Isaiah 51:12

The chapters from Isaiah 40–66 speak comfort to God’s people in their exile in Babylon, after Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed in 586 BC. Earlier in this chapter God has told them to look back to Abraham and Sarah, from whom he made a great people, and has promised to make Zion’s wilderness like the garden of the LORD (Isaiah 51:1–3). He has called them again to hearken to him (Isaiah 51:4, 51:7), and he has told them that the heavens and the earth will wear out while his salvation lasts for ever (Isaiah 51:6). Verse 9 is the cry that rises from his people in reply, voiced by the prophet on their behalf.

The verb “awake” is ʻûwr, the ordinary word for waking from sleep, used both literally and figuratively, and it comes three times in this one verse. The “arm” is zᵉrôwaʻ, the arm of a man or the foreleg of an animal, and figuratively force, might and strength. The arm of the LORD is his power going out to act. Moses sang of that arm at the Red Sea, saying that by its greatness the nations would be as still as a stone till God’s people passed over (Exodus 15:16). “Put on strength” pictures that power as a garment the arm puts on before it goes to work.

The second question of the prayer names the deed: God “dried the sea, the waters of the great deep” and “made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over.” This is the night when the LORD divided the waters and the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground (Exodus 14:21–22). A psalm sings of the same mighty deeds of God in the sea (Psalm 77:16–20).

The verb “dried” is chârab, to parch or dry up. Elsewhere it is used of a land laid waste, left in ruins so that settled life there comes to an end. Here the sea itself is dried, and its bed becomes a road. The “great deep” is tᵉhôwm, the abyss or surging mass of water, the word for the waters of creation in Genesis 1:2. The “way” is derek, a road or path, and figuratively the course of a life. God made a road through the very waters that stood between his people and freedom.

The people who walked that road are “the ransomed”, from gâʼal, to redeem as a near kinsman. Under Israel’s law the kinsman-redeemer bought back a relative’s lost property or set him free from bondage, and the LORD did that for Israel as their divine Kinsman, of his own will and as a gift. The next verse calls the same people “the redeemed”, and there the word is pâdâh, to ransom, release or preserve. The KJV’s “ransomed” in verse 10 and “redeemed” in verse 11 translate these two different Hebrew words, and between them they tell us that God claimed his people as his own kin and set them free.

The Red Sea became the pattern for what God would do again. The God who brought Israel out of Egypt would bring them out of Babylon, and in Christ he brings his people out of sin and death.

“Therefore” ties the promise of verse 11 to the deeds of verses 9 and 10. Because God made a way through the sea, “the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion.” The name of God here is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, his covenant name. To “return” is shûwb, to turn back or come back. “Singing” is rinnâh, a raised voice or ringing cry of joy, a word that can also be used of a cry in prayer. Zion, Tsîyôwn, was the hill in Jerusalem where David set his capital and where the temple later stood, and it became a name for Jerusalem as the place of God’s presence among his people. The road home from exile is pictured as a procession of song.

“Everlasting joy shall be upon their head.” The word for everlasting, ʻôwlâm, reaches to the vanishing point, time out of mind, past or future, and so it means for ever. “Head” is rôʼsh, and joy rests on the heads of the redeemed like a crown everyone can see. The joy is simchâh, joy, gladness or mirth, and the gladness beside it is sâsôwn. They shall “obtain” these, nâsag, to reach or attain, so that joy is something they take hold of and keep. Last of all “sorrow”, yâgôwn, and “mourning”, ʼănâchâh, a word for sighing and groaning, “shall flee away”. The verb nûwç means to flee, vanish or escape, and sorrow is pictured running off before the joy of those coming home.

Isaiah has given this promise before, in almost the same words (Isaiah 35:10). A psalm of returning captives says, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy” (Psalm 126:5–6). The redeemed of the LORD were first the exiles brought home from Babylon, and the words reach to all whom the LORD ransoms. In Christ we have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7), and we are come unto mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22–24). Jesus gives his own joy to his disciples (John 15:11), and the God of hope fills believers with joy and peace in believing (Romans 15:13). The last line of the verse waits for the day when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4).

In verse 12 God himself speaks. His people asked his arm to awake, and he answers by telling them who he is. The Hebrew doubles the word for “I”, ānōḵî ānōḵî, and the doubling is emphatic: God himself, and he alone, is the one who comforts them. To comfort is nâcham, a word that begins with sighing and goes on to pity and console. Isaiah’s whole message of hope began with God’s command, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God” (Isaiah 40:1), and Paul calls him “the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

Then comes the question, “who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die?” The word for being afraid, yârêʼ, is also the word for reverence, so the question asks whom God’s people stand in awe of. The man they fear is ʼĕnôwsh, man in his frailty and mortality, and the “son of man” is bên with ʼâdâm, the general word for a human being. Both are as short-lived as grass. Isaiah has already said it: “All flesh is grass... The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:6–8). A psalm says the same of man’s days (Psalm 103:15–16), and Proverbs warns that “The fear of man bringeth a snare” (Proverbs 29:25). Jesus taught his disciples to fear God, who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell, and to set aside the fear of those who can kill only the body (Matthew 10:28).

Verse 13 goes to the root of the fear. God’s people have forgotten “the LORD thy maker”. The verb is shâkach, to forget, and the Maker is named with ʻâsâh, the broad everyday verb for doing or making. He “stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth”. Isaiah has already called him the one “that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain” (Isaiah 40:22), and “the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isaiah 40:28). Moses warned Israel, “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 8:11). When the Maker of heaven and earth slips from memory, a human enemy fills the whole view.

So they have “feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy”. The oppressor is Babylon. His “fury” is chêmâh, heat, rage or poison, a word Strong’s traces to a root meaning to be hot. Then God asks, “and where is the fury of the oppressor?” The rage that filled their days will pass and be gone, and the God they forgot remains. The same word chêmâh comes back in verses 17, 20 and 22 for the fury of the LORD himself. The fury Jerusalem truly suffered was the LORD’s, and he is able to end both his own and the oppressor’s.

The psalmist had learned this answer: “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?” (Psalm 118:6), and “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1). Paul asks, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31), and John writes that “perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18).

In verse 14 God speaks of the prisoner himself: “The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed”. The verb mâhar means to hurry or act quickly, and the context decides whether the haste is good or bad. Here it is the haste of a captive toward freedom, and the verse promises that his release is near. “Loosed” is pâthach, to open wide, loosen or let go free, like the opening of a prison door. He is to be kept from dying “in the pit”, the shachath, which can be a dungeon or a cistern used as a prison, and also the grave. “Nor that his bread should fail”: the verb châçêr means to lack or run short, and bread, lechem, stands for everything needed to live. In one captive the verse speaks for the whole exiled people, and God promises them life, freedom and daily bread.

God has fed his people before. Israel ate manna forty years in the wilderness (Exodus 16:35), and Moses told them it was to teach them that man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:3). A psalm tells of prisoners sitting in darkness, bound in affliction and iron, whom the LORD brought out as he broke their bands (Psalm 107:10–14). Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), and promised that when we seek first the kingdom of God, all these things shall be added to us (Matthew 6:33). In Nazareth he read that he was sent “to preach deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18–19), and he called himself the bread of life (John 6:35).

Verse 15 sets the LORD’s own name against every fear: “But I am the LORD thy God”. Yᵉhôvâh is the covenant name, which Strong’s explains as the self-existent or eternal one, and “thy God” makes it personal, because this God belongs to his people. He “divided the sea, whose waves roared”, which takes us back to the Red Sea of Exodus 14. The word for sea is yâm, a large body of water, which can also name the bronze basin of the temple and the direction west, and Strong’s connects it to a root meaning to roar, from the noise of the surf. The waves “roared”, hâmâh, to make a loud sound and so to be in commotion or uproar. The wildest and loudest thing Israel knew was the sea in its fury, and the LORD divided it.

“The LORD of hosts is his name.” The hosts, Sabaoth in Hebrew, are the armies of heaven and earth, the angels, the stars and every force in creation, and the LORD commands them all. “Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory” (Psalm 24:10). “The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (Psalm 46:7). When Jesus arose in the boat and said to the sea, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39), and the wind ceased, he showed the same mastery over the waters, and after his resurrection he said that all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18).

In verse 16 God says, “I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand”. The word dâbâr means a word or speech, and also a matter or thing. God put his words in Jeremiah’s mouth in the same way (Jeremiah 1:9), he sent Ezekiel to speak his words to Israel (Ezekiel 3:4), and he promised Moses a prophet in whose mouth he would put his words (Deuteronomy 18:18). “Covered” is kâçâh, to cover as with clothing or to conceal, and “hand” is yâd, the open hand, and so power and means. The one God sends is hidden and sheltered in the shadow of God’s own hand, as a psalm speaks of the one who abides under the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1).

God does this “that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.” The God who made the heavens and the earth at the beginning is at work to establish a new order, and its goal is a people he calls his own. Isaiah later speaks of new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17), John sees them (Revelation 21:1), and Paul writes that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “Thou art my people” is the heart of the covenant, and the new covenant says it again: “and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). Peter gives the same word to the church, who “in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9–10).

At verse 17 the cry of verse 9 comes back with the same verb, ʻûwr, and now God is the one calling and Jerusalem is the one asleep. His people asked his arm to wake, and he answers by calling them to wake and stand. The city lies like someone senseless with drink, because she “hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury”. The fury is chêmâh, the word used for the oppressor’s rage in verse 13.

The cup is a picture the prophets often use for the portion of judgment God gives to drink. The LORD gave Jeremiah the wine cup of his fury to make the nations drink (Jeremiah 25:15–16). A psalm says that in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and all the wicked of the earth shall wring out its dregs and drink them (Psalm 75:8). Ezekiel speaks of the cup of astonishment and desolation (Ezekiel 23:32–34), and Revelation of the wine of the wrath of God (Revelation 14:10).

Jerusalem has drunk “the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.” The KJV’s “dregs” translates qubbaʻath, and the picture is of drinking to the very bottom of the cup. “Trembling” is tarʻêlâh, reeling or staggering, the way a drunk man sways. “Wrung them out” means she has drained every last drop. Jerusalem has suffered the full measure of the judgment, from the hand of the LORD, because of her long unfaithfulness to his covenant.

Yet God calls her to stand up. The judgment is complete, and the call is to rise from it and make ready for his deliverance. The same call sounds again soon after, “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments” (Isaiah 52:1), and later, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come” (Isaiah 60:1). The God whose arm his people asked to put on strength now tells Zion to put on hers.

Verse 18 pictures Jerusalem as a mother whose sons should have helped her. “There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth”. To guide is nâhal, to lead gently or conduct, and so to protect and sustain. None “taketh her by the hand”, and “taketh” is châzaq, to fasten upon or take firm hold, and also to strengthen, with yâd, the hand. A son in Israel was bound by the command to honour his father and mother, and helping a fallen mother to her feet is the least a son owes her. Jerusalem’s sons have fainted themselves (verse 20), so her people and her leaders are too weak to lift her. The idols they had served were powerless to save them (Jeremiah 2:27–28). Lamentations opens with the same grief, the city sitting solitary like a widow with none to comfort her (Lamentations 1:1–2), and a psalm cries, “no man cared for my soul” (Psalm 142:4).

Verse 19 names what has come on her: “desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword”. shôd, from shûwd, is violence and ravage, the devastation an enemy leaves behind. sheber, from shâbar, to break, is a breaking, an injury or a disaster. Famine and the sword came together in every siege, and Jeremiah sets them side by side in the same way (Jeremiah 14:18).

Two questions follow: “who shall be sorry for thee?” and “by whom shall I comfort thee?” The second uses nâcham, the verb of verse 12. Among men there is none who can comfort Jerusalem, and that sends us back to God’s word in verse 12, “I, even I, am he that comforteth you.” The suffering of this verse is exactly what his comfort answers.

Verse 20 shows the sons. “Thy sons have fainted”: bên is “son”, and the verb ʻâlaph, from a root meaning to veil or cover, describes someone overcome and fainting, wrapped in a stupor. They “lie at the head of all the streets”. rôʼsh is “head”, the word that set joy on the heads of the redeemed in verse 11, and chûwts means outside, and so the streets. They lie at the top of every street, in the most public places of the city, in plain sight of everyone passing. Lamentations calls Jerusalem to lift up her hands to God for the life of her young children, who faint for hunger at the top of every street (Lamentations 2:19).

They lie “as a wild bull in a net”. The tᵉʼôw is a wild ox or antelope, a strong untamed animal, and the makmâr is a hunter’s net. All the strength of the beast is useless once the net is over it, and the nation that was once strong lies caught and helpless. They are “full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God”. mâlêʼ means full or filled, chêmâh is the fury once more, and gᵉʻârâh is a rebuke or sharp chiding. “The LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh and “thy God” is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form and read as a plural of majesty, and the two names together show that the judgment came from the God of their own covenant.

Moses had warned what would follow if Israel broke the covenant (Deuteronomy 28). Jeremiah saw the destroyer of the nations coming up like a lion from his thicket (Jeremiah 4:7). Isaiah himself asks who gave Jacob for a spoil and Israel to the robbers, and answers that it was the LORD, against whom they had sinned (Isaiah 42:24–25). God had meant his servant to be a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6), and here Israel’s sons lie in public shame at every street corner.

Verse 21 begins with “Therefore”, and God turns from Jerusalem’s misery to his word to her: “hear now this”. The verb shâmaʻ means to hear with attention, to listen and understand, and God wants her whole attention for what he is about to say. He calls her “thou afflicted”, ʻânîy, from a root meaning to depress or afflict, one who is poor, lowly and in distress. She is “drunken”, shâkar, to be drunk, used figuratively of anyone overcome by a strong influence, “but not with wine”, yayin. She staggers from the cup of verse 17, the cup of the LORD’s fury.

Scripture uses the same picture elsewhere. In Lamentations the sufferer says, “He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood” (Lamentations 3:15), and a psalm says, “thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment” (Psalm 60:3). Calling her “afflicted” also shows God’s tenderness. He speaks to her where she lies and bids her listen, because what he says next is good news.

Verse 22 is the turning point of the passage. “Thus saith thy Lord the LORD”, Adonai Yᵉhôvâh, the sovereign Lord who is also the covenant God, “and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people.” To plead a cause is to take up someone’s case as their advocate, and God himself is Jerusalem’s advocate against those who wronged her. “Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again”. The staggering, tarʻêlâh, and the fury, chêmâh, are named again, and God himself takes the cup out of her hand. The Hebrew behind “no more ... again”, yâçaph, makes the promise final, and her time under that judgment is over.

Verse 23 tells where the cup goes: “But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee”. sûwm is the common verb “to put” or set, and God himself sets the cup in the oppressors’ hands. They “have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over”. The verb shâchâh means to bow down or lie prostrate, the word used for homage to a king and for the worship of God, and here the conquerors forced it on Jerusalem. “Thy soul” is her very self. “And thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.” chûwts is again “street”, the place where her sons lay fainted in verse 20. Conquerors of that age made the defeated lie down so that they could march over them in triumph, and Jerusalem was treated as pavement under their feet.

Now the cup passes to them. God is the judge who putteth down one and setteth up another (Psalm 75:7), Babylon is to be paid back double for what she did (Revelation 18:6), and Nahum says that the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries, though he is slow to anger and great in power (Nahum 1:2–3). God used the nations to judge his people, and he holds those nations to account for their cruelty and pride, just as the cup went round the nations in Jeremiah 25. The promise leaves our own wrongs in his hands, for vengeance is his and he will repay (Romans 12:19).

The arm of the LORD that his people begged to awake was revealed in Jesus Christ, God’s saving power come in person. At the Red Sea that arm broke Egypt, and on the cross and in the resurrection it overcame sin, death and the devil. Scripture calls the devil “that old serpent” and “the great dragon” (Revelation 12:9), and the first promise of the gospel was that the woman’s seed would bruise the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). Christ spoiled principalities and powers and made a shew of them openly (Colossians 2:15). Through death he destroyed him that had the power of death and delivered those who all their lifetime were subject to bondage through fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15), and our old man is crucified with him (Romans 6:6). So the fear of man in verse 12 loses its root, since the worst any oppressor can do is kill, and Christ has broken the power of death as the firstfruits of them that slept (1 Corinthians 15:20–22). He is also the Maker the exiles forgot, the Word by whom all things were made (John 1:3), in whom all things were created and by whom all things consist (Colossians 1:16–17).

He made a way for the ransomed. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and we were redeemed with his precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:18–19). Through his flesh he opened “a new and living way” into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19–20).

He drank the cup. In Gethsemane he prayed, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). The cup of the LORD’s fury that Jerusalem drank to the dregs, he drank for his people, and on the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), he was made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13), and “he was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5–6). Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:8–9). That is why God can say to his people, “thou shalt no more drink it again.” The cup passes to those who stand against him at the last, when Christ comes to smite the nations with the sharp sword of his mouth (Revelation 19:15).

Where Jerusalem had none to guide her and none to take her by the hand, Christ is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He calls all that labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30). He is the shepherd who leads his flock beside the still waters (Psalm 23:1–3), the high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15–16), and the Wonderful, Counsellor of Isaiah 9:6. Where God asked, “by whom shall I comfort thee?”, Jesus promised his disciples another Comforter, the Holy Spirit (John 14:16). And the call to Jerusalem to awake sounds again for the church: “now it is high time to awake out of sleep” (Romans 13:11), and “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above” (Colossians 3:1).

This passage begins with God’s people calling on him to wake, and it ends with God waking them. Their prayer was right to lean on his past deeds, and his answer is larger still: he is their comforter himself, he is the Maker of heaven and earth, and he takes from their hand the very cup they could least bear.

So the passage gives us words to pray when God’s power feels far away: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD.” It shows us the true size of those who frighten us, men who shall die and be made as grass, and the true size of the God who stretched out the heavens. It tells us that the LORD who judges sin is also the God who pleads the cause of his people, and that in Christ the cup of his fury has been drunk to the bottom on our behalf. And it promises a homecoming, when the redeemed of the LORD come to Zion with singing, everlasting joy on their heads, and sorrow and mourning flee away.