241 Danger ahead! God's about to ravish the earth and leave it in ruins, Rip everything out by the roots and send everyone scurrying: 2 Priests and laypeople alike, owners and workers alike, celebrities and nobodies alike, buyers and sellers alike, bankers and beggars alike, the haves and have-nots alike. 3 The landscape will be a moonscape, totally wasted. And why? Because God says so. He's issued the orders. 4 The earth turns gaunt and gray, the world silent and sad, sky and land lifeless, colorless. Earth Polluted by Its Very Own People 5 Earth is polluted by its very own people, who have broken its laws, Disrupted its order, violated the sacred and eternal covenant. 6 Therefore a curse, like a cancer, ravages the earth. Its people pay the price of their sacrilege. They dwindle away, dying out one by one. 7 No more wine, no more vineyards, no more songs or singers. 8 The laughter of castanets is gone, the shouts of celebrants, gone, the laughter of fiddles, gone. 9 No more parties with toasts of champagne. Serious drinkers gag on their drinks. 10 The chaotic cities are unlivable. Anarchy reigns. Every house is boarded up, condemned. 11 People riot in the streets for wine, but the good times are gone forever - no more joy for this old world. 12 The city is dead and deserted, bulldozed into piles of rubble.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Isaiah 24:1-12
Commentary on Isaiah 24:1-12
(Read Isaiah 24:1-12)
All whose treasures and happiness are laid up on earth, will soon be brought to want and misery. It is good to apply to ourselves what the Scripture says of the vanity and vexation of spirit which attend all things here below. Sin has turned the earth upside down; the earth is become quite different to man, from what it was when God first made it to be his habitation. It is, at the best, like a flower, which withers in the hands of those that please themselves with it, and lay it in their bosoms. The world we live in is a world of disappointment, a vale of tears; the children of men in it are but of few days, and full of trouble, See the power of God's curse, how it makes all empty, and lays waste all ranks and conditions. Sin brings these calamities upon the earth; it is polluted by the sins of men, therefore it is made desolate by God's judgments. Carnal joy will soon be at end, and the end of it is heaviness. God has many ways to imbitter wine and strong drink to those who love them; distemper of body, anguish of mind, and the ruin of the estate, will make strong drink bitter, and the delights of sense tasteless. Let men learn to mourn for sin, and rejoice in God; then no man, no event, can take their joy from them.