Earlier in our chapter we found the people of Judah of Isaiah's day and of the next 130 years saying things like, "Don't prophesy to us anymore!" But a time will come when they will turn back to the Lord, back to the Scriptures, back to the true prophets, and back to the wise elders.
"People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious He will be when you cry for help! As soon as He hears, He will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'" (Isaiah 30:19-21)
A lot of the prophets and priests and elders went astray from the Lord. Some did not, but they were generally scoffed at. As we continue on through the books of the prophets we will find the majority of the people choosing to listen to false messengers because the false messengers speak the words they want to hear. But this will not always be the case! After their defeat and their captivity in Babylon, they will want to know the truth about the Lord. They will seek Him and He will answer them. True prophets and faithful priests and wise elders will rise up to guide them.
After the era of captivity we never again see the tribes of Israel bowing to images again. They will recognize these things for how useless they are, which is why this next verse graphically describes them casting the idols from them as a person would cast away an object covered in bodily fluids. "Then you will desecrate your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, 'Away with you!'" (Isaiah 30:22) Anything covered with blood or any other bodily fluids was considered unclean due to the risk of pathogens. Just as a person would not retain any object covered in blood but would throw it in the garbage, the idols to which the people formerly bowed will now appear to them as unclean garbage, fit for nothing but being thrown onto the trash heap to be burned.
When the Lord brought the descendants of Jacob into the promised land, He assured them He would make all of their work prosper. Their fields would produce abundant crops. Their flocks would increase. The work of the laborers and the artisans would turn out well and would provide a living for their families. He also warned the people that turning from Him would result in the opposite: drought, disease, and oppression by their enemies. In this next segment we foresee a day which has only been fulfilled in part in our time.
"He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill. The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the Lord binds up the bruises of His people and heals the wounds He inflicted." (Isaiah 30:23-26)
Although a large number of the people returned from the Assyrian captivity and from the Babylonian captivity, the return of prosperity promised above was not completely fulfilled in that era. The Lord did help the nation to rebuild but it continued to be plagued and subjugated by various enemies. For a very long time in history the nation of Israel was not even a sovereign and recognized nation in the world until fairly recent times.
The Lord has kept His promise to make Israel a sovereign nation in the world again. He has kept His promise never to remove the tribes of Israel from the earth. But the complete fulfillment of the verses above will not take place until the Messiah comes to reign over the earth forever from the throne of David at Jerusalem. But just as the Lord has kept every promise up until now, He will continue to keep every promise He has ever made. Whether the reign of the Messiah begins in our lifetime or whether it doesn't begin until a thousand years from now, it will happen and then the descendants of Jacob will weep no more. Indeed, no one who has trusted in the name of the Lord will ever weep again.
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