Isaiah 2:10-11

Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust opens a refrain the chapter repeats twice more, at verses nineteen and twenty one, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, the terror of his coming presence rather than any human enemy. Verse eleven supplies the refrain's other half, the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, repeated again at verse seventeen, framing the catalogue between them as one argument stated twice. The lofty looks of man humbled and the haughtiness of men bowed down state in miniature what the list of verses twelve through sixteen will spell out in full.

Isaiah 2:12-16

The day of the Lord of hosts falls upon every category of natural and human height in a single list, the cedars of Lebanon and oaks of Bashan for the tallest trees the ancient world knew, every high mountain and lifted hill for the land's own geography, every tower and fenced wall for the works of defense, and the ships of Tarshish, the ocean going merchant fleet, for wealth that could outrun any army. Pleasant pictures closing the list is read by the older commentators as decorated craft or carved imagery, one more thing prized for its own beauty rather than for the Lord's. The list's variety is the point, nothing that stands tall by nature or by human effort is exempt from the day named twice already in the refrain around it.

Isaiah 2:17-19

And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down repeats verse eleven's refrain almost word for word, the repetition itself part of the argument, God's exaltation stated as settled fact before the catalogue and restated as settled fact after it. The idols he shall utterly abolish stands opposite the mountain of the house at the chapter's opening, where the nations came to be taught; here the false gods that competed for that same devotion are simply erased. Fleeing into the holes of the rocks and the caves of the earth pictures worshippers hiding in the very ground their idols of silver and gold were dug from, the ore returning to where it was mined.

Isaiah 2:20-22

In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold pictures the same wealth catalogued at verse seven finally discarded, thrown to the moles and to the bats, creatures of the dark and the cave rather than any place of honor. Verse twenty one repeats the flight into the clefts of the rocks from verse nineteen, the terror of the Lord's rising to shake the earth given twice within a few verses for emphasis. The chapter's closing line turns from the coming day to a plain command for the present one, cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, a warning against exactly the trust in horses, treasure and idols the chapter has just catalogued.