Translation: In “and it shall be as the chased roe,” what does “it” refer to? Although “earth” is the closest noun, this meaning does not make sense with the rest of the verse. The NIV translates this passage as: “Like hunted antelope, like sheep without a shepherd, each will return to his own people, each will flee to his native land.” People returning in haste to their own lands (those attempting to escape Yahweh’s wrath) best fit the imagery of “chased roe.”
Culture: Social upheaval will match the physical upheaval. Without their normal social structures, men will “return to [their] own people” or most likely to family units and family lands. Without a larger government, they will fall back on tribal or patriarchal units. This is the equivalent of a return to earlier times. Madeleine and Lane Miller note:
Patriarchal society can best be described as seminomadic and pastoral. It was essentially a tribal society, based not on territorial principles (the period of the judges) or sociopolitical classes (the period of the monarchy), but rather on family units. Blood relationship was the determining factor, with genealogical principles the underlying framework for all social and legal regulations.… The civil life of this tribal society was directed and controlled by the head of the family. Members were not subject to written rules or chosen officials, but rather to tribal traditions and the honest and just rule of the patriarch. On increasingly complex levels of organization, the decisions of the patriarch, the clan council, and the tribal council were binding. Law and order, security, justice, and matters of daily life were based on rules of common descent and family ties rather than on regulations and institutions deriving from common residence.
While the patriarchal period is a revered beginning point for Hebrew culture, it also represents a less civilized past. Hence the return to tribalism is a de-evolution of the social structures from the more socially complex monarchy familiar to Isaiah and his contemporaries to the less complex social system of the distant past. While there is no direct fulfillment of this prophecy in the Old World, this is precisely what happened to the Nephites upon the destruction of their political structure:
Now behold, I will show unto you that they did not establish a king over the land; but in this same year, yea, the thirtieth year, they did destroy upon the judgment-seat, yea, did murder the chief judge of the land.
And the people were divided one against another; and they did separate one from another into tribes, every man according to his family and his kindred and friends; and thus they did destroy the government of the land.
And every tribe did appoint a chief or a leader over them; and thus they became tribes and leaders of tribes. (3 Ne. 7:1–3)