What does Isaiah 24:22 mean?
The end has come for planet earth: destroyed by God as part of His judgment humanity's sin and refusal to receive grace through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ (Isaiah 24:18–20). Now that the battle, such as it was, is over, the Lord will now gather two groups of prisoners. Isaiah identified them as the "host" of heaven and the kings of the earth (Isaiah 24:21).The host of heaven includes fallen angels, also known as demons: those who followed the original fallen angel, Satan (Revelation 12:4). The kings on the earth are likely the human rulers, political systems, and philosophies which led humanity to stand against the Lord's and reject Jesus. Both groups will be punished, but their punishment will not come just yet. First, God collects them, as one might house prisoners in a hollowed-out hole.
Peter's writing appears to mention this prison, using the Greek word Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4). In Greek thinking, Tartarus was the lowest level of the underworld, reserved for the most evil people. This corresponds to Israel's reference to a burning waste dump: Gehenna (Matthew 5:22, 29). These are often translated using the term "hell." Fallen angels are kept awaiting the Lord's judgment.
John also describes this moment in the book of Revelation: "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while" (Revelation 20:1–3).
While those powers and the rebel kings of the earth are held in the pit, the Lord Messiah will establish His kingdom on earth. He will reign over all the earth from His throne in Jerusalem, as Isaiah describes in the final verse in this chapter (Isaiah 24:23).
