We return now to the questions we ask above concerning the outcome of the promises made in Isaiah 40 and Ezekiel 34 and their meaning for modern readers.
Both passages anticipate events that are to take place at some time in the future, when God will be present, will act decisively, and will be acknowledged as God. Were these anticipations actualized, and if so, in what way? If not, are they still to be realized, or were the prophets wrong? In either case, what meaning can their prophecies have for modern readers?
Clearly, when second Isaiah speaks about God’s appearing in glory, he is not speaking of an appearance visible to eyes of flesh, even though he asserts that “all flesh” shall behold the appearance. The God who “measured the waters in the hollow of his hand” (v 12) is not visible to human eyes in any circumstances. The glory of God, whose manifestation the writer prophesies, can be seen only with eyes of faith. It is the same glory that “filled the whole earth” according to the First Isaiah’s inaugural vision (6:3). Just as the glory which fills the whole earth was already visible in Isaiah’s time to those who had eyes to see, so the glory which second Isaiah prophesied would be manifest only to those who had faith. However, in that event all humanity would have been brought to faith, so all would behold the glory. The eyes of faith and the eyes of unfaith observe exactly the same phenomena, but the one regards them as manifestations of God’s power and wisdom, while the other sees only what they appear to be.
If the future appearance of God in glory anticipated in Isaiah 40 is not essentially different from the presence of God which could be known in the present, then we would not have to posit “a new heaven and a new earth” as the precondition of fulfillment. Both Isaiah 40 and Ezekiel 34 seem to be speaking about the non-too-distant future. Indeed, the events heralded by second Isaiah are already beginning to take place in his own time. In chao.34 Ezekiel is anticipating a time somewhat farther into the future, though not necessarily more than a few generations. His hope of a restoration of the Israelite nation might reasonably have been expected to be fulfilled in that length of time. The next question, then, is whether the expectations of these two writers were actually realized in subsequent years.