In adult instruction (catechesis) for those being brought into the Church, we cover many teachings of Scripture. Sometimes, we have classes dealing with people’s specific questions. One such class dealt without how to understand the last verse in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.
That verse reads: “And they will go out and look on the corpses of those who have rebelled against me, where their worm will never die, where their fire will never go out, and they will be a horror to all flesh.”
In the process of understanding this verse this verse in its context (and within all of Scripture), we also did a short study on what is Hell, and even into Mary giving birth to Jesus.
A Study to Help Understand Isaiah 66:24 in Its Context
To help us understand what is taking place, we need to start back in Isaiah 63:15. There Isaiah prays for mercy from God. We find that these passages in Isaiah are in poetic format. So we need to read these passages understanding that and not reading them as literal prose.
Read Isaiah 63:12-64:12
– What is the spiritual state of Israel?
– Why would Isaiah pray for mercy?
God answers
Read Isaiah 65:1-7
– How have the people of Israel been dealing with God?
– What is outwardly happening but not inwardly happening? (vs. 3-5)
Read Isaiah 65:8-10
– What will God bring out of His people Israel?
– What does that point forward to?
Read Isaiah 65:11-12
– What awaits those who forsake the Lord?
God now contrasts those who are in His Church and those who are not.
Read Isaiah 65:13-16
The New Heaven and New Earth
Read Isaiah 65:17-25
God uses earthly experiences to describe eternity. And so we lean of eternity by way of contrast to our experiences now. Again, we are not to understand these passages literally because it is poetry.
From Eternity Back to the Coming New Covenant
Chapter 66 begins with God’s earlier words to King David about His wish to build God a temple. But here in Isaiah, it is pointing forward to the Temples’ fulfillment in the New Covenant.
Read Isaiah 66:1-2
– Who will bring about the New Covenant? (vs. 2)
Read Isaiah 66:3-4
– How are Israel’s outward and inward spirituality out of sync?
Read Isaiah 66:5-6
God contrasts the unbelievers and believers in Israel.
– In verse 5, what does “what we may see your joy” point forward to?
A Prophecy of Jesus, Mary, and the New-Covenant Church
Read Isaiah 66:7-11
Something curious now happens in these verses. Zion gives birth to one child, a single individual, the male child (Isaiah 66:7). This is Jesus. Yet, in verse 8, we find that Zion has also given birth to many children, a nation! So, which is it? Does Zion give birth to the Messiah, a single male child or does she give birth to many children, a nation?
In scripture, we find Jesus described as the head of the Church. Yet, scripture also describes Him as the body of the Church—or both! Isaiah 66 seems to have such to a full understanding of Jesus. For instance, she (Zion) gives birth to Christ (the head) and, through that birth, she gives birth to a multitude, a nation, Christ’s body (the Church). This confirms that the male child is Jesus since no other person in history can be both head and body, a single individual and a multitude.
– Who then is the “she” in verse 7?
When we look at New-Testament accounts of Mary, understanding that Isaiah 66:7 refers to Mary makes sense. For example, God’s command for Daughter Zion to “rejoice” (Isaiah 66:10) corresponds to the angel Gabriel’s first words to Mary: “Rejoice, you who enjoy God’s favor! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The same Greek (kairo) word translated as “rejoice” is used in both Luke 1:28 (sometimes translated as “greetings”) and Isaiah 66:10, in the Greek Septuagint.
What makes this connection more certain is that Gabriel did not use a typical Hebrew greeting. The more common Hebrew greeting would have been, “Peace to you” (Matthew 10:12, Luke 24:36, John 20:19, 26, and Romans 1:7). Instead, Gabriel greeted Mary with “Rejoice.” This greeting was so odd that Mary “was very troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29). Gabriel’s use of “Rejoice” seems deliberate. If it was not a direct reference to Isaiah 66:10, it was at least an echo.
In verse 11, in the same way that Jesus goes from being head to body, so also does Mary go from herself to representing the Church. As Mary will nurse Jesus, the Church will nurse those in her care.
To help understand Isaiah 66:7-11 even better, it is also good to know Revelation chapter 12. See the appendix.
The New-Covenant Church
Read Isaiah 66: 12-14
– How does (or through whom does) God comfort us?
– What takes place for those in Christ’s Church?
The Final Judgment
Read Isaiah 66:15-16
– How will Jesus return (remember this is poetry)?
Read Isaiah 66:17
– What happens to “those who sanctify and purify themselves”? Discuss why.
Read Isaiah 66:18-23
– Who will be in the Church?
Read Isaiah 66:24
In this verse, God contrasts those in eternity who are in His kingdom with those who are not. We must remember that earlier we’ve seen earthly-life metaphors used to describe eternity. As Isaiah 65:17-25 did not literally describe what eternity would be like for God’s family, so does this verse not literally describe eternity for those who have rejected God.
– Although the word “hell” is not used, how is hell metaphorically described?
Excursus: What is Hell?
Today, many think that Hell is an eternal separation from God. However, Scripture does not teach this (unfortunately, many translations foster this belief by mistranslating one verse).
In 2 Thessalonians 1:9, most translations read something to the effect that Hell “is the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.”
“Away from” and “from” are both translations of the Greek word apo. However, apo is ambiguous and can carry a couple of meanings. To carry the ambiguity of the Greek into English, “from” would be a better translation, because “from” also has that ambiguity in English.
Now, “from” could mean that hell is an eternity away from God’s presence. However, “from” could just as well mean that hell is an eternity caused by God’s presence.
Hell being caused by God’s eternal presence is the better of the understanding. Why?
- God is omnipresent, so no place exists where God is not, including in eternity. This should be an obvious no-brainer for Christians.
- In 2 Thessalonians 1:10, Paul is referencing Isaiah 2:10, 19, 21.
- Isaiah 2:10: “hide in the dust from before the terror of the LORD, and from the splendor of his majesty.”
- “From before” is a translation of the Hebrew word min. Min means “from,” but also “by” and “because of.” So Isaiah is saying to hide–not away from–but because of the Lord’s presence.
- Isaiah 2:19 and 21 describe the same scenario using the same Hebrew word min.
- Isaiah 2:10: “hide in the dust from before the terror of the LORD, and from the splendor of his majesty.”
Saying that Hell is an eternal separation from God based on the ambiguity of the Greek word apo in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 doesn’t make sense, especially considering God’s omnipresence, which Scripture teaches in many places. If you factor in Isaiah’s use of the Hebrew word min, the case is closed.
So what is Hell? Hell is being in eternity without Christ’s righteousness to make you holy. If someone does not have Christ’s righteousness and holiness, he would experience eternity–not as a child of Light–but as if being on fire. It would be eternal torment because God is eternal.
A person’s own righteousness is not sufficient, as Isaiah 66:17 and following tell us. Hell is what happens when someone is in eternity in God’s omnipresent, eternal glory, where God is being God without “hiding Himself” (as He does here, in Word and Sacrament, to make Himself accessible to us sinful creatures).
Appendix: Revelation 12 and Isaiah 66
After our Fall into sin, God’s first recorded speaking of His promise of our deliverance is in Genesis 3:15. He said:
I [God] will put hostility between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He [the woman’s seed] will strike your [the serpent’s] head, and you will strike his heel.
The vision John saw in Revelation 12 uses the same characters that are in Genesis 3:15: The woman (Revelation 12:1, 4, 6, 13-17), her Seed (Revelation 12:2-5, 17), the serpent (Revelation 12:9, 14, 15), and the serpent’s seed (Revelation 12:4, 7, 9). This is part of the assumed knowledge the reader/hearer of Revelation is to have.
Revelation 12 shows, through imagery, the hostility and warfare that Genesis 3:15 mentions. The serpent (dragon) is at war with both the woman (Revelation 12:13, 15) and her Seed, Christ, the “male child” (Revelation 12:4).
Genesis 3:15 prophesies the serpent’s defeat when his head is crushed under the foot of the woman’s Seed. Revelation 12 also depicts the serpent’s defeat. However, in Revelation 12, the woman’s Seed, the male child, conquers the dragon (devil) when He is caught up to heaven and casts the dragon down to earth (Revelation 12:5, 7-10).
The woman’s Seed is Christ. He is the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 and He alone crushes the head of the Serpent. However, God also crushes the Serpent’s head under the feet of all Christians–because they have become members of Christ’s body (Romans 16:20). That is how we in the Church receive and share in Christ’s victory. Yet, we don’t experience the fullness of this victory until the Last Day and in eternity.
Thus, the woman’s Seed takes on a duality. She gives birth to only one child, the male-child, Christ (Revelation 12:5). Yet, at the end of Revelation, chapter 12, the dragon (devil) wages war against her seed. This time “her seed” represents all Christians “the ones keeping the commandments of God, and having the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:17). This is similar to what happens in Isaiah 66, where the woman, “she,” gives birth to a son (Jesus) in verse 7 and a “nation” (the Church) in verse 8.
Revelation 12 confirms the dragon represents Satan “that old serpent… who deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). That goes all the way back to Satan as the serpent in Genesis. The male child is Jesus, since He rules and shepherds all nations with a “rod of iron” (Psalm 2:9) and has ascended to God’s throne. The Serpent’s seed are Satan’s angels, who were thrown from heaven with him (Revelation 12:9), and, implicitly, all the wicked, since they persecute Christians (Revelation 12:11-12). The woman is the Virgin Mary, since she gave birth to Jesus (Revelation 12:5).
It is worth noting that in Isaiah 66:7 “she,” that is Mary, is said to give birth “before she was in labor,” even “before pain came upon her.” Yet, in Revelation 12, “a woman,” again Mary, “was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains.”
If we were to understand both passages literally, then they would contradict. However, since both of these passages use descriptive, metaphorical imagery to teach divine truths, the point is not about whether Mary had birth pains or not.
- Isaiah 66 describes the joy of being into the Church, eventually moving into the eternal joy for those in Christ’s kingdom. To help make this point, a painless labor and birth was used in that passage.
- Revelation 12 depicts the struggle between Jesus and Satan and Satan’s ultimate defeat. And to help make that point even more vivid, the birth in Revelation 12 was painful because Jesus defeat of Satan was painful.
That is why the imagery differs in both settings.
