Context for Isaiah 17-19
The upheaval that best Israel and Judah during Isaiah’s time and after engulfed the entire ancient Near East. From Egypt in the west to Persia in the east, kings and kingdoms battled for supremacy, only to be conquered by others.
Only with the Roman conquest of the area did relative peace come, and even then not until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD and the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine.
Yet from this conflict the stage for the spread of Christianity was set. As early as 100 AD, most of the people living in the are area encompassed by historical Assyria, Egypt, and Israel mentioned in Isaiah 19:23 were Greek-speaking Christians.
God’s judgment prophecies served a purpose greater than just to punish the evildoing of those who were being prophesied against. Like everything else God does, His prophecies also served the good of those who have faith in Him.
The upheaval and chaos that marked the period during which Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem fell marked the greatest dispersion of the Jewish people in the ancient Near East until the time of the Romans. With those Jews went their religion, and with a few of them went their faith, which continued to spread and grow even in the lands where they were exiled.
As a result, when Jesus came, there were Jewish communities throughout the Near East, Northern Africa, and in Persia primed to hear the Gospel. Like fire in dry brush, the message of the Messiah took hold in those communities, spreading the faith to places it might have never reached otherwise.
This is a powerful example of how God uses even our proclivity to sin to accomplish His will. From Israel and Judah’s apostasy and evil came the very means by which the Gospel would be spread some 500 years later, a means by which all of us came to be able to hear the same saving words.
DLH
