Isaiah 62:12

Isaiah 40–66 is often called the Book of Consolation, because it speaks hope, restoration and comfort to Israel. Its backdrop is the Babylonian exile and the people’s longing to go home. After the sin and desolation of Isaiah 59, chapters 60 to 62 turn to restoration and joy (Isaiah 60–62). Chapter 60 pictures light dawning on Zion and drawing the nations to her, and chapter 61 brings the messenger anointed by the Spirit, who carries good tidings to the afflicted and proclaims the acceptable year of the LORD.

Isaiah 62 is given over to the LORD’s zeal for Jerusalem. He will keep on until her righteousness goes “forth as brightness” (Isaiah 62:1). She will be “a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God” (Isaiah 62:3). He will rejoice over her as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride (Isaiah 62:5), and he sets watchmen on her walls who keep calling on him until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth (Isaiah 62:6–7). In Isaiah 62:4 he promises that the names Forsaken (Azubah) and Desolate (Shemamah) will be taken away and replaced with names of delight.

All of Isaiah 62:1–9 leads up to these three verses, where the promise is set in motion. The road is built, the news is announced, and the new names are given.

Verse 10 is a string of five commands, and two of them are doubled. The first verb, ʻâbar, means to cross over or to pass through, and saying it twice (“Go through, go through the gates”) gives the call its urgency. The people of Jerusalem are to go out through the city’s gates, beyond its walls, to meet those who are coming home and make ready for their arrival. God has promised the restoration, and he calls his people to take part in preparing for it.

“Prepare” translates pânâh, a verb whose basic sense is to turn or to face. Here it is used of getting the road ready for “the people”.

“Cast up, cast up the highway” uses çâlal, to heap up or mound up, which is the word for building a raised road. The doubled command calls for real labour, filling the hollows and raising a level surface. The highway, mᵉçillâh, is a main thoroughfare, a built road that is plain to see and easy to travel. Kings of that day often had roads prepared for their triumphal entries and for moving armies or whole populations, and a people who had been carried away by force would know what a safe, open road home meant.

“Gather out the stones” uses çâqal, to clear of stones. The stones, ʼeben, are the rocks that would trip travellers and slow a large company on the move, and clearing them is a basic part of making any road. They also make a picture. Whatever stands in the way of God’s people coming to him, whether sin, doubt, opposition or division among them, is the kind of thing this verse calls his people to clear away.

Verse 11 opens and closes with “Behold”, the Hebrew hinneh, which appears three times in the verse. Each one calls for attention and marks what follows as certain. The speaker is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, which Strong’s gives as “the self-Existent or Eternal One”. The announcement comes from him, so its fulfilment is sure.

He has proclaimed it “unto the end of the world”, literally the end of the earth, qâtseh ʼerets. This is a public message meant for all humanity, and the farthest places hear it. Isaiah speaks the same way of the Servant of the LORD: “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

The message itself is short. “Say ye” (ʼâmar) sends God’s messengers to carry it. “The daughter of Zion” is a tender way of speaking of Jerusalem and its people, as though the city were a beloved daughter, and the words are addressed straight to her. “Thy salvation cometh” (yeshaʻ, bôwʼ) is the heart of it. The noun yeshaʻ means deliverance, safety, liberty, prosperity and saving, from a root that Strong’s gives as “to be open, wide, free”. It covers rescue from enemies and oppression, and it also covers the spiritual well-being and lasting peace of a people restored to God. The verb “cometh” is a participle in Hebrew and pictures that salvation as already on its way.

Verse 12 uses the verb for calling or naming, qârâʼ, twice: “they shall call them” and “thou shalt be called”. In Israel a name often marked a person’s character or a change in their standing, as when Jacob was renamed Israel (Genesis 32:28). To be called Forsaken or Desolate was a deep mark of shame. The people who came back after the exile found a ruined city, had to rebuild both Jerusalem and their life with God, and felt forsaken by him and shamed among the nations. God answers that shame with four names, and each one rests on what he has done.

The first two names belong to the people. “The holy people” (qôdesh, ʻam) means a people set apart for God by his own choice and claim. Moses had said it at the beginning: “For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 7:6). “The redeemed of the LORD” tells where that holiness comes from. The verb gâʼal belongs to the law of kinship. The redeemer was the next of kin, who bought back a relative’s land, married his widow, or avenged his blood. God calls himself his people’s kinsman, who steps in to set them free from bondage and shame and to bring them back to himself. The word looks back to the exodus, when Moses sang, “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed” (Exodus 15:13), and David blesses the LORD “Who redeemeth thy life from destruction” (Psalm 103:2–4).

Then the verse turns to the city itself and speaks to her as “thou”. “Sought out” translates dârash, which means to seek, to inquire of, to require, or to care for. Jerusalem had looked abandoned, and the LORD names her as the city he has sought and cares for. His love for her is the love he declared through Jeremiah: “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).

“A city not forsaken” answers directly to the old name Azubah, Forsaken, of verse 4. The verb ʻâzab means to loosen, to leave or to forsake, and here God says it of his city with a “not” in front of it. That is the covenant promise Moses gave Israel: “he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deuteronomy 31:6). The shame of desolation is over, and the city that was left in ruins becomes the city the LORD keeps.

These verses look ahead to Jesus Christ. He is himself the way that is prepared: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Hebrews calls the access he opened “a new and living way” (Hebrews 10:20). By his perfect life, his death for sin and his resurrection he has cleared the road of the stones that blocked our way to God, which are sin, condemnation and death.

He is also the standard lifted up for all the nations. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14), and Jesus said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32). His cross is the rallying point where he gathers his people from every tribe and tongue.

He is the salvation announced to the daughter of Zion. When old Simeon held the infant Jesus he said, “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:30). Zechariah told the same daughter of Zion, “behold, thy King cometh unto thee” (Zechariah 9:9), and Matthew records that word fulfilled when Jesus rode into Jerusalem: “Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass” (Matthew 21:5). His first coming brought salvation, and the promise that his reward is with him looks on to his return, when he will judge the living and the dead.

The new names belong to his people now. Peter calls them “an holy nation” whom God has “called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9). They are the redeemed, for in Christ “we have redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7), and Jesus is the kinsman who bought them back. They are sought out, because “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). And they are kept, for he promised, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20), and God has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). The vision ends in the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God, with the great voice saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:2–3).

These verses show a God who brings his scattered people home and sees to every part of it. He has the road built up, the stones cleared and the banner raised, and he sends his own announcement to the end of the earth so that everyone may hear it. He comes in person, and he brings his reward and his work with him.

They also show how God deals with shame. Jerusalem had been called Forsaken and Desolate, and he gives her names that rest on his own work: holy, because he set her people apart, redeemed, because he bought them back as their kinsman, sought out, because he cared for her, and kept, because he stays with her. In Christ those names are given to everyone he gathers, and they stand on what he has done. If you belong to him, the LORD who spoke these words calls you by them.