This chapter of Isaiah is all about the future of God's people. Like many of the prophetic books in the Bible, one minute God is calling down fire and brimstone, the next, He's promising milk and honey. It's hard to reconcile those two voices, sometimes.
I mean, it's not hard to understand God's standard of righteousness. With a lot of persistence, read through the Pentateuch. Being righteous back in the day was obeying every single law written in those five books, and God warned the Israelites that if they stopped obeying Him, the consequences would follow. We know that they messed up big time, and really failed to seek after God and receive His blessings.
It makes sense then, that God would stay true to His word and bring about the promised spanking. He gave the Israelites hundreds of years to turn back on their decision, but nope. They talked back. They definitely earned their discipline.
But like any loving Father, the wrath doesn't last. He still wants to give His children good gifts. And one of them is a peace established by God's kind of righteousness.
When people obey God and live by His standard as described by Jesus, tyranny doesn't exist, and fear is cast as far as the East is from the West. Because, to an extent, that's what Jesus did on the cross. He brought an end to the fear of death.
Terror is as far from you as the nails in Jesus' hands. Which is essentially as far as you let them be. And the distance possible is immeasurable.
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