This first portion of Chapter 27 deals with the judging of a great serpent. We will talk about how the term "Leviathan" is used both literally and figuratively in the Bible.
Isaiah has been prophesying about the end times, about the final judgment, about the resurrection of the dead, and about believers' eternal destiny with the Lord. Chapter 27 picks up where Chapter 26 left off, which ended with Isaiah predicting a time of distress before the day of resurrection and the eternal kingdom. That is why Chapter 27 begins with the words "in that day" because it is a continuation of the same theme.
"In that day, the Lord will punish with His sword---His fierce, great and powerful sword---Leviathan the gliding serpent, Leviathan the coiling serpent; He will slay the monster of the sea." (Isaiah 27:1) Before the day of eternal peace can dawn when believers will live on the restored earth in the presence of the Savior forever in immortal bodies like His, the Lord must banish all that is wicked. He must judge sin and the source of sin.
There are places in the Bible where "Leviathan" appears to be a reference to a literal sea creature. Many scholars think it was the great white whale, a prehistoric whale which was the "giant of the sea" or "Goliath of the sea" or "dragon of the sea". Others think Leviathan may have instead been a large sea serpent which, like the great white whale, is extinct in our day. We don't know exactly what it was in reality but there was a great deal of ancient mythology regarding sea serpents. It has been theorized that Leviathan represented a Ugaritic sea god that was the pagan god of chaos. In my opinion, this is a valid theory for why Isaiah is using the word "Leviathan" here, for it is certain that the world is filled with chaos due to sin and it is well known that ancient peoples often symbolized chaos with images of the sea or of waves.
The Lord is going to do away with the chaos of this world. He will put an end to rebellion. He will put an end to sin and, in putting sin to death, He will put death to death. He will forever imprison Satan and the angels who rebelled with him, according to Revelation, in a place called the "lake of fire". This brings me to another point regarding Leviathan, which Isaiah calls a "serpent": Satan first appears in the Scriptures in the form of a serpent. Satan also appears in the final book of the Bible as a serpent, for when he is cast into his eternal place of imprisonment in the book of Revelation, he is called "that ancient serpent" and "the dragon".
I believe a number of things are being judged here in Isaiah's vision of the future. I believe the enemies of Israel are being judged and eradicated from the earth. I believe the enemies of Christ's church are being judged and eradicated from the earth. I believe sin is being judged and being eradicated from the earth. I believe death is being judged and being eradicated from the earth. I believe Satan and all his minions are being judged and are being eradicated from the earth.
What do we have left when all chaos is gone? We have peace! We have the eternal, peaceful reign of the Lord over all who are His! No temptation will ever befall mankind again. No accuser will ever accuse us before God again. No one will ever persecute us again. Never again will anyone be sick or injured. Never again will anyone die. It would be worth giving our allegiance to the Lord for all this, would it not? Eternity in the joy of His presence, where no sorrow will ever overcome us again, is better than anything sin could ever offer us. The pleasures of sin are only "for a season", as the Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:25---and we will pay dearly for those pleasures if we do not repent of them and accept the offer of salvation from the Redeemer. But the joys of the Lord are eternal. Nothing worldly that we will ever possess could ever begin to compare with what He offers us. As Isaiah will later say and as the Apostle Paul will later say, the things the Lord has in store for His people are so good that no human mind can begin to imagine them. (Isaiah 64:4, 1 Corinthians 2:9)
No comments:
Post a Comment