What is the context?
The closing scene joins judgment with gathering. The Lord comes with fire and sword against rebellion, including people who perform acts of purification while continuing in forbidden worship.
He announces that nations and languages will gather to see His glory. Survivors are sent to distant places that have not heard His fame, and they proclaim His glory among the nations.
People are brought from those nations to Jerusalem as a gift to the Lord, compared with an offering brought in a clean vessel. He will also select some as priests and Levites. The gathering extends His renown beyond those who already knew it.
The enduring new heavens and new earth supply the comparison for the people’s enduring name and descendants. All humanity comes to worship. Yet the final image is of the corpses of rebels, with undying worm and unquenched fire, as a horror to those who see them.
The book therefore closes with the Lord’s glory made known widely and with rebellion judged. The hope of belonging and worship does not erase the seriousness of refusing Him.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry and Wesley connect the messengers and gathering with the spread of the gospel and people being brought to God. Henry describes the various means of transport as a picture of the abundant help given for that gathering.
Wesley understands the selection of priests and Levites as including converted Gentiles serving God. He reads the new moons and Sabbaths as language for continuing worship, rather than a requirement for Christians to reproduce every feature of Israel’s calendar.
Henry relates the final warning to Jesus’ teaching about the punishment of those who remain unrepentant. In his reading, the separation at the end displays both the gift of rescue and the gravity of judgment.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Mark 9:42–50 directly uses Isaiah’s final language about the worm and fire. Jesus brings it into His warning about sin, judgment and the seriousness of entering life and God’s kingdom.
The worldwide gathering also has a close parallel in Romans 15:14–21. Paul describes his gospel ministry among Gentiles in priestly terms, so that they become an offering acceptable to God through the Holy Spirit. He does not explicitly quote Isaiah 66 there; the connection is the shared picture of people from the nations brought as an offering.
Isaiah’s ending thus reaches into both sides of the New Testament’s proclamation: the good news goes to the nations, and Jesus calls those who hear Him to take sin and judgment seriously.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.