Isaiah 54:5

Isaiah 54 comes straight after the Servant who suffers for his people in Isaiah 53, and it belongs to the chapters of comfort that begin at Isaiah 40 (Isaiah 40–55). The chapter opens with “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear” (Isaiah 54:1), and Isaiah 54:1–3 promises her so many children that she must enlarge her tent. Verse 4 turns to the wound under the barrenness, the shame she has carried. The people first addressed were the exiles in Babylon. Jerusalem had been destroyed, the temple razed and many of its people deported, and they understood their suffering as God’s judgment on their unfaithfulness and idolatry.

“Fear not” is a word God speaks to his people again and again in Isaiah, as in “Fear thou not; for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10). The verb yârêʼ means to fear or to be afraid, and it can also mean to revere. Here it is a command to lay down dread and trust the God who is speaking.

Four words for shame follow, one on top of another. “Ashamed” is bûwsh, from a root meaning to turn pale, and it also carries the sense of being disappointed. “Confounded” is kâlam, to be humiliated or made to blush in public, and “put to shame” is châphêr, which again speaks of blushing and disappointment. God says the same promise twice over in different words so that every kind of disgrace, public and inward, is covered by it.

Then he names the two shames she will forget. “The shame of thy youth” most likely means Israel’s early history of unfaithfulness, the idolatry and rebellion that brought the covenant curses and the judgments that followed. “The reproach of thy widowhood” pictures the exile itself, when the nation lived desolate and unprotected and felt that her divine husband had left her. In Israel a barren woman carried real shame, since barrenness was often taken as a sign of God’s disfavour and it threatened the family line, and a widow was left vulnerable, often neglected, with no one to protect her. The word for reproach, cherpâh, means disgrace or scorn cast on someone, and it comes from a root meaning to strip or expose.

Verse 5 gives the reason Zion can stop fearing. It stacks up names for God, and each one tells her something about the one who has bound himself to her.

Verse 6 puts Zion’s grief into words before it answers it. “The LORD hath called thee” uses qârâʼ, to call out to, to address by name or to invite. God is the one who reaches out and summons her back, and her own merit or effort plays no part.

He calls her “as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit”. “Forsaken” is ʻâzab, to loosen, let go, relinquish or leave destitute, the word for a woman whose husband has left her alone and without support. “Grieved in spirit” describes the sorrow within. In Israel the grief of barrenness, divorce or rejection weighed especially hard on a woman, whose standing was so often tied to bearing children and keeping her marriage.

“A wife of youth”, in Hebrew eshet ne’urim, is a bride married in one’s early years, the wife of a long and first love. For God and Israel this points back to the beginning of the nation, when he made his covenant with her at Sinai (Exodus 19). “When thou wast refused” uses mâʼaç, to spurn, cast away, despise or reject. She has felt more than left behind. She has felt despised. God names that feeling honestly, and then he calls her back as the wife he married in her youth.

“Saith thy God” closes the verse. The word for God is Elohim, with “thy” making it personal, and the promise carries his own authority. The same God speaks through the prophets elsewhere: “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you” (Jeremiah 3:14), and Paul answers his own question about Israel with “God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew” (Romans 11:1–2). The call of this verse leads on to the everlasting kindness, peace and safety of the rest of the chapter (Isaiah 54:7–17), where God promises that “the covenant of my peace” will stand (Isaiah 54:10).

Verses 7 and 8 make the same promise twice, and each time a short word of judgment is followed by a long word of mercy. “For a small moment have I forsaken thee” uses ʻâzab again, the very word that described the forsaken woman in verse 6. God owns that the leaving was his. “Small moment” joins qâṭân, small or slight, to regaʻ, which Strong’s describes as a wink of the eyes, a very short space of time. The exile lasted about seventy years and was a long and devastating time for those who lived through it. Measured against God’s everlasting love and the future he has planned for his people, it was a moment.

“But with great mercies will I gather thee.” “Great” is gâdôwl, and “mercies” is racham, compassion, a word that also means the womb. It speaks of tender love like a mother’s for the child she carried, and its plural form here, rachamim, makes that compassion abundant. “Gather” is qâbats, to collect, gather or assemble, the word for people being brought together for a common purpose. It promises the return from exile and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and with it the restoring of the people to God himself. It brings to mind a shepherd collecting his scattered flock.

Verse 8 says it again. “In a little wrath” translates shetseph qetseph. qetseph is the ordinary word for wrath or anger, and here the wrath is limited and lasts only “for a moment”, regaʻ once more. “I hid my face from thee” (çâthar pânîym) means that God withdrew his favour, protection and evident presence, which for Israel meant judgment and exile. Then comes the promise: “with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee”. “Kindness” is cheçed, God’s steadfast love and covenant loyalty, the faithful love he has pledged and keeps when his people fail. “Everlasting” is ʻôwlâm. “Have mercy” is râcham, the verb from the same root as the “mercies” of verse 7, the tender compassion of a parent for a child.

The verse is signed “saith the LORD thy Redeemer”, bringing back the go’el of verse 5. The one who promises everlasting kindness is the kinsman who has bound himself to deliver his people, restore what they lost and keep his word.

Scripture says the same about God’s anger and his favour in many places. “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). “For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies” (Lamentations 3:31–32). “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (Psalm 103:8–11). Moses calls him “the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him” (Deuteronomy 7:9).

These promises come right after Isaiah 53, and the Servant’s work there is what they rest on. Because the Servant “hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) and his soul was made “an offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:10), the woman “forsaken and grieved in spirit” can be called back. Chapter 53 tells of the suffering that makes redemption possible, and chapter 54 tells of what it wins: a barren, forsaken wife restored, her shame removed and her husband’s kindness promised for ever.

The New Testament shows every name in verse 5 belonging to Jesus Christ. He is the Maker, for “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). He is the husband of his church, who “loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:25–27). He is the Redeemer, “who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity” (Titus 2:14), and we were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18–19), an eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). An unclean spirit cried out that he was “the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). After his resurrection he said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), and he bears the name “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS” (Revelation 19:16).

He also carried the shame and the forsaking that this passage removes from us. He endured the cross, “despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2), so that his people would be ashamed no more. On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), bearing the weight of our sin and the Father’s wrath against it. The wrath Israel knew in exile points ahead to that greater wrath poured out on the Servant, and the cross is where the brief judgment against sin was spent. Now God says of his people, “their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12), under a better covenant that cannot be broken (Hebrews 8:6–13). “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

So the gathering of verse 7 continues in Christ, the Good Shepherd, who brings his sheep from every nation into “one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16), and God’s plan is to gather all things together in him (Ephesians 1:10). His call to the forsaken sounds in “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden” (Matthew 11:28), and those who come hear that “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The story ends at the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9), where God wipes away every tear and the former things pass away (Revelation 21:4).

The God who speaks here is your Maker, and he has bound himself to you as a husband and as your nearest kinsman. Your past failures and the shame others have put on you are real, and he deals with them himself, so that they lose their hold on who you are. You can lay down self-condemnation and the weight of other people’s judgments and trust his forgiveness.

When God seems far away or his discipline feels heavy, this passage gives you the measure of it. The hiding of his face is for a moment, and his kindness is everlasting. He has called you back by name, and the same Lord who commands the hosts of heaven and will be called the God of the whole earth has promised to gather you with great mercies.