Broken The Permanent Treaty

The earth is defiled by its inhabitants, for they have violated laws, disregarded the regulation, and broken the permanent treaty. – Isaiah 24:5 (NET)

Before we reach the verse above, we read that “The earth will be completely devastated and thoroughly ransacked. For the Lord has decreed this judgment. The earth dries up and withers; the prominent people of the earth fade away” (24:3-4). Though this was not God’s intention for His good creation, this is the situation wrought by man’s rebellion in the garden. Man was able to have this impact on the earth because He was a creature made in God’s image. He was specifically tasked by God and was given dominion over the creation, to steward it wisely, and failed to do so, introducing evil and its effects into the world.

In Adam’s faithlessness to his God-given responsibilities and limitations, the earth was most certainly defiled. Adam willfully and egregiously violated the law that had been given to him by his Creator. Yes, he most certainly disregarded the regulation. God had designed His creation to be permanently good, and for man to tend His good creation in perpetuity, but that permanence proved to be fleeting. As Isaiah writes, mankind broke “the permanent treaty.” Another rendering of the Hebrew would be “the everlasting covenant.” Adam, representing all mankind, violated the everlasting covenant of God. What was the result of this defiling, violation, disregarding, and breaking? “To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you’. But to Adam He said, ‘Because you obeyed your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,” cursed is the ground thanks to you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat of the grain of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return’.” (Genesis 3:16-19) Yes, the Lord decreed this judgment. The earth would be devastated and ransacked by thorns and thistles and pain and hostility. Though the earth had produced bountifully, in effect it would now be dried up and withered. Man would indeed fade away into dust.

Isaiah would write, “So a treaty curse devours the earth; its inhabitants pay for their guilt. This is why the inhabitants of the earth disappear, and are reduced to just a handful of people” (24:6). As we continue to focus our thoughts on what occurred with Adam, we can see that God cursed the earth because of the broken treaty, the ignored agreement, the disregarded covenant. As a result, man has continually suffered from death and decay and all that goes with man stepping outside of the bounds of God’s covenant (sin). Yet again, Isaiah speaks of the fact that man fades away into death, with his speaking of the disappearance of the inhabitants of the earth. As has been said, the impact of man’s sin extends beyond himself, reaching the created order, which is why “The new wine dries up, the vines shrivel up,” and with terminology that puts us in mind of Romans chapter eight, “all those who like to celebrate groan” (24:7).
Bringing an awareness of all of these things forward to the time in which he was writing, Isaiah could easily have looked around him, considered what it was that Israel was charged with doing and being under God’s covenant, and determined that Israel had done the same thing. Whereas Israel, now representing mankind, was supposed to be the means by which God revealed Himself, dealt with the problem of evil in the world, and functioned as a shining light of God’s glory to draw all men to Himself and bring them into reconciliation under His covenant, they were instead actively engaging in further defiling of the earth. God’s plan, beginning with Abraham, was to reverse the devastation of the curse through His covenant people, but instead they contributed to its ongoing devastation. Israel, of course, had been given specific laws by their God, and they violated them almost unceasingly. From time to time, Israel would recognize their violations and come to repentance, but for the most part, they utterly disregarded the regulations that had been delivered to them. Yes, just like Adam, sadly, God’s people had broken their everlasting covenant. For that, devastating judgment of cursing and exile would come upon them. This would occur as an outworking of God’s justice. He had brought them into a treaty---an everlasting covenant with Him---and the execution of coming destruction was the ongoing demonstration of God’s righteousness (covenant faithfulness) towards His people and towards His creation. Ultimately, it would take a Redeemer, a Messiah, for God Himself to act in the flesh, to repair the treaty and to set His people and this world to rights, doing so through a people, a renewed Israel, that live in a believing covenantal union with Jesus.