For Jehovah will rise up as on mount Perazim, he will be moved with anger as in the valley of Gibeon; that he may do his work, his strange work, and perform his act, his unwonted act.
Isaiah's warning ends with a shock: the Lord rises up to fight, but this time He rises against His own people. He names two old battlefields, then calls the work He does there strange — an act unlike Himself.
Perazim points back to a victory won long before, when God broke through Israel's enemies for them.
A place probably connected with BAAL-PERAZIM, where David struck the Philistines. Isaiah 28:21: compare 2 Samuel 5:20.
The shock lies in the reversal. God once fought for Jerusalem; now He rises against the men who rule it.
When Sennacherib came against Jerusalem long ago, the godly king Hezekiah ruled there. He made no covenant with death. Instead he begged Jehovah for help against the scornful king of Assyria. The result was that the angel of Jehovah struck the host of Assyria, so that no less than 185,000 fell. The Assyrian will oppose the Jews once more. Apart from that, almost every feature of the past is the reverse of what we have here.
"Strange" here says something about the One doing the work, not about how rare it is.
His strange work is judgment, His strange act the destruction of these scornful men. It is strange work, because He is the God of all grace and does not want anyone to perish. But He has appointed the Day of Judgment. He must judge, because men treat His mercy lightly and defy His authority.
What makes this act unlike anything else is not its severity but its target. God is striking the very people He has loved without limit.
What is Jehovah's "strange work" and "act"? It is the judgment of His people, towards whom His goodness has no bounds. This "act" is strange to the heart of God, and it made the Lord Jesus weep. It is judgment carried out on His people, who had turned away from Him. It is a thing God does only when He is forced to it by their extreme wickedness.
Judgment is not God's last word on the sinner. He uses it to press home the lesson man finds hardest to learn.
Of himself, man is a complete stranger to grace, and the Spirit he insults is the Spirit of grace. Man lost the knowledge of God when he fell... But God will win him in spite of himself, and melt his heart by grace. It is God's will, God's right, the necessity of His nature, because He is Love. And so He makes judgment an opportunity for acting in grace. In this way He presses on man's heart and conscience, as clearly as possible, the hardest lesson he has to learn: God can and does love the sinner, and He can be perfectly just in forgiving him.
The word strange also sets a limit on how long the work lasts.
Since judgment is God's "strange work" (Isaiah 28:21), it will be a "short work" (Romans 9:28). So vengeance is only for a day compared with the year of redemption.
The phrases "strange work" and "short work" come from an older translation. The ESV reads "strange is his deed" here in Isaiah 28:21.
The verse also explains the hand of God on a believer's life. Correction is not God at His most natural.
He might have said to you what He said to His beloved Israel, "Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone" (Hosea 4:17). A terrible punishment! Harder than the most severe outward chastening! But our God will not deprive us of the light of His face and the sweetness of His fellowship. For God does not chasten willingly: it is a strange work for Him, as He says (Isaiah 28:21). But sin is always sin in His eyes, and He cannot allow it.
God puts His warning in writing before He acts.
God always warns before He judges... He loves mercy, He loves blessing. He loves to bless the soul. Do you suppose, friend, that God wants to judge you? No, it is the last thing in His heart; but if you refuse to be blessed by Him, you must be judged.
- Strange, not weak. Judgment is strange because it is foreign to God's heart — yet He carries it through in full.
- Rescue reversed. Perazim marked a rescue; now the same power rises against the people it once defended.
- Forced, not eager. God judges only when men keep defying Him and leave Him no other way.
- Short by nature. What is strange to God cannot last; a day of vengeance stands against a year of redemption.
- Grace has the last word. God turns even judgment into an occasion to show that He can love a sinner and still be just. The warning He gives first is mercy already.
Now therefore be ye not scorners, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard from the Lord Jehovah of hosts a consumption, and [one] determined, upon the whole land.
These words close a long warning to the rulers of Jerusalem, who had made a covenant with death to survive an invasion. Their scorn will only tighten the bonds already on them, because God has fixed the outcome.
The judgment falls on Israel. The warning against mocking lands on the men who rule Jerusalem.
In Isaiah 28 the judgment is clearly on Israel. As it moves through Ephraim, it finds the rulers of Jerusalem in league with death. So they are warned (v. 22) not to be mockers, because a full end is determined on the whole earth (land).
The word behind "a decree of destruction" is a strong one. Other prophets use it for judgment carried right through to the end.
The word translated "consumption", or "consummation", is used elsewhere for God's judgments carried out to the full. In Jeremiah the same word is translated "full end" in several places (Jer. 4:27; Jer. 5:10, 18; Jer. 30:11; Jer. 46:28). The prophecy means that the avenging judgments carried out by the destroyer will be the climax of God's repayment as He governs the world.
Translators give the last phrase as "the whole land" or "the whole earth," and commentators differ on how far it reaches. Some keep it to Israel. Others hold that the sentence covers far more than the region where it begins.
The judgments of that coming day extend to the whole earth. The land of Israel and the countries around it may be their special focus and centre, but they are universal in their range.
Scorn attacks more than the threat of judgment. It also sneers at God's grace. Neither one moves.
Israel or men may mock at the thought of the judgment of God. They may fortify themselves against it, as they suppose. They may sneer as well at the idea of the grace of God, and despise the foundation. "Mockers," "scorners," "scoffers" mark the last days of Israel and of Christendom alike. Yet God has not all this while been acting without counsel and design. He may deal with man, Israel, or the great professing Christian body in many ways while He is patient, yet the appointed evil will come.
The same principle reaches past Jerusalem. It touches everyone who has had the truth put in front of them.
The Jews have rejected the Christ, and they will have the Antichrist. The full end determined on the whole earth will be much more terrible for them. The same principle holds, and is even worse, for Christendom, which had the light but rejected it. The more fully a person stands in the light, the more surely he is joined to Satan if he rejects that light. Nothing is more terrible than a conscience hardened by a perverse will.
Assyria did come against Jerusalem long ago. But the details do not match. The king then, Hezekiah, did the opposite of what these rulers do.
When Sennacherib came against Jerusalem long ago, the godly king Hezekiah ruled there. Instead of making a covenant with death, he begged Jehovah for help against the scornful king of Assyria. The angel of Jehovah then struck the army of Assyria, and no fewer than 185,000 fell. The Assyrian will oppose the Jews once more; apart from that, almost every feature of the past event is the opposite of what we have here.
If no past event matches these words, only two options are left.
Nothing that comes near this prediction has yet happened; that is perfectly certain. So only one fair conclusion is left. Either the prophecy is still to be fulfilled, or the prophet who spoke it was a fake, guilty of a lie or a boast. The Christian believes instead that God has written nothing in vain, and that every word not yet accomplished must be fulfilled to the letter.
- Mock — God warns rulers who had made their own deal with death and treated His threat as a joke.
- Bonds — scorn loosens nothing. Men may fortify themselves as they suppose, and sneer at grace as well as at judgment. The appointed evil still comes.
- Decree — the word means judgment carried out to the full. Elsewhere it is "full end," the climax of God's dealing in judgment.
- Reach — commentators read the last phrase as "land" or "earth." Israel is the centre, but the judgments are universal in range.
- Light — the sentence falls heaviest where the light was clearest. Rejected truth, not ignorance, is the most dangerous place to stand.