This post is part of my Exegetical Compilation project, which I’m sloooooowwwwwwlly posting up, and which can be found here.
Isaiah 66:24 is the famous verse (the final verse of Isaiah) appealed to so often by non-universalists, where the righteous shall go out after the coming of YHWH to look on the corpses of the people who have rebelled against YHWH, who (or whose bodies) shall be an abhorrence to the righteous. The same verses (and their immediate contexts) also strongly emphasize that all flesh shall come to bow down before YHWH, and that the unrighteous (or the bodies of the unrighteous) shall be abhorrent to all flesh. This would seem contradictory if eternal conscious torment is true, so annihilationists especially like to appeal to this as evidence of the cessation of existence of the wicked leaving “all flesh” to continue existing after them. But “their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched”, seems to indicate that results will continue to be abhorrent to the righteous, and so also that the worm and the fire are continuing instead of ending; so ECT proponents make hay out of that. Annihilationists reply that the maggots and fire keep going until the task is accomplished and then go out, but that is not what the scriptures say here, and doesn’t seem to explain the continuing abhorrence to the righteous. If it’s annihilation, the description indicates a slow one.
Some of the tension can be resolved by noting that this scene contextually occurs after the coming of YHWH to rescue besieged Jerusalem from her final enemies (Ezekiel 39:4-12), and so occurs before the general resurrection. However, the same rare word for “abhorrence” or “revulsion” is only used once more in the OT by Daniel 12:2, which talks about the resurrection of the evil and the good, some to olam (or in Greek eonian) life and the others to disgrace and olam (eonian) revulsion. But then what about the strongly stated “all flesh” from Isaiah?! Perhaps it means that even the wicked shall bow down to YHWH but shall be repulsed, along with the righteous, by their own bodies eaten by undying maggots and unquenchable fire? That wouldn’t seem to be much of a heaven for the righteous! – nor are things improved at all if only the righteous continue to be repulsed by the remains of the annihilated unrighteous!
This leaves over rather a riddle, which Christ solves in appealing to this verse in His warning before Mark 9:49-50: the fire (He explains in vv.49-50) is for salting, and for salting everyone, and the salting is the best of things and leads to peace with one another. (Also, prior revelations in Isaiah indicate all sinners shall eventually be saved, even though some must first be punished.)
The vision of the final verse of Isaiah, then, would be literally of the situation at the beginning of the millennial reign (when survivors at Jerusalem are required to go out to care for the dead bodies of the rebels despite their own revulsion, committing them to the natural flames and maggots of the nearby valley of Hinnom), combined perhaps with the situation after the lake of fire judgment (when the righteous of the New Jerusalem, despite their revulsion, go out to evangelize the impenitent sinners): the end result being indeed that all flesh shall bow down in spirit and in truth to worship YHWH, and shall reject in revulsion their prior sins.
This fits immediately preceding verses of Is 66 where all nations and languages will see the glory of God, and all peoples to the remotest part of the earth will see God’s salvation, which is exactly why all will come to worship YHWH.
(In any case the destruction of Jerusalem by pagan armies, whether in Isaiah’s day or afterward down to the year 70 of the Christian Era, definitely doesn’t fit the description of God arriving to save Jerusalem from pagan siege by killing the pagans!)
Members are invited to post further or alternate interpretations and observations on these verses below, including links to threads elsewhere. ECT, Annis, and Kaths talk a lot about this verse, and we’ve discussed it here on the forum a lot already (and most likely will again), so it’s perfectly okay to add links below to previous or future discussions.
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