Isaiah 33:8
The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: he hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man. The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceaseth: he hath broken the covenant, he hath despised the cities, he regardeth no man.
The chapters Isaiah 31-35 belong to the latter part of Isaiah that deals almost wholly with the days of the Christian dispensation. The chapter stands among the descriptions of Jehovah's coming to judgment. It pictures highways lying waste and deserted, with the wayfaring pilgrim ceasing from travel, while men break the covenant, despise the cities, and regard no man as precious. That judgment scene belongs to millennial times, so its language of coming and judgment is not to be taken literally.
The wasting is the wasting of the earth in the final conflagration that provides the lake of fire adequate for the punishment of the ungodly. Fire from God out of heaven joins fire burning in the earth to melt the elements with fervent heat, as a fiery oven and furnace of fire. It is a devouring, unquenchable fire in which the wicked suffer the second death by being consumed and devoured and burned up root and branch until they cease to live. Afterward the fire goes out, and the saints dwell upon the very place where it has burned, in the new heaven and new earth that follow it.
The ceasing pilgrim denotes those who seek souls, who will enter into rest during the millennium while the desolate earth keeps its Sabbath. The same picture rebukes self-absorption and neglect of the cities and their perishing inhabitants. Those city dwellers are not to be despised, for they are precious as souls for whom Christ's blood was shed.