This Prophet has already delivered one blistering Sermon regarding the women of Judah! You can review that Text by glancing back at Isaiah 3:16-26. Here’s an Excerpt: “The LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion.” Pretty plain!
But again in Isaiah 32 he repeats his warning … to the ladies! (As go the women of any nation, spiritually speaking, so goes the whole land!)
“Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech. Many days and years shall ye be troubled, ye careless women: for the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city: because the palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks.” Isaiah 32:9-14
They are “at ease,” also “careless,” and face a bleak future … due to (in this Paragraph anyway) “lethargy, luxury,” just as well say “practical atheism.” No thought of God, none whatsoever!
The Text advises these women of soon-coming national disaster! And “mourning” rather than “revelry” is more in order! They dressed (back to Isaiah 3) expensively, lavishly, ostentatiously … so God admonishes them to take off those fancy garments! “Strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins.” And instead put on rough, uncomfortable “sackcloth,” historically a sign of sadness, calamity.
Why?
Unconfessed sin!
Which displeases God to the Utmost! Angers Him, truth be told.
Therefore, here’s God’s depiction of (promised) coming judgment, because Judah has refused to repent of her sins. “Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city: because the palaces shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks.” Desolation! (From the Royal Palace to the most remote farmland … but particularly targeting Jerusalem, “The City!”)
If the men will not listen … maybe the mothers/wives will take heed! But the sermon was “to no avail!”
The City did fall. In fact, all these prophecies were locally fulfilled. That’s a matter of historical record.
But (I fear) it’s all going to happen again, during the great Tribulation! Zechariah 14:2 is specific: “For I (the Lord) will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the WOMEN ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.”
Israel’s anguish will continue … until that great “Golden Daybreak” when Jesus will come again to earth … and Romans 11:26-27 will become Reality: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”
Praise the Lord!
— Dr. Mike Bagwell
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