Isaiah 54

54:1 SING, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt spread abroad on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and the reproach of thy widowhood shalt thou remember no more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. For the LORD hath called thee as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even a wife of youth, when she is cast off, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In overflowing wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy pinnacles of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy border of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near thee. Behold, they may gather together, but not by me: whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall because of thee. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the fire of coals, and bringeth forth a weapon for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness which is of me, saith the LORD.

Chap. 54. So soon as he has passed the hill of sorrow, his old rapturous emotions come upon him with twofold force, and no paean in his prophecy is more joyous than the 54th chapter. It rings like a marriage bell. The true title, indeed, of Isaiah’s prophecy is a “song.” It is the “Song of Songs, which is Isaiah’s,” and many of its notes are only a little lower than those which saluted the birth of Christ, or welcomed Him from the tomb, with the burden, “He is risen, He is risen, and shall die no more!” Gilfillan.

This chapter stands in the closest relations of thought with the two that immediately precede it. Chap. 52 contemplates Zion, the ancient Church, as coming forth from her quasi captivity under the bonds of the Mosaic dispensation into the glorious freedom of the Christian age; the glad heralds of Gospel light announcing to her the coming of her Messiah; from which the prophet passes to speak somewhat fully of this “servant of the Lord” as winning immense and glorious reward by His sufferings and death. This reward lies in nations saved through His blood and by means of His revealed truth. Of course in this achievement of victory over the powers of sin and Satan, His people, “workers together with Him” and identified with Him in the deepest sympathy of their heart, must participate. Victory to Him is infinite joy to them. The gathering of His spoils (53:12) is the accumulation of converts within her tents and the filling of her solitudes with a teeming population. Upon this fact the chapter before us bears. After what has been said of the Messiah’s triumph through suffering and of His seeing the travail of His soul, nothing could be more natural and legitimate than to pass next to consider the bearing of these achievements upon His Church and people. Hence the prophet rushes into the midst of this sublimely magnificent theme, calling on Zion to break forth into song; to enlarge her tents for these new accessions; and to open heart, hand and home to these new comers. He assures her that her Maker is her husband, remembers her with undying love, and after temporary absence and alienation returns to her with everlasting mercies; will rebuild her fallen walls with ineffable beauty and glory; will teach all her children righteousness, and will ensure her against the weapons of her foes. H. C.

Instead of suffering from the loss of her national prerogatives, the Church shall be more glorious and productive than before (verse 1). Instead of being limited to a single nation, she shall be so extended as to take in all the nations of the earth (verses 2, 3). What seemed at first to be her forlorn and desolate condition shall be followed by a glorious change (verse 4). He who seemed once to be the God of the Jews only shall now be seen to be the God of the Gentiles also (verse 5). The abrogation of the old economy was like the repudiation of a wife, but its effects will show it to be rather a renewal of the conjugal relation (verse 6). The momentary rejection shall be followed by an everlasting reconciliation (verses 7, 8). The old economy, like Noah’s flood, can never be repeated or renewed (verse 9). That was a temporary institution; this shall outlast the earth itself (verse 10). The old Jerusalem shall be forgotten in the splendor of the new (verses 11, 12). But this shall be a spiritual splendor springing from a constant Divine influence (verse 13). Hence it shall also be a holy and a safe state (verse 14). All the enemies of the Church shall either be destroyed or received into her bosom (verse 15). The warrior and his weapons are alike God’s creatures and at His disposal (verse 16). In every contest, both of hand and tongue, the Church shall be triumphant, not in her own right or her own strength, but in that of Him who justifies, protects and saves her (verse 17). A.

1. Zion, thought of as a wife and mother, the accessions to her in numbers being accounted as her children, has long been barren—that is, during those ages of spiritual decline and dearth which preceded the coming of Christ. Now the era of domestic joy returns. More are the children of her who has been desolate than falls to the common lot of the married wife. The Gospel age is to be distinguished by Pentecostal ingatherings and immense accessions from the Gentile nations. H. C.

2. Enlarge the place of thy tent.

The prophet announces the conversion of the Gentiles, in words addressed to the Jewish Church as the emblem of the Christian. The allusion here is to the tabernacle, and the image presented is an enlargement of the sacred tent to contain new crowds of worshippers; the stakes are to be driven deep and firm; the cords lengthened and tightened, that the sides of the tent may be able to support the pressure of the multitudes within it. (See Gen. 9: 27, where Noah foretells the admission of worshippers of Japhet’s stock into the tent of Shem.) W. Lowth.

5. In each clause the first member points out the relation of Jehovah to His people, while the second proclaims one of His descriptive names. He is related to the Church as her Husband and Redeemer; He is known or shall be known to all mankind as the Lord of Hosts and as the God of the whole earth, which are not to be regarded as equivalent expressions. As the God of the Jewish institutions, the redeemer of a forfeited inheritance, was necessarily the next of kin, it is appropriately placed in opposition to the endearing name of husband; and as the title Lord of Hosts imports a universal sovereignty, it is no less exactly matched with the God of the whole earth. A.—The magnificent thoughts of this verse are clothed in the richest poetical conceptions and in the finest style of Hebrew parallelism. The God who made thee is thy Husband, and He is truly the Lord of Hosts, God of the celestial armies, bearing this name only because He sustains these relations, and therefore the name well expresses the precious reality. Then essentially the same thoughts are put in new phrase and figure. Thy Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, their very Saviour, their dearest Friend, to be particularly appropriated by them as their own Holy One. He is also truly “the God of the whole earth,” and will evince Himself to be so by bringing the whole earth to know, accept, love and adore Him as their God. The Redeemer combined in Himself (God) most of the elements of a near and faithful friend, bound to make any possible sacrifices and efforts for the welfare of His brother. In this sense Jehovah appears here as the Redeemer as well as the Husband of His people.

6. The general sense of this verse is. The Lord hath called thee back into the relation of a wife again, after a temporary divorce, in which state thou wast forsaken and heartbroken. The first word, “for,” indicates this logical connection; thy Maker surely is thy Husband, for He now invites thee to return into this relationship, despite of its suspension because of thy past sins. H. C.

7. For a small moment.** God does not keep His anger against His people forever; no, it is soon over; as He is slow to anger, so He is swift to show mercy. The afflictions of God’s people, as they are light, so they are but for a moment, a cloud that presently blows over. How sweet the returns of mercy would be to them, when God should come and comfort them according to the time that He afflicted them. God called them into covenant with Himself, then when they were forsaken and grieved; He called them out of their afflictions, then when they were most pressing (verse 6). God’s anger endures for a moment, but God will gather His people when they think themselves neglected; will gather them out of their dispersions, that they may return in a body to their own land; will gather them into His arms, to protect them, embrace them and bear them up; and will gather them at last to Himself. H.

Sin disappears, as the mist before the sun, in the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus. The forgiveness of sins disperses the clouds of Divine wrath, even as the wind disperses the clouds of heaven. Caspars.

8. A thought so precious will bear to be reiterated and set forth in new and more resplendent light. This hiding of God’s love is but temporary, only a transient outburst of displeasure, a sudden emotion which passed over in a moment; while on the other hand His mercy and His kindness are everlasting. It is only a duration indefinitely long that can suffice to unfold the depth of God’s loving-kindness to His chosen Zion. The ages of earth’s years and centuries are therefore assigned for her triumph and peace in the presence and glory of her Divine Redeemer and Husband. H. C.

The wrath is little, but the mercies great; the wrath for a moment, but the kindness everlasting. See how one is set over against the other, that we may neither despond under our afflictions nor despair of relief. If He hide His face from His own children, and suspend the wonted tokens of His favor, it is but in a little wrath, and for a small moment; but He will “gather them with everlasting kindness” (Isa. 54: 7, 8). As sure as the light of the morning returns after the darkness of the night, so sure will joy and comfort return, in a short time, in due time, to the people of God; for the covenant of grace is as firm as the covenant of the day. This word has often been fulfilled to us in the letter; weeping has endured for a sight, but the grief has been soon over, and the grievance gone. As long as God’s anger continues, so long the saint’s weeping continues; but if that be but for a moment, the affliction is but for a moment, and when the light of God’s countenance is restored, the affliction is easily pronounced light and momentary. H.

When God hides His face from His child, yet still He is a Father, and His heart is toward His child; as Joseph, when he spake roughly to his brethren, and made them believe he would take them for spies; still his heart was full of love, and he was fain to go aside and weep; so God’s bowels yearn to His children, when He seems to look strange. “In a little wrath I hid My face from thee, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee.” Though God may have the look of an enemy, yet still He hath the heart of a father. Watson.

When the morning stars sang together, the “sisters of sorrow” were visible in the distant perspective, as servitors of the same cause for which Christ died. They stood locked hand in hand with the angels of Gethsemane. Never did a good man bear a throb of pain to which the heart of Christ was not responsive. Never does a great affliction fall upon a trusting believer which is not recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Phelps.

How needful, amid the trials of this earthly life, and how blessed is it to look off from the low plane and past the near horizon of earth and time, to the higher, wider heavens, with their juster standards, and clearer lights, and unsettling glories, that thus we may learn to judge aright of the events around us, and of the influences that are passing over us. Earthly trial, however sharp and however long, is not hopeless, or endless, or even aimless, if accepted as the appointment of a parental providence, and as training and metering us for rest in Jesus. And earthly splendors and lures grow tame and despicable, when, from the sidelights of Scripture, we learn to acknowledge what baits they often are and what fates they often work out. W. R. W.

Faith listens to the testimony of Jesus. The Lord thy Redeemer speaks: “My deserting thee is of the shortest duration, a moment, the twinkling of an eye;” as no space of time compared to eternity. Then love vents itself and declares, “With everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee.” The word of the Lord shall stand. His covenant is sure, His love unchangeable, His promises immutable. Hence the soul is excited to confidence, to assurance— yea, the fullest assurance of a God of truth, though all present appearances seem against it. Then hope dawns in the soul and love to Jesus is quickened. Holy shame and godly sorrow for past follies fill the heart, while the Comforter inwardly testifies of Jesus. His love, how infinite! His person, how precious! His promises, how reviving! His presence, how joyful! “Weeping may endure for a night” (of desertion), “but joy cometh in the morning” (of His presence). W. Mason.

9. The assurance of the preceding verse is now repeated in another form. There can no more be another such effusion of My wrath than there can be another deluge, here called the waters of Noah, just as we familiarly say “Noah’s flood.” The security in this case, as in that, is a Divine oath or solemn covenant, like that recorded in Gen. 8:21 and 9:11. The text mentions only one point of comparison between the two events—viz., that neither can occur again. The prophet does not say that God’s displeasure with the Church is a flood which shall never be repeated, but that it shall never be repeated any more than the flood. A.

This must not be pressed to the extreme of saying that God will nevermore find anything in His Church to excite His displeasure or to call forth His rebuke. The declaration should be explained within its own limitations—no such period of darkness, displeasure and rebuke as that of the age before Christ came. The change from that state of things to the Christian age brought back the presence of God with His people and renewed their spiritual marriage covenant—never to be severed again. Dr. Alexander well remarks: “That this is not a general promise of security is plain from the fact that the Church has always been subjected to vicissitudes and fluctuations. Nor is there any period in her history to which it can properly be applied in a specific sense, except the change of dispensations which was made once for all, and can never be repeated. That the Church shall never again be brought under the restrictive institutions of the ceremonial law is neither a matter of course nor a matter of indifference, but a glorious promise, altogether worthy of the solemn oath by which it is attested here.” H. C.

10. The meaning is not that God’s promise is as stable as the mountains, but that it is more so; they shall be removed, but it shall stand forever. A.

God’s favors to His people appear very constant, and His kindness everlasting; for it is formed into a covenant, here called a “covenant of peace,” because it is founded in reconciliation and is inclusive of all good. This is as firm as the covenant of providence; it is “as the waters of Noah,” as that promise which was made concerning the deluge, that there should never be the like again to disturb the course of summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (verse 9). God then contended with the world in great wrath, and for a full year, and yet at length returned in mercy, everlasting mercy; for He gave His word, which was as inviolable as His oath, that Noah’s flood should never return, that He would never drown the world again. And God has ever since kept His word, though the world has been very provoking; and He will keep it to the end. And thus inviolable is the covenant of grace, “I have sworn that I would not be wroth with thee” as I have been, “and rebuke thee,” as I have done. He will not be so angry with them as to cast them off and break His covenant with them. God’s kindness shall never depart from His people, for whom He loves, He loves to the end; nor shall the covenant of His peace ever be removed, for He is the Lord that has mercy on His people. Therefore the covenant is immovable and inviolable, because it is built not on our merit, which is a mutable, uncertain thing, but on God’s mercy, which is from everlasting to everlasting. H.

The covenant of peace is not to be overthrown by trials, temptations or sins. So far from it, that these prove its stability and certainty. Every believer is at this moment in the very state in which God intended he should be, and in which it is best for him to be; and this, though afflictions, trials, deep desertions, yea, though sin and corruptions assail, and even overcome him. The great proof that he is a believer in such circumstances is, that he prays for faith and patience under the rod of affliction, hates his sins when they prevail against him, and longs for the light of God’s countenance while he walks in darkness. Hill.

The stately march of the grand English translation lends itself with wonderful beauty to the melody of Isaiah’s words. But the thought that lies below them, sweeping as it does through the whole creation and parting all things into the transient material and the immortal Divine, is still greater than the music of the words. These are removed, this abides. And the thing in God which abides is that gentle tenderness, that strange love, mightier than all the powers of divinity besides, and permanent with the permanence of His changeless heart. There come out of these words thoughts of that Divine relationship to us which are meant to strengthen us in the contemplation of that which is perishable and amid the changing of all that is material. “My kindness”—what a revelation of God! It tells me that the infinite, undying, imperishable love of God is mine; older than the mountains, deeper than their roots in the great abyss, wider than the heavens and stronger than all my sins, is the love that grasps and keeps me and will not let me go, that lavishes its tenderness upon me, beseeches me and pleads with me, woos me, rebukes and corrects me, and that sent His Son to die for me. And then there is the consequence and outcome of that imperishable and unremovable loving-kindness: “My covenant of peace,” or “the covenant of My peace.” We are to think of this great, tender, changeless love of God, which underlies and towers above all things, which overlaps beyond them all and fills eternity, as being placed under a guarantee and being under a solemn obligation. God comes into a covenant with you and me, and His covenant is this: “I promise that My love shall never leave thee!” A. M.

No, the covenant of God’s peace with His people is an everlasting covenant. Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant. His loving-kindness reaches into the future. The covenant is a covenant of promise. Beautifully the prophet in the next verses puts this promise under the figure of a lovely palace, which shall be the dwelling-place of God’s own. Vincent.

11. The figure now changes, from a wife restored to favor and blessed with children, to a city after storms and ruin rebuilt in magnificence and beauty. The apostle clearly applies it to “the Jerusalem above,” the mother city of all true believers. But it is here viewed at an earlier period than in the visions of Apocalypse, while its foundations are being laid. Birks.

12. It is here promised in the particular instances of those things that shall be the beauty and honor of the Church, which are knowledge, holiness and love, the very image of God in which man was created, renewed and restored. And these are the sapphires and carbuncles, the precious and pleasant stones, with which the Gospel Temple shall be enriched and beautified, and these wrought by the power and efficacy of those doctrines which the apostle compares to gold, silver and precious stones, that are to be “built upon the foundation.” H.

13. Dropping all figure and passing from poetic drapery to prosaic simplicity, the prophet gives here the very ideas; all Zion’s children disciples of the Lord; the Divine Spirit teaching them of God, putting His laws unto their minds and writing them in their hearts, as said Jer. 31:34, and quoted by the writer to the Hebrews (8:11). The key to this passage is given by our Divine Lord Himself: It is written in the prophets, “and they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me” (John 6:45). When God by His Spirit teaches the sinner, He leads him at once to Jesus. H. C.—The promise is not one of occasional instruction, but of permanent connection with Jehovah, as His followers and partakers of His constant teaching. That the words are applicable to the highest teaching of which any rational being is susceptible—to wit, that of the Holy Spirit making known the Father and the Son, we have our Saviour’s own authority for stating. (See John 6:44, and cf. Matt. 23:8; Heb. 8:11; 1 John 2:27.) Paul too describes believers as taught of God in relation to the duties of their calling (1 Thess. 4:9). Similar promises under the Old Testament are given in Jer. 31:34 and elsewhere. A.

Notice the breadth of this prophetic declaration. It is not limited to her gifted prophets, nor to her ordained apostles, bishops, pastors and preachers, but is shared by all; “all her children shall be taught of the Lord.” H. C.—Then the Church is all glorious when it is full of the knowledge of God, and that is promised here, “All thy children shall be taught of the Lord.” The Church’s children, being born of God, shall be taught of God; being His children by adoption, He will take care of their education. It is a promise of the Spirit of illumination. Our Saviour quotes it with application to Gospel grace, and makes it to have its accomplishment in all those that were brought to believe in Him (John 6:45), “It is written in the prophets, They shall be all taught of God;” whence He infers, that those, and those only, come to Him by faith that have heard and learned of the Father, that are “taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21). There shall be a plentiful effusion of the Spirit of grace upon Christians, to “teach them all things” (John 14:26). H.

14. Since the verse preceding traces piety in man to the teaching of God, so the idea here seems to be that God’s righteous faithfulness secures and establishes man’s righteous piety and life. The former includes the latter as the cause does its effect. H. C.

15. The promise of the preceding verse is here so modified as to provide for every possible contingency. If enemies should be assembled, it will not be by Divine command (cf. chaps. 10 : 5 ; 47 : 6), and they shall end by coming over to the side of those whom they assail.

16. The general meaning evidently is that God can certainly redeem His pledge, because all instruments and agents are alike at His disposal and under His control. He is not only the maker of the weapons of war, but the maker of their maker, as well as of the warrior who wields them. The pronoun in both clauses is emphatic. It is I (and not another) who created them. A.

The account given here of the smith’s process is, “that bloweth into the coal-fire, or fire of coals, and bringeth out by this means his tools for his work”—referring to the manufacture of his own implements. As the smith makes his tools with the aid of fire and hammer, so God can make and use His instruments with perfect wisdom and power. As God creates the smith who with the aid of fire makes his hammer, and with the aid of hammer makes the sword and the spear of war, and as God alone sustains him through all these processes, surely this same God can cut short all efforts to harm His Zion at any one of ten thousand points as may be His pleasure.

17. Neither weapons for violence nor tongue for accusation shall prosper against thee. The former covers war ; the latter, litigation. Such is the “inheritance of the servants of the Lord.” The plural here looks beyond the one special “servant of the Lord” who appears (chaps. 52 : 13 and 53 : 11), to all His associated people who are identified with Himself in sympathy and labor for the common cause. The last clause seems to mean, “And this (or such) is their righteousness from Me,” saith the Lord. Such is their piety and such its fruits of righteousness from My hand. H. C.

Every tongue against thee. The idea is, that truth and victory in every strife of words should be on the side of the Church. To those who have watched the progress of discussions thus far on the subject of the true religion, it is needless to say that this has been triumphantly fulfilled. Argument, sophism, ridicule, have all been tried to overthrow the truth of the Christian religion. Appeals have been made to astronomy, geology, antiquities, history, and indeed to almost every department of science, and with the same want of success. Poetry has lent the charm of its numbers ; the grave historian has interwoven with the thread of his narrative covert attacks and insinuations against the Bible ; the earth has been explored to prove that “He who made the world and revealed its age to Moses was mistaken in its age ;” and the records of Oriental nations have been appealed to, but in all these contests ultimate victory has declared in favor of the Bible. And no matter from what quarter the attack has come, and no matter how much learning and talent have been evinced by the adversaries of the Bible, God has raised up defenders to meet these charges, and to turn the scales in favor of the cause of truth. Barnes.

Righteousness which is of Me. We have no righteousness of our own ; yet, saith the Lord Jesus, the righteous one, “Their righteousness is of Me.” We are made the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5 : 21). When we are taught this by the Spirit of truth, instead of looking into ourselves for righteousness, we cry out in the joy of faith, I have found it : “In the Lord have I righteousness” (Isa. 45 : 24). Then we have a living union with the Lord our righteousness, by faith ; being perfectly righteous in Him, we have righteous hopes, fears, desires, a righteous walk and righteous expectations ; for we know our salvation is of the Lord. The Spirit of truth does not leave us to the unrighteous notions of salvation on account of our own works, duties and performances, either in whole or in part ; but He shows us such matchless glory in our Lord’s one everlasting righteousness, that we renounce all our own righteousness and all dependence on it for salvation. W. Mason.