Chapter 1 ended in ruin. A faithful city turned to a harlot, murderers where righteousness once lodged, and a whole people warned that refusal would end in the sword. Chapter 2 opens with the same city, seen from the other side of everything God is going to do with it. This is the Zion that will be, set beside the Zion that is.
2"The mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains." Mount Zion was never an especially tall mountain, and the Mount of Olives across the valley stood as high or higher. Every ancient people assumed their gods lived on mountains, the taller and grander the better, and against every one of those rival high places Isaiah sets a hill that was never physically remarkable and says it will be the highest of all, because of who lives there.
2"All the nations shall flow to it." The word for "flow" ordinarily describes water running downhill. Isaiah reverses it. Nations climbing a mountain is one thing. Nations flowing up one, like a river running backward, is something no one had watched happen. The image itself argues that something is about to defy the world's normal gravity.
Teaching draws them. 3"That he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." A few verses earlier foreigners were devouring Jerusalem's fields (Isaiah 1:7). Here they come to learn from her God. 3"Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem." The word that once spoke creation into being goes out again, this time to instruct the nations and not only to command them.
4"He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples." The peace that follows is a consequence of every nation submitting its disputes to one Judge instead of settling them by force: 4"they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks." A plowshare and a short sword were shaped almost alike in the ancient world, the same iron reforged for a different purpose, planting instead of killing. An entire skill set is forgotten.
Peace without submission to the Judge who grants it is an armistice waiting to break. What Isaiah describes holds only because the nations came first, climbing that impossible river uphill, willing to be taught.
Then the chapter turns, in one line, from vision to command. 5"O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD." Everything promised about nations someday streaming to Zion becomes, in this last verse, a summons to Israel now. The far-off day does not excuse the present one. If the nations will one day walk in God's paths, God's own people can start walking in his light today.
Micah preserves nearly the same oracle, which suggests that both prophets thought it too important to be sung only once (Micah 4:1-3). And centuries later, on a day when a scattered crowd of every nation and tongue heard the gospel, each in their own language, something of that ancient river began quietly to flow.
Ask what you keep sharpened that should have been reforged, a grudge, an argument, a habit of winning. Beat it into something that plants, and walk in the light today.
Prayer
Father, you have set your mountain higher than every rival high place where we have gone looking for you. Draw the nations to yourself, and draw us there first, teachable. Where we still keep swords sharpened that should have become plowshares, disarm us. Until the day the whole world climbs your mountain, let us walk even now in the light of the Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.