Isaiah 52:3

These chapters of comfort were given for God’s people in exile in Babylon (Isaiah 40–55). Jerusalem had fallen in 586 BC, its temple was destroyed and its people were carried away (2 Kings 25). The chapters before this one speak of judgment and suffering and bring in the Servant of the LORD (Isaiah 50). Here lament gives way to a call to joy and renewal, and the message runs on to the Servant who suffers for his people and at last to the new heavens and new earth of Isaiah 65–66.

“Awake” is ʻûwr, to wake, literally or figuratively, and Strong’s connects the word with the idea of opening the eyes. God says it twice, because the matter is urgent. Zion has lain in the stupor of grief and shame, and she must rouse herself and see what God is about to do. The call answers the people’s own prayer a few verses earlier, when they cried for the arm of the LORD to “awake” (Isaiah 51:9), and the LORD had already told Jerusalem to awake and stand up, because he was taking the cup of his wrath out of her hand (Isaiah 51:17–23). His people asked him to wake, and he answers by waking them. His own work of redemption is what makes their rising possible.

“Put on” is lâbash, properly to wrap around, and so to put on a garment or to clothe oneself. Zion is to dress first in her strength, a strength that God gives and she receives and wears. In Israel a city’s strength and security rested on the LORD’s protection: “except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” So a ruined Jerusalem looked to the nations like a city whose God had left her or was too weak to keep her, and the call to put on strength promises his protection restored.

Then she is to put on her beautiful garments in place of the rags of mourning and captivity. They stand for honour and dignity given back to her, and perhaps for the robes of a priestly people. God’s people are clothed in the same way in Christ, in whom we put on the new man, created after God in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24). Later Isaiah sounds the same call in other words: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee” (Isaiah 60:1).

Zion was the fortified hill within Jerusalem, and its name came to stand for the city as the place God chose to dwell. Here the two names stand side by side for one city, and through her for the whole people of God, the place and the people together. The LORD loves the gates of Zion (Psalm 87:2), and while she still sits in the dust he gives her back her true title, “the holy city”.

Verse 2 pictures Jerusalem as a captive woman sitting on the ground. Sitting in dust or putting it on oneself was a custom of deep mourning and humiliation, often after defeat in war, and Job’s friends did so when they came to mourn with him (Job 2:12). A psalm cries to God from the dust and asks him to rise and redeem his people (Psalm 44:25–26). The exile lasted about seventy years, as Jeremiah had foretold (Jeremiah 25:11), and now God tells the city to get up.

“Shake thyself” is nâʻar, to shake or toss about, to shake off or out. Jerusalem is to shake herself free of the dust and of all the defeat and shame it stood for. Then she is to “arise”, standing up from the ground, and then to “sit down”.

“For thus saith the LORD” gives the reason for the calls of verses 1 and 2, with the LORD’s own authority behind it.

“Ye have sold yourselves” uses mâkar, to sell, to hand over in exchange, and figuratively to surrender. In Israel people could sell themselves into service through debt or poverty, and a price had to be paid to buy them back. God uses that picture for the exile. By idolatry and by breaking his covenant, Israel handed themselves over to their enemies, as the covenant’s blessings and curses had warned (Deuteronomy 28).

“For nought” is chinnâm, a word formed from the word for favour, meaning gratis: free, for nothing, without cause, in vain. Israel’s sale brought them only emptiness, suffering and servitude. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and sin always pays its servants in that coin.

“Ye shall be redeemed” uses gâʼal, to redeem according to the law of kinship, that is, to be the next of kin and as such to buy back a relative’s land or person. The kinsman-redeemer, the go’el, was the nearest relative, with the right and the duty to buy back family property, to avenge a death, or to free a relative who had been sold into slavery (Leviticus 25:47–49). The LORD takes that place for his people. He had already called himself their redeemer when he promised to bring them out of Egypt (Exodus 6:6).

“Without money” uses keçeph, silver, and so money. The exiles will pay no ransom, and their freedom will come by God’s own power and covenant love, with no bargain struck with Babylon. That came true when Cyrus’s decree in 538 BC let the Jews go home, as God had promised through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29:10–14).

“The Lord GOD” is ʼĂdônây Yᵉhôvih. ʼĂdônây is “Lord”, used as a name of God only, the Master over all. Yᵉhôvih is a form of the LORD’s own covenant name written after ʼĂdônây, which Jewish readers pronounce another way to avoid repeating the same word, and that is why the KJV prints “GOD” in capitals. The one speaking is the sovereign Master and the faithful God who keeps his promises to Israel.

“My people went down aforetime into Egypt to sojourn there.” “Aforetime” reaches back to Israel’s beginnings. To sojourn, gûwr, is properly to turn aside from the road for a lodging, and so to stay as a guest. Jacob’s family went down to stay for a time, and later a new king enslaved them (Exodus 1:8–14). A psalm recalls how Israel came into Egypt and sojourned there (Psalm 105:23–25). God saw their affliction and heard their cry (Exodus 3:7–8), and he brought them out at the Passover (Exodus 12).

“And the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.” To oppress, ʻâshaq, is to press upon, and so to oppress, defraud, extort or wrong. Assyria conquered the northern kingdom in 722 BC and carried its people away (2 Kings 17:6), and it pressed hard on Judah and threatened Jerusalem itself in Hezekiah’s day (2 Kings 18:13–16). “Without cause” is ʼepheç, a word whose sense is an end or nothing further, used here to mean for nothing at all. On Assyria’s side there was no just cause for such cruelty.

Egypt at the start of Israel’s story and Assyria in recent memory stand together as the two great oppressions God’s people had known, and God brought them through both. He saw, he remembered, and he acted, and the exile in Babylon, which verse 5 turns to, will end the same way. The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble (Nahum 1:7–8).

The Servant of the next chapter suffered without cause as well: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). He bore that for our sins, and through him we are made free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2) and delivered from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, in whom we have redemption (Colossians 1:13–14).

“Now therefore, what have I here, saith the LORD.” God looks at his people in Babylon and asks what he has there, what good their captivity brings him. The question is a lament, full of grief and indignation, and it shows how closely he holds his people’s pain.

“That my people is taken away for nought” joins lâqach, to take or carry away, with chinnâm, the same word as “for nought” in verse 3. There Israel sold themselves for nothing. Here their captors take them for nothing, without cause, and with no just claim on them.

“Therefore my people shall know my name.” Because his name is scorned, God will make it known. “My people”, ʻam, a people gathered as one, runs through verses 4, 5 and 6, and the people the nations treat as nobody’s are claimed by God as his own.

To know, yâdaʻ, is properly to find out by seeing, and the word is used in a great many ways, including the closest personal knowledge, as when Adam knew Eve (Genesis 4:1). God’s people will know his name by seeing what he does for them: his faithfulness, his power and his care. Those who know his name put their trust in him (Psalm 9:10), and knowing the LORD is the mark of the new covenant he promises through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:34).

“In that day” uses yôwm, a day or a span of time, and in the prophets it means the time God appoints to act. It was fulfilled first in the return from Babylon, and it reaches on to the coming of the Messiah and the completion of God’s plan, when the glory of the LORD is revealed (Isaiah 40:5).

“That I am he that doth speak.” To speak, dâbar, is to speak, mention or tell, and Strong’s gives its root sense as to arrange. The God who speaks here is the God who spoke and the light came (Genesis 1:3), and his word always comes to pass. Every promise of these verses rests on it, and it sets him apart from the idols of Babylon, which have nothing to say.

“Behold, it is I.” God names himself and stands before his people in person. It echoes the name he gave Moses, I AM (Exodus 3:14). The people who heard the nations mock their God hear him answer for himself.

In Jesus that word was spoken face to face. The Word was made flesh (John 1:14), and Jesus manifested the Father’s name to those the Father gave him (John 17:6). He spoke of himself in the same way: “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25), and he said that before Abraham was, he is (John 8:58). Life eternal is to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3).

God speaks to Jerusalem while she is still in the dust, and he calls her by her best names, Zion and the holy city, before anything around her has changed. Her strength and her beautiful garments come from him, and her freedom comes without money, because the LORD is her Redeemer and pays the whole cost himself.

These verses also show who God is. He remembers Egypt and Assyria and every wrong his people have suffered. He grieves when they howl under cruel rulers, and he guards the honour of his name by setting them free. Above all he means to be known, and he comes to his people saying, “behold, it is I.” In Christ he has said it in person, and the city he is preparing is kept holy for ever. The call to awake and put on strength reaches all who belong to Christ, and it comes from the God who has already paid for their release.