Isaiah chapter 2 - Exodus

“And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.”

The above passage speaks of the origination of the law and the word of the Lord. Could that be related to the “Law” of Moses and to the “Word” of God, the Bible? I am convinced that it is. Where was Israel when God gave them the Law and the Word? They were in the deserts of Sinai, and these events are first recorded in the second book of the Bible, Exodus. In fact, the giving of the Law and the Word is the primary subject of the book of Exodus. Is it just coincidence that the passage above is found in the second chapter of Isaiah? Hardly. There is more in this chapter that connects with Exodus too.

Nowhere in the Old Testament is there a more vivid picture of Israel’s idolatry than what we find at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses is up on the mountain meeting with the Lord. Flagrant abuse and total abandon is what we see in this picture, and in Isaiah 2:6-9 Isaiah implores God to forgive [Israel] not because they are worshipping idols in his day too. Isaiah is still talking about his own people, but he’s not at the foot of Mount Sinai this time. He’s right in Jerusalem, and he’s speaking of the idolatry of the Israelites there and then, but the connection is made to an earlier time, back in the days of the Exodus. What did God do when Moses came back down from the mountain? God destroyed the idol that Aaron had fashioned when Moses threw the stone tablets at it, and what does verse eighteen of Isaiah chapter two tell us?

“And the idols he shall utterly abolish.”