What does Isaias Chapter 24 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The chapter’s sequence retains its particular images and conditions. Edition interpretations remain separately attributed rather than certified claims. Promises and warnings retain their scope without invented scenes or universal practical guarantees.

Chapter breakdown

Isaias 24 portrays the Lord laying waste, stripping and afflicting the earth and scattering inhabitants. Priest and people, servant and master, handmaid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor share its condition. Earth and its high people weaken. Transgressed laws, changed ordinance and broken everlasting covenant accompany infection and curse, sin, madness and few remaining people.

Vintage and vine mourn, musical mirth ends and drink becomes bitter. The city of vanity is broken, houses shut and gates oppressed. Remaining olives and post-vintage grapes describe those who raise praise from the sea. Instruction, islands and distant praise of the just one lead to the speaker's repeated My secret to myself and woe over prevarication. A western sea and private psychological explanation are not specified.

Fear, pit and snare follow one another; opened floodgates and shaken foundations accompany breaking, crushing and trembling earth. Drunken-man and one-night-tent images lead to its fall under iniquity. The Lord visits the host of heaven and earthly kings; they are gathered into pit and prison and visited after many days. The edition explains host as stars, with some commentators proposing demons of air. Moon blushes and sun is ashamed before the Lord's reign at Sion and Jerusalem. This retains the imagery without specifying literal fissures, pagan star worship or an inescapable dungeon.

The story inside

Opening: The chapter’s sequence retains its particular images and conditions. Development: Edition interpretations remain separately attributed rather than certified claims. Conclusion: Promises and warnings retain their scope without invented scenes or universal practical guarantees.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The chapter’s sequence retains its particular images and conditions.
2
Edition interpretations remain separately attributed rather than certified claims.
3
Promises and warnings retain their scope without invented scenes or universal practical guarantees.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 80363–80371
24:1. Behold the Lord shall lay waste the earth, and shall strip it, and shall afflict the face thereof, and scatter abroad the inhabitants thereof. 24:2. And it shall be as with the people, so with the priest: and as with the servant so with his master: as with the handmaid, so with her mistress: as with the buyer, so with the seller: as with the lender, so with the borrower: as with him that calleth for his money, so with him that oweth.
Lines 80436–80442
24:21. And it shall come to pass, that in that day the Lord shall visit upon the host of heaven on high, and upon the kings of the earth, on the earth. The host of heaven on high.... The stars, which in many places of the Scripture are so called. Some commentators explain that these words here signify the demons of the air.
Lines 80448–80450
24:23. And the moon shall blush, and the sun shall be ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Sion, and in Jerusalem, and shall be glorified in the sight of his ancients.