Isaiah 2:6, commentary and pictures

God has forsaken His professed people, the house of Jacob, because of unfaithfulness in adopting foreign customs, practicing divination, and joining in alliance with foreigners. To be replenished from the east is to be filled with religious teachings, customs and philosophies from the East, including pantheism, Buddhism, Vedantic philosophy and Christian Science, which enter the Christian church in the last days. To be soothsayers like the Philistines and to please themselves in the children of strangers is to practice forbidden divination, to heed human teachers rather than God, to foretell false peace and safety, and to delight in and join hands with foreign religious influences and worldly approval. The prophecy belongs to the last days, when many peoples speak on their own responsibility of going up to the mountain of the Lord and beating swords into plowshares, while war is still prepared and armaments increase, and that deceptive cry of political peace without God lulls thousands to sleep and ends in sudden inescapable destruction. It denies any coming temporal millennium or conversion of the world through human effort, for lasting peace comes only when Christ reigns in righteousness and the earth is cleansed from sin.

Words and Phrases Clarified

God has forsaken, rejected and left His professed people, the house of Jacob, because of unfaithfulness and apostasy in turning to foreign customs, divination, and alliance with foreigners. That forsaking belongs to the latter days and last days, when eminent specialists consult spirits, psychical research admits psychic phenomena, teaching that the dead communicate with the living grows through books and interest in occult research and reconstruction of Christian belief, reverting to pagan necromancy. The promised call to go up to the Lord's mountain and the vision of peace are words spoken by many people, not by the Lord, so their claim of peace does not mean they are faithful to Him. The false promise of peace is evidence of apostasy and deception of the world, and the cry of peace and safety does not bring peace but brings sudden inescapable destruction.

To be replenished from the east is to be filled with customs, religious teachings, philosophies and practices from the East, including Hindu teachings about the soul, reincarnation and transmigration, which in the last days can enter the Christian church and be accepted through persuasive arguments. It is a warning message for the last days that Christendom is being filled up with the bewitching philosophy of the East, with ancient teachings of Gentile heathen peoples revived under new forms of expression and spreading swiftly in perilous times. It is the same religion of human nature and false philosophy that grew until God could no longer endure ancient Babylon, and now again makes modern world-Babylon the hold of every foul spirit. Professed worshipers who import such teachings as immortality and the age to come while attempting to worship God do so in vain, and professed Christian teachers who accommodate or equate those eastern religions with Christianity stand under the same charge.

That eastern filling is fulfilled by the introduction of the Vedantic philosophy of India in the West, developed across centuries, almost millennia, as the brightest intellects of India grappled with the problem of existence and passed their philosophy in a connected line from generation to generation with a continuity impossible in any other country, producing a system never equaled by any other non-Christian people and now seriously challenging attention in the West. It is fulfilled when Christendom is leavened by Oriental mysticism, with Buddhism spreading through Germany and other Christian lands not as an organized church but as a permeating influence marked by toleration rather than militant faith, decay of interest in missionary and Bible societies, and public honor to Buddha. It is fulfilled in pantheism identifying God with nature and teaching that divinity is diffused through all things, coloring religious thought and reviving old errors in new forms. It is fulfilled in modern America when Christian Science gains hundreds of thousands of adherents, because Christian Science is simply another phase or guise of the mystic religions of India, and its acceptance by men and women of culture and education proves that modern civilization, even in its finest fruitage, has not carried people beyond Oriental superstition. These Vedantic and Christian Science ideas rest on false premises and reasoning that shifts from a personal God to an impersonal one, so they cannot withstand sound reasoning about the personality of God.

To be soothsayers like the Philistines is to be filled with diviners and soothsayers, diviners and soothsayers being the same, practicing divination forbidden to God's people, whereas the nations Israel dispossessed listened to diviners. That soothsaying is explained as mesmerism and is presented as warning about spiritualism with lessons for the latter days. It means heeding human teachers rather than God, and falsely foretelling peace and safety, coming peace and disarmament, and a converted world despite sin and wars being prepared. Those who go and say the nations will beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruninghooks are false foretellers like the Philistines, and God calls such claimants soothsayers whose work is mockery, a form of godliness without its power.

To please themselves in the children of strangers is to delight in strangers, strike hands and join with foreigners, join themselves to foreign peoples, and welcome foreign religious influences. The phrase is rendered a spurious brood of strange children, delighting in people shaped by the world rather than humble, self-denying believers. It is applied to churches that court wealth, respectability, worldly approval and popularity, avoid defending unpopular truth, and imitate the world while boasting of growth and influence. In the last days soothsaying enters religious life while Vedantic philosophy and Christian Science replenish religious thought as examples of this influence.

The Hebrew word rendered replenished simply means to fill or fill full or to fulfill, used about 240 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, with no necessary sense of filling a second time. The immediate context describes a land full of silver and gold with no end to treasure, which they make their defense and refuge, and full of horses with no end to chariots, including automobiles and the like. It describes a land full of idols where people worship the work of their own hands, with wealth, military power and idolatry marking the corrupt condition. Idolatry includes not only bowing to images but giving any person or thing excessive affection or admiration equal or superior to love for God, including devotion to wealth, Babylon's abundance, and false confidence and carnal security in prosperity. In that setting the people will cast away their silver and gold idols and flee into hiding for fear of the Lord and the glory of His majesty when He rises to shake terribly the earth.

Setting in Prophecy

Isaiah 2:6 belongs to a prophecy of the last days and latter days, its timing fixed by the opening of the chapter concerning what shall come to pass in the last days. That dating proves where the world stands in history and that the prophets foresaw present conditions in minute detail. It belongs to a prophecy about the last day, the terrible shaking of the earth, and the coming of the Lord to judgment. The chapter sets the sayings of the many people in the last days over against God's purposes as declared by Joel, and it ends with the needed admonition to stop trusting in man whose breath is in his nostrils.

The chapter sets forth Judah's awful backsliding and contrasts the Lord's law and peace with Jacob's unfaithfulness. Although the nations are pictured coming to learn God's ways and turning weapons into tools, the house of Jacob is forsaken because it adopts foreign practices, including divination and alliances with strangers. That backsliding serves as a type of last-day apostasy, including a cry for universal peace that has no true ground, while the final day brings the humbling of human glory and the exaltation of Jehovah. In that surrounding prophecy Zion and Jerusalem can symbolize the church under the Christian dispensation, where the professed church is nearing judgment for its sins while the righteous are spared and the wicked suffer.

The prophecy has a close parallel in Micah 4, which describes what people will say in the last days. The time of peace proclaimed in Isaiah 2:3-5 and Micah 4:2-5 is not the Lord speaking but many peoples and many nations saying the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it. The Lord's true people at that very time are only a halting, afflicted remnant.

The forsaking follows the establishing of the mountain of the Lord's house in the top of the mountains and its exaltation above the hills, when all nations flow to it. This is the lifting of the church above earthly kingdoms and above the mountains of religion, the establishing of ecclesiastical authority in the heights of civil power and in union of church and state drawing support and nourishment from kingdoms. It is accomplished through the movement to Christianize the citizenship of governments and enthrone Jesus as Arbiter of nations, exalting the Christian religion above all other religions in a civil way because its superexcellency has been proved by past history, with the nations flowing in in a nominal way and yielding only feigned obedience. The effort to popularize religion strikes at its vital power, and its success, so far as human effort and consent of nations without divine sanction can make it succeed, sacrifices the divine approval. It applies to the Christian dispensation and the backslidden church in the last days as a church joined to earthly governments that profess Christianity and are powerful among the nations, whose power and progress result from Christian enlightenment yet use God's blessings to exalt humanity and material things rather than glorify God and bring the heathen to Christ, while the nations instead imitate their militarism and oppression.

The verse begins a description of widespread corruption before the Lord shakes the earth, not a future era of peace among nations. It describes the exaltation of the professed church in the last days and its humbling in the day of the Lord that comes immediately afterward, when He arises to shake terribly the earth. That proud and lofty exaltation is immediately followed by the day of the Lord of hosts upon everyone proud and lifted up to bring him low, when human loftiness is bowed down and the Lord alone is exalted.

False Cry of Peace

The call to come up to the mountain of Jehovah, to walk in His paths, to have Him judge between nations, and to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks is not spoken by God but is spoken on their own responsibility by many peoples and many nations in the last days. They falsely declare that Jehovah said these things, while the Lord's true people at that very time are only a halting afflicted remnant. The words belong to a time when men mock themselves with the illusion that they stand on the vestibule of a resplendently glorious era, opposite to the divine command to prepare war and wake up the mighty men. The chapter shows no corresponding action of peace, but the loftiness of man bowed down and the haughtiness of man made low, ending in final discomfiture when men drop their idols and flee into caves of the earth and clefts of the rocks and tops of the ragged rocks for fear of the Lord and for the glory of His majesty when He arises to shake terribly the earth. It is God's own view of the house of Jacob in the last days in immediate answer to the peace talk of Isaiah 2:2-5, exposing the true condition of things when that peace talk is going on.

God's professed people who repeat this prediction while replenished with eastern ways, practicing divination and making alliance with foreigners are themselves the soothsayers worthy to be forsaken. To talk great peace while in that condition makes them soothsayers, for speaking it while replenished from the east and as soothsayers like the Philistines and pleasing themselves in the children of strangers God forsakes His professed people. In the last days people claim to seek God's instruction and peace while their conduct remains wicked and hypocritical, and the Lord's response is that they are not to be forgiven. It is God's verdict on the many people and many nations who cry peace and safety and promise that nations will beat swords into plowshares and learn war no more, declaring that He has forsaken the house of Jacob for that message of peace in sin because its preachers are filled with customs from the east and strike hands with the children of strangers in idolatrous divided worship.

The promised peace is a deceptive, soothing claim, not the peace that comes when Christ reigns in righteousness. In this application they proclaim a political peace that leaves out God, Christ and salvation, and their mixed worship, self-salvation and theories of evolution reveal their disloyalty. The forsaking follows the establishing of the mountain of the Lord's house in the top of the mountains and exalting it above the hills when all nations flow to it, which is the establishing of ecclesiastical authority in the heights of civil power through the movement to Christianize the citizenship of governments and enthrone Jesus as Arbiter of nations, and the effort to popularize religion by human effort and consent of nations without divine sanction sacrifices the divine approval. The last apostate confederacy of Babylon takes its seat in Jerusalem, exalting the Christian religion above all other religions in a civil way because its superexcellency has been proved by past history, with all nations flowing into it in a nominal way and yielding only feigned obedience. That recognition is used to push the great last-day peace movement in which professed Christianity is the dominant power and its name and system are regarded as sacred, with its law going forth from Jerusalem as the most sacred place on earth where the Prince of Peace suffered and died, led by the pope of Rome as head of historic Christianity with Palestine granted to the Papacy as temporal power, while the nations know it only as a system of ethics and their political elevation of it perverts and debases it. The verse is applied to people who profess allegiance to God while looking to a humanly established religious center or ruler as God's representative and expecting that authority to bring peace.

The false cry of peace raised by men in the world today will not bring peace but will end in increasing armaments and preparations for war. The peace talk goes on even while war is being prepared, at a time when the land is full of silver and gold with no end of treasures and full of horses and chariots with no end, including automobiles and the like. Teaching a coming era of earthly peace before Christ returns and claiming that nations will learn war no more repeats Isaiah's words, but marks that teaching as part of the people's unfaithfulness and coming judgment. It warns that people who proclaim peace while preparing for war are unfaithful to God, their conduct like the Philistines' soothsaying and their pleasure in foreign alliances, applying to nations that speak of peace even as they spend heavily on weapons and slaughter as a sign of the last days. Calls for peace thus accompany unprecedented preparation for war.

That cry of peace and safety does not bring peace but brings sudden destruction upon them from which they shall not escape. When this cry reaches its height sudden destruction will come upon the world, and even while warlike preparations are under way multitudes deceive themselves with the hope of peace and that false hope becomes their snare and precedes sudden destruction. Their cry deceives and lulls thousands to sleep and brings sudden inescapable destruction upon them, while to the children of light who are not deceived it is evidence that Christ's coming is near. The cry of peace and safety is a false religious message that lulls people into feeling secure in sin, preached in the last days with worship mixed with idolatry and divided allegiance, and serves as evidence that Christ's coming is near. The preceding promise of nations coming to the Lord's house and beating weapons into tools is not a prediction that the world will be converted and enjoy peace before Christ comes, and lasting peace begins only when Christ comes and the earth is cleansed from sin.

The verse is included in a prophecy whose promise of nations turning from war is presented as a false cry of peace, with many people speaking of going to the Lord's mountain and of swords becoming plowshares even while war is being prepared. In this setting it warns that those who proclaim peace and safety among the nations in the last days are likewise forsaken by the Lord because the people adopted eastern practices, practiced divination like the Philistines, and joined themselves to foreign peoples. Isaiah 2 is to be read whole and carefully alongside Isaiah 24:16-17 to expose the last-days cry of peace and safety and the conversion of the world, showing songs of glory to the righteous heard from the uttermost part of the earth while treacherous dealers deal very treacherously and fear and the pit and the snare come upon the inhabitant of the earth, proving that the popular preaching of a millennium of peace on earth is false.

Eastern Influence in Last Days

The forsaking is fulfilled when eminent specialists consult spirits and psychical research admits psychic phenomena. Teaching that the dead communicate with the living grows, with multiplying books and widening interest in occult research and in reconstruction of Christian belief. This is a reverting to pagan necromancy.

Oriental religions spread by the Congress of Religions at the Chicago World's Fair have filled the Christian world with pleasing sophistries. Pretended Christian teachers put Gautama and Confucius on an equality with Christ. Eastern scriptures are put on a par with the Bible.

Christendom leavened by Oriental mysticism is Satan's gospel of preparation, working at the same time the true gospel prepares the way for Christ's coming in power and glory. Being replenished from the east is a sign of the times as Eastern heathenism supplants Christianity. Buddhism spreads through Germany and other Christian lands not as an organized church but as a permeating influence marked by toleration rather than militant faith. That supplanting is marked by decay of interest in missionary and Bible societies and by public honor to Buddha.

The eastern pantheistic philosophy of God in nature carries fascination and vitality that give it wings and power of self-propagation. It infects souls off guard with spiritual contagion like bubonic plague, planting thought germs in minds to develop later into full fruit. It fills current literature and knocks at every door, laying a snare for all. It enters educational institutes and schools and confuses youth to conclude there is no God. Fully developed it makes God as nothingness in the mind. Its influence among German thinkers through theosophy is linked to the growth of higher criticism, which undermines the authority of the word of God.

The warning applies to modern spiritual delusions presented as Christian teaching. These include mesmerism as the soothsaying named in the verse, spiritualistic philosophy, claims by false Christs, and revived eastern witchcraft. Vedantic philosophy and Christian Science are examples of eastern religious thought replenishing religious thought while soothsaying enters religious life. They rest on false premises and reasoning that shift from a personal God to an impersonal one, so they cannot withstand sound reasoning about the personality of God.

Adoption of old oriental philosophies and idolatries colors religious thought and revives old errors in new forms. Joined with a false message of peace, it lulls people into spiritual sleep and leaves them exposed to ruin. It leads into revelations of the day of God.

Judgment and Christ's Coming

The chapter does not promise the conversion of the world but warns that its destruction is near, for the popular expectation of a temporal millennium is only the sentiment of the people and not a word spoken by the Lord. Human hopes are to be abandoned, for there is no corresponding action of peace, but the loftiness of man shall be bowed down and his haughtiness made low in final discomfiture. This stands opposite the illusion that men stand on the vestibule of a resplendently glorious era, and opposite the divine command to prepare war and wake up the mighty men.

The unfaithfulness introduced here unfolds when the Lord is about to arise to shake the earth, with the land filled with silver and gold and abundant treasure which men make their defense and refuge. Devotion to wealth leads to destruction, for in the same prophecy men cast away their silver and gold idols and flee into caves of the earth, into clefts of the rocks and into the tops of the ragged rocks for fear of the Lord and for the glory of His majesty when He arises to shake terribly the earth.

God has forsaken His people for their corruption, and He does not accept the attempt of professedly Christian nations to establish Christ's kingdom through national conquest and enforced Christianity. Those nations will meet His last-day judgments. In the last days the peoples and nations making great professions of peace are soothsayers forsaken by God, for their going up to great assemblies to speak of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks is inconsistent profession not in harmony with His will. Their real condition is selfish pride, greed and love of glory stirred to war, leading to the gathering of all nations strong and weak to the battle of Armageddon and to judgment, after which God takes His great power and reigns in true peace.

In that last-day setting a government is predicted in which God's true church could be protected in civil and religious liberty, identified as the United States established in connection with the scattering of the holy people's power. The great peace cry going forth from Jerusalem is false because God has forsaken the house of Jacob for being filled with customs from the east, practicing soothsaying like the Philistines, and striking hands with the children of foreigners. That corruption accompanies a false peace cry amid the seeming exaltation of nominal Christianity headed by a false representative of Jehovah who deceives the world. The mountain of the Lord, the Christian religion, is regarded by all nations as pre-eminent above all historic religions because professedly Christian nations are stronger and wealthier, yet the nations know it only as a system of ethics and their political elevation of it perverts and debases it. That recognition is used to push the great last-day peace movement in which professed Christianity is the dominant power and its name and system are regarded as sacred, with its law going forth from Jerusalem as the most sacred place on earth where the Prince of Peace suffered and died, led by the pope as head of historic Christianity with Palestine granted as temporal power.

The prophecy harmonizes with the account in Amos of Israel's restoration and points to the same prophetic time of the gathering and deliverance of God's people and the giving of His Spirit before the resurrection of the just. It is to be read whole and carefully alongside Isaiah 24:16-17 to expose the last-days cry of peace and safety and the conversion of the world. There songs of glory to the righteous are heard from the uttermost part of the earth while treacherous dealers deal very treacherously, and fear and the pit and the snare come upon the inhabitant of the earth, proving false the popular preaching of a millennium of peace on earth.

Applied to Christ's comings, the passage portrays God's professed people turned from Him and entangled with foreign practices and customs of other nations, professing loyalty and willingness to hear His law yet replacing its commandments with human tradition. This warning bears on the second coming, when professed Christians will put tradition in place of the fourth commandment, while those who remember and love God's law will keep the Sabbath along with the other commandments. The verse belongs to the prophecy describing the church's last-day condition as rich, proud, popular and honored by the world, marked by wealth, military power and idolatry before God's wrath is visited on the ungodly. This condition exists alongside a public peace movement claiming the Lord's house should be exalted among the governments of earth, and the contrast between that profession and a people marked by idolatry shows whom God will humble.

Doctrines Proved and Denied

Isaiah 2 denies the popular expectation of a temporal millennium and the conversion of the world, including a coming millennium of peace on earth brought by human efforts to remove immorality, for the world is not nearing universal conversion. The prediction of millennial peace is the sentiment of the people, not a word spoken by the Lord, and the chapter instead warns to cease reliance on human hopes because the destruction of the world, not its conversion, is near. Read whole and carefully alongside Isaiah 24:16-17, it exposes the last-days cry of peace and safety and of the conversion of the world by showing songs of glory to the righteous heard from the uttermost part of the earth while treacherous dealers deal very treacherously and fear and the pit and the snare come upon the inhabitant of the earth, proving the popular preaching of a millennium of peace on earth to be false.

The promised peace does not come through a human political movement that installs Christ in earthly law and government, for Christ's kingdom is not temporal and is not established by conquest. Although the nations are pictured as coming to learn God's ways and turning weapons into tools, the house of Jacob is forsaken because it adopts foreign practices including divination and alliances with strangers, so reliance on such foreign ways marks apostasy rather than the Lord's law and peace. That forsaking applies to those who profess allegiance to God while looking to a humanly established religious center or ruler as God's representative and expecting that authority to bring peace, and to professedly Christian nations that try to establish Christ's kingdom through national conquest and enforced Christianity, which God does not accept.

Zion and Jerusalem in the surrounding prophecy can symbolize the church under the Christian dispensation, in which the professed church is nearing judgment for its sins while the righteous are spared and the wicked suffer. True peace comes only when Christ reigns in righteousness, in contrast to the false soothsaying message of peace borne by the false church filled with customs from the East, whereas the gospel of God's righteousness alone shines with light and power and true peace. The preceding promise of nations coming to the Lord's house and beating weapons into tools is not a prediction that the world will be converted and enjoy peace before Christ comes, but what many people falsely proclaim even while war is being prepared, while the verse describes God's judgment on His professed people. That false peace-and-safety message deceives people, and the surrounding war preparations confirm that peace will not characterize the present age, since lasting peace begins only when Christ comes and the earth is cleansed from sin.

Warnings for God's People

The verse warns not to be led away by mystic cults and by those turning to the old religions of the East, and that warning is being literally fulfilled today. God has forsaken the house of Jacob because they are filled with customs from the East, are soothsayers like the Philistines, and strike hands with the children of foreigners. This takes place in the last days when the land is full of silver and gold with no end of treasures and full of horses and chariots with no end, including automobiles and the like, while the people fill themselves with eastern customs and practice soothsaying. The timing is fixed by the opening of the chapter concerning what shall come to pass in the last days, proving where the world stands in history and that the prophets foresaw present conditions in minute detail.

The same danger of being replenished from the East now threatens God's present people also, by taking in the subtle Eastern pantheistic philosophy of God in nature that fills current literature and knocks at every door. That evil carries fascination and vitality giving it wings and power of self-propagation, planting thought germs in minds to develop later into full fruit and infecting souls off guard with spiritual contagion like plague. Fully developed it makes God as nothingness in the mind, lays a snare for all, enters educational institutes and schools, confuses youth to conclude there is no God, and threatens to capture schools and ruin youth among God's own people. Against it the simple third angel's message that made them a people is God's shield and protection, and feet must be kept firmly planted on eternal foundations by study of the Word concerning the person of God and the true power of God working in the things that are made.

The verse rebukes false confidence and carnal security, for prosperity and confidence do not mean safety from the Lord's judgment when the house of Jacob turns to foreign practices and soothsaying rather than remaining faithful. The surrounding description of wealth, horses, and idols warns them to hide in fear when the Lord rises to shake the earth. It is also a warning against extravagance and idolatry while people should be examining character by God's law, including excess in the use of likenesses and misuse of means.

Religious ministers soothe God's people with falsehood about peace when they should be sounding the alarm of coming doom. Jacob is forsaken because the people are filled with eastern practices, practice divination like the Philistines, take pleasure in foreign influences and in Babylon's abundance, and join in idolatrous divided worship in the last days when the land is full of idols made by human hands. Idolatry includes not only bowing to images but giving any person or thing excessive affection or admiration equal or superior to love for God. God warns the world of coming doom and calls all to flee from wrath by hiding in God and laying up treasure in heaven, while false prophets cry peace and safety and a good time coming, deceiving and lulling thousands to sleep in sin and bringing sudden inescapable destruction upon them, yet to the children of light who are not deceived that cry is evidence that Christ's coming is near.

Adopting customs from the East, practicing soothsaying like the Philistines, joining to foreigners, worshiping idols made by human hands, and making compromises and alliances expose the false religious fellowship of the nations as disloyalty to God and not true peace nor walking in Jehovah's light. This belongs to nominally professed Christian nations raising a cry for peace without yielding to God's righteousness, setting the sayings of the many people in the last days over against God's purposes. Human works built on corrupt principles, including sectarian fellowship, will be brought low when the Lord alone is exalted in the terrible shaking of the earth at the Lord's coming to judgment. The needed admonition at the end is to cease trusting in man whose breath is in his nostrils.