"No Resident Will Say: 'I Am Sick' "

"All creation keeps on groaning together and being in pain together until now." So said the apostle Paul.  (Romans 8:22) Despite advances in medical science, sickness and death continue top plague the human race.  How wonderful, then, the promise that climaxes this part of Isaiah's prophecy is!  Imagine the time when "no resident will say: 'I am sick' "  (Isaiah 33:24)  when and how will this promise be fulfilled?

Isaiah is writing at a time when God's covenant people are sick spiritually.  (Isaiah 1:5, 6)  They have plunged so deeply into apostasy and immorality that they need severe discipline from Jehovah God. Assyria serves as Jehovah's "rod" to administer that discipline.  (Isaiah 7:17; 10:5, 15)  First, the northern ten-tribe kingdom of Israel falls to the Assyrians in the year 740 B.C.E. (2 Kings 17:1-180 18:9-11) A few years later, King Sennacherib of Assyria launches an all-out attack on the southern kingdom of Judah.  (2 Kings 18:14; Isaiah 36:1) As the Assyrian juggernaut sweeps through the land, Judah's complete annihilation seems inevitable. 

But Assyria, going  beyond its mandate to discipline God's people, is now pursuing its own greedy ambition for world conquest.  (Isaiah 10:7-11)  Will Jehovah allow its brutal mistreatment of his people to go unpunished?  Will there be a healing of the nation's spiritual illness?  In Isaiah chapter 33, we read Jehovah's answers to these questions.

Next time: Despoiling the Despoiler

From the Book Isaiah's Prophecy Light for all Mankind, 2000