Isaiah 60:10

The last line of verse 10 holds the key to the whole passage: “for in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour have I had mercy on thee.” The ruin Jerusalem had known came from God’s own hand. When the forces of Nebuchadnezzar burned the temple and broke down the walls of Jerusalem in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:8–10), the LORD was bringing his wrath on his people’s idolatry and disobedience. The chapter just before this one confesses that sin and holds out the promise of redemption (Isaiah 59), and chapter 60 answers it with light. These prophecies speak to a people who had endured, or were about to endure, the destruction of their city and the exile in Babylon.

The word for wrath, qetseph, means wrath or anger. God’s anger at sin is just, and the exile showed that he holds his own people to account. In the same breath he speaks of his favour, râtsôwn, his good pleasure and delight, and of his mercy. The verb râcham means to love, and especially to have compassion. It is a deep and tender pity, like a mother’s love for her child, and it moves God to restore the people he has disciplined. The smiting and the mercy both come from him, and he used the one to bring his people to the other. A psalm says the same: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever” (Psalm 103:8–10). His wrath came first, and his mercy has the last word.

Verse 11 opens with “Therefore,” tying the open gates to the promises before it: the light that has risen on Zion and the nations drawn to it (Isaiah 60:1–3). The word for gates, shaʻar, means an opening, a door or gate, from a root meaning to split or open. A city’s gates were the centre of its life. Trade was done there, cases were judged there, and the defence of the city turned on them. They were shut at nightfall and whenever danger threatened, against enemies, robbers and wild animals, and Jerusalem had suffered siege and destruction many times.

So when God says “thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night,” he is promising a peace and safety so complete that the gates can stand open, and a welcome that has no closing hour. Tâmîyd, “continually,” speaks of what endures or is regularly repeated: always, constantly. Strong’s traces it to an unused root meaning to stretch. “Day nor night” sets the two halves of time side by side to mean all of it.

The open gates have a purpose: “that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought.” The riches of the nations come in, and their kings are led in with them. The verse leaves unnamed the one who brings them, and the passive “may be brought” points to God’s hand drawing them, so that they come willingly and by his doing. John saw the same open gates in the New Jerusalem: “And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it” (Revelation 21:24–26).

Verse 12 sets a warning beside the welcome: “For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” “Thee” is Zion, the city of God’s presence and the centre of his saving plan, so to refuse to serve her is to refuse God himself. “Nation and kingdom” together take in every kind of people and state. The word for nation, gôwy, is used above all of the peoples outside Israel, the Gentile nations, and it returns in “those nations” at the end of the verse.

To serve, ʻâbad, means to work, labour, serve, till or worship, and the verse speaks of nations that withhold that service and set themselves against God’s order. Their end is told twice, with the second line strengthening the first. To perish, ʼâbad, properly means to wander away or be lost, and by implication to perish. To be “utterly wasted” is chârab, to be destroyed and lie in ruins, so that settled life is no longer possible there.

The psalm gives the kings of the earth the same warning: “Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:10–12). Daniel foretells a kingdom set up by the God of heaven that will outlast every other and stand for ever (Daniel 2:44), and in Revelation voices in heaven say, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The other side of the warning is blessing, as when the law promises good to a people that obeys the LORD (Deuteronomy 28:1–14). Nations answer to God just as people do, and those that take their place in his purposes flourish.

Verse 13 brings the best of the natural world to God’s house. The word kâbôwd means glory, honour, splendour and wealth, and “the glory of Lebanon” is the splendour of its forests, the most prized thing that land produced. Lebanon was famous for durable timber, cedar, fir and pine, which builders sought for temples and palaces. Solomon built the first temple with timber from Lebanon supplied by Hiram of Tyre (1 Kings 5:6), so the promise recalls the temple’s golden age and goes further still.

Three trees are named: the fir tree, bᵉrôwsh, the pine tree, tidhâr, and the box, tᵉʼashshûwr. They come “together,” yachad, as one offering of many kinds of choice and lasting wood, and they come “to beautify the place of my sanctuary.” To beautify, pâʼar, is to adorn and give glory, making the house beautiful in honour of the one who lives there. The sanctuary, miqdâsh, is a consecrated or holy place. The word is used of idols’ shrines as well, and here it is the LORD’s own dwelling in Jerusalem. As the nations bring their flocks for God’s altar earlier in the chapter, here the forests of the earth are given to his house. Haggai heard the same promise, that as the nations come the LORD will fill his house with glory (Haggai 2:7).

Then God says, “and I will make the place of my feet glorious.” The place, mâqôwm, is a place or spot, and regel is the ordinary word for a foot. God speaks of himself in human terms, and the place where his feet rest is his dwelling, the temple or Jerusalem, where his presence is. The verb kâbad means to be heavy, and in a good sense to be rich or honoured, and in this form it means to make weighty with honour, to make glorious. The verse begins and ends with glory, kâbôwd in its first line and kâbad in its last. The trees adorn the house, and God himself makes it glorious by his presence, so its glory comes from the God who dwells there.

In verse 14 bên, son, returns: “The sons also of them that afflicted thee.” These are the descendants of Zion’s oppressors, so the change reaches into the generations to come and lasts. To afflict, ʻânâh, is to press down, humble, deal hardly with or weaken, and it sums up what Judah had suffered at the hands of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and others. Now their sons “shall come bending unto thee,” and all who despised her “shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet.”

The verb shâchâh means to bow down or lie prostrate, especially in homage to a king or to God. In that world, bowing at the feet of a victor or a sovereign was the plainest sign of submission and homage. Isaiah has used the picture before: “they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet” (Isaiah 49:23). A psalm says, “Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him” (Psalm 72:11). The verse before spoke of the place of God’s feet, and here Zion’s old enemies bow at the soles of her feet.

The verse gives the meaning of their homage in what they say: “they shall call thee, The city of the LORD, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” In bowing to Zion they acknowledge God. Jerusalem’s honour comes from her bond with the LORD, who owns her and dwells in her. Qâdôwsh, holy, means sacred and set apart, and as a name for God it speaks of his perfect purity and majesty. “The Holy One of Israel” is Isaiah’s own title for God, used over twenty-five times in the book, and it joins God’s holiness to his covenant faithfulness to Israel. Zechariah gives the same promise, that the LORD will return to Zion and “dwell in the midst of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 8:3), and he foresees the nations going up to Jerusalem “to worship the King, the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 14:16). The chapter goes on to promise that Zion’s people will all be righteous (Isaiah 60:21).

This vindication is God’s work. He is the one who sets things right, and his people leave it in his hands, so the verse gives them hope and calls for no vengeance of their own.

The return from exile began to fulfil it, and its full scope still lies ahead, because Jerusalem has yet to see gates that stand open for ever, every nation gathered, and a peace that lasts. Believers differ on the shape of that fulfilment. Some hold that it describes a restored Jerusalem on earth, which the nations will one day honour as the city of the LORD. Others hold that it is fulfilled in the church, the spiritual Zion, where people “out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9) are gathered through the gospel, since believers are already “come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:22). Others again hold that both are in view, with a promise to Jerusalem itself and a picture of the gospel’s reach that belong together. On every reading the promise reaches its goal in the New Jerusalem that comes down from God, where he dwells with his people (Revelation 21:1–4), its gates are never shut, and the nations bring their glory into it (Revelation 21).

The light that draws the nations to Zion shines in Jesus, who said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The wrath of verse 10 fell on him at the cross, where he became “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and through his sacrifice God’s favour and mercy now reach all who believe. Christ “is the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and through him the gates of salvation stand open to every people.

Paul describes the strangers of verse 10 coming in. Gentiles who were once far off “are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13), who has broken down “the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14). They are “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19), and they are built together into a holy temple, with Christ himself the chief corner stone (Ephesians 2:20–22). Peter says that believers, “as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). The diverse gifts of believers from every nation adorn that house (Romans 12:4–8), much as Lebanon’s trees adorn the sanctuary in verse 13.

Christ is himself the glory of God, “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), and in him God came to dwell among us (John 1:14). The gathering of the nations goes on through the commission he gave his church to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19–20), fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed. Those who bow in verse 14 bring him their worship and allegiance, for at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). The peace of the open gates belongs to the reign of the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), and “of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33).

These verses show us who God is. He disciplines his people in wrath, and he restores them in favour and tender mercy. He turns those who tore down Jerusalem’s walls into those who build them, and he opens his city to the nations day and night. He rules every kingdom, and the nation that sets itself against him comes to ruin. He takes the finest things of the earth for his house, and his own presence makes the place of his feet glorious.

All of it comes from his favour. The city’s walls, its gates, its wealth and its honour are his gifts, and the name the nations give it at the end, “The city of the LORD, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel,” tells whose it is. If you belong to Christ, you were once among the strangers of verse 10, and by his blood you now stand inside the open gates as a citizen of the city (Ephesians 2:19).