"My People Are Taken Over without Price"

Can people disregard the relevance of Isaiah’s prophecy to our day, yet suffer no consequence? Can they prepare to deal with real hardships that lie ahead but with no foreknowledge of them? “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know,” a wise man said. Isaiah’s use of people and events of the past as types of ones that will exist in the future helps in understanding his message. God’s people in Isaiah’s day, for example, constitute a type of those who claim to be God’s people in the “last days.” As for those who are in denial about the fact that this time it is us whom Isaiah reprimands, not another, the events themselves may finally convince them.

Forming the bulk of Isaiah’s prophecy is the “Day of Jehovah” and the time that immediately precedes it. In an endtime context, one thing that characterizes this phase of God’s judgment is his people’s subjection to bondage: “‘My people are taken over without price. Those who govern them scoff,’ says Jehovah ‘and my name is constantly abused all the day’” (Isaiah 52:5). Economic distress—a covenant curse—gives an opportunity for his people’s leaders to subjugate them. Isaiah compares the severity of that endtime subjugation to Israel’s ancient bondage in Egypt and servitude to Assyria. In other words, things will get that bad before Jehovah comes!