Verse 1
The prophet predicted that the Lord would lay the earth (land) waste, the sum total of all the nations, including those representative ones condemned in the oracles. Isaiah always used "behold" to introduce something future (cf. Isaiah 3:1; Isaiah 17:1; Isaiah 19:1; Isaiah 30:27; et al.). [Note: Delitzsch, 1:425] He would do the reverse of what He did in the Creation, when He brought order out of chaos (cf. Genesis 1:2). He would devastate the earth, making it desolate. He would distort the surface of the earth, as when the Flood changed the topography of this planet. And He would scatter the earth’s inhabitants, as He did at Babel (Genesis 11:9).
"It is not easy to know how literally these words will be fulfilled, but in these days of threatened ecological and nuclear catastrophe, it is not at all difficult to imagine a very literal fulfillment, and one which will indeed be the result of human greed and covetousness." [Note: Oswalt, p. 444.]
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