Isaiah 10:17, commentary and pictures

The light of Israel and His Holy One is the Lord Himself acting as fire and flame to burn and devour the wicked Assyrian oppressor like thorns and briers in one day. That day is the day of judgment, the great day of the Lord, not a prophetic day fixing a set time for cleansing evil from the world. With what follows it, the burning shows a complete destruction of both soul and body, so that transgressors and sinners come to an end. The wicked are thus consumed rather than kept alive forever, proving the punishment of sin is extinction of life and not eternal torture, and that the soul can die and is not immortal. Consumed like thorns and briers, they are burned up root and branch unto destruction, not continued life, leaving only few survivors after the judgment.

Context and Imagery

Isaiah 10:17 belongs to a prophecy against Assyria. It stands within the prophecy of chapters 10 to 12, where reproofs of sin in Isaiah's time point forward to similar conditions in the last days and to the promised great deliverance at Christ's coming. Chapter ten's picture of strife, war, and wickedness contrasts with the rest, peace, and righteousness described in Isaiah 11.

The passage shows that even a powerful king is only an instrument in God's hands and has no power independent of God. Dominion was given by God, as in Nebuchadnezzar's case, and high position increased rather than removed the duty to obey God. The light of Israel and his Holy One is the Lord as a fire and flame that burns and devours the wicked oppressor like thorns and briers in one day. The quoted continuation in Isaiah 10:18 extends that burning to both soul and body, so the destruction is complete and not merely harm to the body. The following verses describe the few survivors left after the destruction.

The wicked being consumed like thorns and briers means their end is destruction, not continued life, and they are burned up root and branch. The "day" is the day of judgment, the great day of the Lord, not a prophetic day. The judgment of the wicked will take more than a year, so the verse does not set a prophetic time for consuming evil or cleansing the world. The consuming fire represents a destruction synchronized with the consuming process described in Isaiah 14, applied to the downfall of the papal king in 1798, when the treading-down oppression of God's people ended.

Final Destruction of Wicked

The light of Israel becomes a fire and his Holy One a flame that burns and devours the wicked like thorns and briers in one day, and with the continuation in Isaiah 10:18 the burning consumes both soul and body. The image is therefore complete destruction, not merely consumption of the body or harm to the body alone. The surrounding verses describe that same judgment as a consuming fire upon the wicked extending to soul and body together.

That consuming of transgressors and sinners reaches both soul and body so that they come to an end. To burn and devour them in one day means extinction of bodily life, proving the punishment for sin is not eternal torture. The verse stands among the texts teaching the destruction of the wicked, supporting that they are consumed rather than kept alive forever.

It is evidence that the soul can be cut off, die, and go into the grave, and therefore is not immortal. To be consumed like thorns and briers means the end of the wicked is destruction, not continued life, burned up root and branch.