Day 201: Isaiah 31-35 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey, Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 201. We are in the book of Isaiah, chapters 31 to 35. This is a fun stretch of the book of Isaiah. Chapters 34 and 35 are actually what's called a mini apocalypse. So we've gotten some apocalyptic literature already in the book of Isaiah. We're gonna get a little bit more and I'm gonna try really hard today to actually like go into detail on what makes it apocalyptic. I know we've touched on this in the past, but we're really gonna dive into that today. If you haven't done the reading for the day, which is Isaiah, chapters 31 to 35, then stop the video, stop the audio, go do the reading. If you have done the reading, then everything I'm gonna say is gonna make perfect sense. We're gonna start with context clues that I'm gonna try to fire off as many nerdy nuggets for you as I can. And I'll always leave with the timeless truth because we're not just here to study history. We're here to get to know the person, the character, the nature of God, and he doesn't change.

And his word is his self-disclosure to us so that we can learn him. The cool thing about the Bible is that the Bible is the only book that's designed for you to not know the book, but to know the author of the book. So I love leaving off with a timeless truth every day. And with no further ado, let's get into some context, okay? We're gonna tackle chapters 31, 32, and 33, like separately. And then we'll tackle chapters 34 and 35 since chapters 34 and 35 are considered to be a mini apocalypse. So we'll save those to the end. So let's start off with some context clues. Go to Isaiah chapter 32, verse nine. You women who are so complacent, rise up and listen to me. You daughters who feel secure, hear what I have to say. Sorry, verse nine and 10. My bad, verse nine and 10. Listen to what I have to say. In little more than a year, okay, you who feel secure will tremble. The grape harvest will fail and the harvest of fruit will not come. Okay, so that phrase right there, in little more than a year, which means Isaiah is prophesying about a little more than a year before Sennacherib comes down with the Assyrian army

and totally destroys Judah, but Jerusalem is gonna get saved, okay? So we actually know the exact year that this happening because Sennacherib is gonna come with the Assyrian army in 701 BC, okay? So this prophecy is happening in 702 BC, okay? So we actually have a date for this content, chapter 31, 32, 33, and probably 34 and 35. This whole section of reading for today, the date that we've got is 702 BC. And to give even more context, okay, we want to, I wanna help you realize that there are two really, really important characters that this entire section of Isaiah is covering. And by section, I mean Isaiah chapter one to Isaiah chapter 39 is a cohesive unit. I probably should have said that sooner, so I'm sorry. As we've been studying the book of Isaiah, I probably should have let you know that there are actually three major divisions in the book. I think I can do this from memory. Isaiah chapter one to Isaiah chapter 39 is all prophecy saying, hey, like the Babylonians are coming. The Southern kingdom of Judah is going to get taken off into Babylonian captivity, okay? And then chapters 40 to 55, essentially that captivity's happened, okay? But that captivity didn't happen till 586 BC. And so a lot of people will refer to that section

of the book as Deutero-Isaiah, because obviously there's no chance that Isaiah is alive in the 700s BC, but also in the 500s BC, okay? So we'll get into that later. That'll be a lot of nerdy nuggets for us to get into. And then people then divide the book again at chapter 56 to chapter 58. chapter 66. So chapters 1 to 39 are a cohesive unit and the two, I mean, dominant figures that we really need to understand will be King Ahaz and King Hezekiah. So here's what happened. Ahaz, a wicked king, signs a treaty, okay, with the Assyrians. Remember, he's scared of the Aramean king and the Israelite king. He's scared, so he makes himself a vassal of the suzerain of Assyria, whose name is Tiglath-Pileser. And so then Tiglath-Pileser dies. Sargon, his son, reigns. Sargon gets the throne from Tiglath-Pileser. And then Ahaz's son is gonna get the throne. His name is gonna be Hezekiah. Hezekiah is gonna rise up and become king. And when Hezekiah rise up and becomes king, he just so happens to be a vassal because his father made them a vassal. That's a timeless truth right there. That whatever walks in the father runs in the family. And so Hezekiah has to deal with the ramifications or the consequences of his dad's decision. But then Sargon, the Assyrian king, dies. And in his place comes Tiglath-Pileser's grandson, which is Sennacherib. And this is 705 BC. And Hezekiah is gonna see an opportunity to rise up and revolt because this is very common in the ancient world. Whenever there's a new king, if you've been a vassal, it's time to revolt before that new king can establish power. And so Isaiah is actually prophesying in a time of incredible security, incredible wealth. But what does he say? In little more than a year, you who feel secure will tremble. I know you feel secure right now, but you will tremble. So I've said this a couple of times as we've been studying Isaiah, like, why aren't people listening to this man? Well, it's because they have a false sense of security. And it's so often that when people have a false sense of security,

they don't feel like they need God. They feel like they can live without God. But Isaiah makes it very, very clear. Your security is not even gonna last more than a year or some change. A little more than a year, and the thing that feels secure is gonna totally fall apart. All right. So I wanted to give you all that context, okay? That the reason that Sennacherib is coming to tear Judah apart is because Hezekiah has taken the turn of leadership as an opportunity to rebel against his suzerain. But Hezekiah had never installed Sennacherib as his suzerain. His father established Assyria as a suzerain. And Hezekiah, who's actually insanely righteous, one of the best kings that Judah ever had, is going to have to deal with the consequences of a decision that his father made. Family, the wait is over. My brand-new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes & Noble, and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & Noble, or you can go to a Books-A-Million, or Amazon, or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of Scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Let's get into some nerdy nuggets. So that's a lot of context. I pray that that's actually really, really helpful. So in the Assyrian lineage, you've got Tiglath-Pileser, who we've talked about a lot. And then you've got Sargon, who's not really gonna get talked about a lot in the biblical record. But then you got Sennacherib. And then on the Kings of Judah, you're gonna have Ahaz, who's the one that becomes a vassal to the Suzerain that is Assyria. Hezekiah just inherits this vassalship. And when Sargon dies and Sennacherib becomes king, Hezekiah sees it as an opportunity to rebel. And that's in 705 BC. And Sennacherib is coming. He's coming to

enact revenge. He has to show that he's not weak. And so he's going to come knocking on Jerusalem's door in 701 BC. And we'll talk about that probably tomorrow. All right. Let's get into some nerdy nuggets. There's a massive continuation of the theme from yesterday. Okay. Remember yesterday's the massive theme. Don't trust in Egypt. Don't trust their horses today. I actually want to like, uh, spell that out. Okay. Uh, so let's go to Deuteronomy 17, 16, uh, says this, the King moreover must not acquire great number of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them. For the Lord has told you, you are not to go back that way again. So since they left Egypt, there's been a of don't go back to Egypt to get horses. And for anyone living in the modern world, this would be like, you know, Ukraine, like trusting in America for missiles, for tanks to fight against Russia. Like this is no different. Like geopolitical alliances have not changed. This is the same like, so, uh, Judah wanting horses from Egypt is the same as Ukraine wanting submarines or tanks or missiles from the United States of America. Okay. And Yahweh says, do not trust in horses, especially not from Egypt. And this theme starts in Deuteronomy chapter 17. I want to show you how this theme gets developed of whether or not the people of God do a good or a bad job. So let's go to first Kings chapter four. If you've been with us on the journey for any length of time, you probably remember this first Kings chapter four, verse 26, Solomon had 4,000 stalls for chariot horses and 12,000 horses. Oh, so the authors of the Bible already telling us Solomon's failing. Uh, and the Bible's not going to say Solomon's failing. The Bible's just going to show you in Deuteronomy. You're not supposed to have horses. That's supposed to go back to Egypt for horses. And then it's going to show you in Kings, Solomon was going back to Egypt for horses. Okay. Cause the Bible shows, instead of telling, if you are expecting the Bible to tell you things, then you're probably going to be sadly mistaken or disappointed because the Bible does a lot of showing and it doesn't do that much telling and people who rely on the Bible to do straightforward telling, uh, probably they typically have a pretty low understanding of, of scripture because scripture does a lot of showing and not a lot of telling. All right. First Kings chapter 12. We'll do one more verse first Kings, um, chapter, sorry, chapter 10 first Kings chapter 10. And we're going to go to verse 28 says Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt and from Q the Royal merchants purchased them from Q at the current price. They imported a chariot from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver and a horse for 150. They also exported them to all the Kings of the Hittites

and the Arameans. So Solomon is being set up as the first King who starts going back to Egypt for horses. So this theme of trusting in Egypt for horses has lasted a long time. This is not a new theme. So when we finally get to Isaiah chapter 30 and then Isaiah chapter 31, it's going to be very, very clear. Hey, God is upset about this because this has been happening for a long, long time. So now let's go to Isaiah chapter 31. And now we have context to actually read it. Woe to those who go to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy one of Israel or seek help from the Lord. Verse three, but the Egyptians are mere mortals and not God. Their horses are flesh and not spirit. So God has, I mean, since Deuteronomy into the book of Kings, now through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, Yahweh has been saying the same thing over and over and over and over. Do not trust Egypt. Don't trust horses. Don't trust the things that your eyes can modern day equivalent. Don't trust tanks. Don't trust missiles. Don't trust things that humans can, can, uh, provide trust in Yahweh. Trust in me. Also, I'm setting us up to really understand how this story is going to come to a climactic end. Okay. Because Hezekiah is going to have to come to a fork in the road and decide, am I going to trust Egypt? Am I going to trust the Babylonians or am I going to trust? Yahweh to help me defeat the Assyrians. And so this, I'm building tension and it will get resolved in a couple of days as we continue on the Bible reading plan. Actually, it's gonna get resolved tomorrow, to be totally honest. All right. One last theme that I want you to see, and that is in Isaiah chapter 32. So now we're gonna move from Isaiah 31 to the Isaiah chapter 32, and we immediately have hope. See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will reign with justice.

So this whole section is going to actually be a prophecy of a coming Messiah. And I love this, that in the middle of God being angry with his people for trusting in horses, in the middle of him, Yahweh telling his people, you will be destroyed. You will be burned. Like, I am gonna send an enemy and an army to totally annihilate you. In the middle of God giving a lot of bad news, he goes, yeah, but one day, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. Because remember, the leaders are drunk and the kings trust in foreign powers. But one day there will be a king that is gonna reign in righteousness and the rulers will rule with justice. Okay. So chapter 32, verse one through eight is all about a coming king, a coming Messiah, who is going to reign. All right. Let me draw your attention to Isaiah 32, verse 15. It says this, till the spirit is poured on us from on high and the desert becomes a fertile field and the fertile field seems like a forest. So it says till the spirit is poured out on us from on high.

I've probably said this a multitude of times, but the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh is not simply gearing us up or setting us up to have hope in a Messiah or a savior. It is. We should be reading these scriptures and we should be longing with anticipation for Jesus to come, for the Messiah, for a savior. But the scriptures are also causing us to long and yearn for the spirit of God to be poured out. The reason that the people of God in the Old Covenant were not able to fulfill the requirements of the law was not simply because only God could do it or Jesus could do it, but because they didn't have the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit living on the inside of them. And so you get sprinkles of a promise that one day the spirit is gonna be poured out from on high. And so this is not just in books like Joel. This is also here in books like Isaiah and it'll be in Jeremiah. It'll be in Ezekiel. It's actually sprinkled all throughout the Old Covenant or the Old Testament or the Hebrew scriptures. And I think it's a beautiful thing that God has given a promise in the Old Testament, not just of a savior, but also of a spirit. And I would, and a lot of scholars and theologians and church fathers would say that Jesus, the savior, is the right hand of God

and the spirit is the left hand of God. And so the Old Testament or the Old Covenant, the Hebrew scriptures are setting us up to anticipate not just the giving of the right hand of God, which is Jesus, but also the left hand, which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Okay, let's keep moving. We're gonna get a woe to Assyria in this section, which is great because even though God has to raise up Assyria to punish Israel, God is still gonna enact judgment on Assyria for arrogance and for pride. I think that's everything I wanted to point out. And now we get to go to chapters 34 and 35, and I'm just gonna point out some apocalyptic language. Okay, here we go, verse three. The mountains will be soaked with their blood. That's apocalyptic right there. Like mountains soaked with blood. This is very much so apocalyptic language. All the stars in the skies will be dissolved, apocalyptic language. And the heavens rolled up like a scroll, apocalyptic language. If anything sounds like it's not actually possible, it tends to be very apocalyptic, okay? Because if the heavens are rolled up like a scroll, man, that's the end of the world. I don't think we're surviving that. All the starry hosts will fall

like withered leaves from the vine. So the starry hosts are actually the Elohim. They're not just stars. In the Hebrew mind, the stars that we point out in the sky and look at actually represent Elohim. Verse five, my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens. Very apocalyptic. The sword of the Lord is bathed in blood. So soaked in blood, bathed in blood, of the moon turning to blood. This is very, very, very apocalyptic language. Verse seven, drenched with blood, soaked with fat. Verse nine, burning sulfur. Verse 10, its smoke will rise forever. Very apocalyptic. God will stretch out over Edom, the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation. That right there is actually Tohu Vavohu, that the word from Genesis chapter one, verse one, actually chapter one, verse two, and the NIV translates it as, in the beginning, the earth was formless and void, Tohu Vavohu. But here it's translated as chaos and desolation. Uh, so that's a nerdy nugget for you. I'll unpack that at some point. Um, but again, it's driving home the point that the ancient reader would not have read Genesis chapter one and thought God makes something out of nothing. They would have seen Tohu Vavohu in Genesis chapter one, verse two, and thought chaos and desolation. But it gets translated as formless and void in Genesis, but chaos and desolation here in Isaiah. I actually think that chaos and desolation is the right translation.

And Genesis chapter one, verse two, should actually read in the beginning where the heavens and the earth, right? And the spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the deep and it's chaos and desolation. Anyway. Okay. Just want to point out some more apocalyptic language. If you're not used to it, tons of apocalyptic language in this section. Just want you to get familiar with what apocalyptic language sounds like. And then of course, we're going to end on a prophecy of Jesus and it says, then will the eyes of the blind be open. This is verse five of chapter 35. Then will the eyes of the blind be open in the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. I love that laced within all the very, very like dark imagery around destruction. And God's sword soaked with blood and him, his sword coming down on Edom and killing everybody, like in the midst of all that, he's like, Hey, then will the eyes of the blind be open? Like, like not only will the day of the Lord be judgment, but the day of the Lord will also include the coming of the Messiah and blind eyes will be open. And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped and the lame will leap like a deer and the mute tongue will shout for joy. It's not a shock, right? That the disciples who watched Jesus open up blinded eyes and unstop deaf ears and heal the crippled and unmute the mute is not a surprise that they also thought that that same man was going to take a sword and judge the Romans, right? Like when you read Isaiah, you're like, okay. Like Peter and Judas and they're not crazy. They're not crazy for thinking that Jesus is going to lead an armed rebellion against the Romans.

Um, however they were, they were off, they were, they, they were wrong. And, uh, all right. Our timeless truth, um, for the day, um, is that Isaiah chapter 32 verse nine. And we're going to just remind you of what verse nine says. That's our timeless truth for the day. You women who are so complacent rise up and listen to me, you daughters who feel secure, hear what I have to say. In little more than a year, you who feel secure will tremble. The grape harvest will fail and the harvest of fruit will not come. Security does not come by how much money you have in the bank or what's in the stock market or what the stock market is doing, security does not come by how you feel based on your five senses. Man, ups and downs are inevitable. Recessions are inevitable. Like this would have been a recession for them. The grape harvest will fail. The harvest of your fruit will not come. This is financial ruin. Um, but the thing that keeps us secure and the lesson that Hezekiah will learn. Is not horses from Egypt. Those don't make you secure, but the rest that you find in the salvation of God and the repentance, when you rest and you repent, you'll be secure. You'll be safe. And I know that sounds unrealistic. That sounds like a fantasy, but the reality is that you could go from feeling secure to losing everything overnight. And in the moment when you lose everything, you better hope that there's a God that you know how to, how to pray to. And, uh, even when God doesn't prevent bad things from happening, He is a hundred percent present and sometimes we're expecting Him to prevent, but instead of

a V, we need to put an S. He doesn't prevent, but He is present. He doesn't prevent everything from happening that we would want Him to prevent from happening, but He is always present and the thing that makes us secure is the presence of God and knowing that we know Him and that He knows us. So that's our timeless truth for the day. That was true thousands of years ago for Hezekiah and Isaiah and Ahaz and Sennacherib and all the characters here. And that's true for us today. I'll see you tomorrow. We've got day 202. We're gonna look at Isaiah chapter 36 and 39, some of my favorite chapters of the book of Isaiah. I can't wait to see you. Love you, so proud of you, especially if you're on the street. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 202. Love you guys, peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.