Isaiah 51: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God calls the people who seek him to look back at Abraham and Sarah, one couple who became a nation, as proof that he can restore Zion's ruins and make her wastelands like a garden. He tells them not to fear men who wear out like clothing, because his rescue lasts while the heavens and the earth wear out. The chapter then calls on the LORD's arm to act as it did at the sea, and calls Jerusalem to wake up: God says he is taking the cup of his fury out of her hand and putting it into the hands of those who trampled her.

Claim by Claim

1. 51:1
   • The speaker calls those who pursue righteousness to listen to him.
   • The speaker calls those who seek the LORD to listen to him.
   • The hearers are told to look to the rock from which they were hewn.
   • The hearers are told to look to the quarry hollow from which they were dug out.
2. 51:2
   • The hearers are told to look to Abraham their father.
   • The hearers are told to look to Sarah, who gave them birth.
   • The LORD says that when he called Abraham, Abraham was one alone.
   • The LORD says he blessed Abraham.
   • The LORD says he made Abraham many.
3. 51:3
   • The LORD will comfort Zion.
   • The LORD will comfort all her ruined places.
   • The LORD will make her wilderness like Eden.
   • The LORD will make her desert like the garden of the LORD.
   • Joy and gladness will be found in her.
   • Thanksgiving and the sound of singing will be found in her.
4. 51:4
   • The speaker calls his people to pay attention to him.
   • The speaker calls his nation to give ear to him.
   • Instruction will go out from the speaker.
   • The speaker's justice will be a light to the peoples.
   • The speaker says he will set his justice in place, the verb being ambiguous between causing it to rest and doing it in an instant.
5. 51:5
   • The speaker's righteousness is near.
   • The speaker's salvation has gone forth.
   • The speaker's arms will judge the peoples.
   • The coastlands will wait for the speaker.
   • The coastlands will hope in the speaker's arm.
6. 51:6
   • The hearers are told to lift their eyes to the heavens.
   • The hearers are told to look at the earth beneath.
   • The heavens will vanish away like smoke.
   • The earth will wear out like a garment.
   • Those who dwell on the earth will die, the comparison being ambiguous between dying in the same manner and dying like gnats.
   • The speaker's salvation will be forever.
   • The speaker's righteousness will not be broken.
7. 51:7
   • The speaker calls those who know righteousness to listen to him.
   • The speaker calls the people who have his instruction in their heart to listen to him.
   • The hearers are told not to fear the reproach of men.
   • The hearers are told not to be dismayed by men's revilings.
8. 51:8
   • The moth will eat those revilers like a garment.
   • The worm will eat them like wool.
   • The speaker's righteousness will be forever.
   • The speaker's salvation will last from generation to generation.
9. 51:9
   • The arm of the LORD is called to awake.
   • The arm of the LORD is called to put on strength.
   • The arm of the LORD is called to awake as in the days of old, in generations long past.
   • The arm of the LORD is asked whether it was not the one that cut Rahab in pieces.
   • The arm of the LORD is asked whether it was not the one that pierced the sea monster.
10. 51:10
    • The arm of the LORD is asked whether it was not the one that dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep.
    • The arm of the LORD is asked whether it was not the one that made the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to cross over.
11. 51:11
    • The ransomed of the LORD will return.
    • They will come to Zion with singing.
    • Everlasting joy will be upon their heads.
    • They will obtain gladness and joy.
    • Sorrow and sighing will flee away.
12. 51:12
    • The speaker declares that he himself is the one who comforts them.
    • The speaker asks who the hearer is that she should fear a man who dies.
    • The speaker asks why she should fear a son of man who is made like grass.
13. 51:13
    • The hearer has forgotten the LORD her maker.
    • The LORD stretched out the heavens.
    • The LORD laid the foundation of the earth.
    • The hearer has been in dread continually, all day long, because of the fury of the oppressor.
    • The oppressor set himself to destroy.
    • The speaker asks where the fury of the oppressor is.
14. 51:14
    • The one bowed down in captivity hastens to be released.
    • He will not die and go down to the pit.
    • His bread will not fail.
15. 51:15
    • The speaker declares that he is the LORD the hearer's God.
    • The LORD stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.
    • The LORD of hosts is his name.
16. 51:16
    • The speaker has put his words in the hearer's mouth.
    • The speaker has covered the hearer in the shadow of his hand.
    • The purpose is to plant the heavens.
    • The purpose is to lay the foundation of the earth.
    • The purpose is to say to Zion, 'You are my people.'
17. 51:17
    • Jerusalem is called to rouse herself and stand up.
    • Jerusalem has drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury.
    • Jerusalem has drunk the goblet, the cup of staggering.
    • Jerusalem has drained that cup to the dregs.
18. 51:18
    • There is no one to guide her among all the sons she bore.
    • There is no one to take her by the hand among all the sons she brought up.
19. 51:19
    • Two things have befallen the hearer.
    • The speaker asks who will grieve for her.
    • The calamities are devastation and destruction.
    • The calamities are famine and sword.
    • The speaker asks how, or by whom, he shall comfort her.
20. 51:20
    • Her sons have fainted.
    • They lie at the head of every street.
    • They lie like a wild antelope caught in a net.
    • They are full of the fury of the LORD.
    • They are full of the rebuke of her God.
21. 51:21
    • The afflicted one is told to hear this.
    • The one addressed is drunken.
    • She is not drunken with wine.
22. 51:22
    • The words are spoken by her Lord, the LORD, her God.
    • Her God pleads the cause of his people.
    • The LORD has taken the cup of staggering out of her hand.
    • That cup is the goblet of his fury.
    • She will not drink it again.
23. 51:23
    • The LORD will put the cup into the hand of those who afflict her.
    • Those afflicters said to her, 'Bow down, that we may pass over.'
    • She made her back like the ground for them.
    • She made her back like a street for those who passed over.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

51:1

"LORD" in small capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four consonants (YHWH); Jewish readers said "the Lord" aloud instead, and English Bibles have followed that practice ever since. The rock and the quarry are a picture of ancestry: the listeners are told to look at the stone they were chipped from, meaning the family they came from, named in the next verse.

51:2

Abraham and Sarah were remembered as the first ancestors of Israel, a couple called out of Mesopotamia who had no children until extreme old age. The point of "he was only one man" is the contrast: a single childless person became a whole nation.

51:3

Zion was originally the name of the fortified hill in Jerusalem, and came to be used as a name for the city itself and for the people living there. Prophets often speak of Zion as a woman, a mother, a widow, a city addressed by name. Eden and "the garden of the LORD" are the same place, the well-watered garden of Genesis; naming it here is a way of saying "as fertile as land can be."

51:4

The Hebrew word behind "law" (torah) is wider than a statute book. It covers teaching, instruction, and authoritative direction of any kind, which is why the second half of the verse pairs it with "justice" rather than with punishment.

51:5

"Arm" is a standard Hebrew figure for power in action, the way English speaks of a strong hand. "Coastlands" translates a Hebrew word for islands and far shores, the distant lands around and beyond the Mediterranean, shorthand for the edges of the known world.

51:6

The last clause is genuinely uncertain in Hebrew. The same short word can mean "in the same way" (so the King James: people die as the sky and earth wear out) or can be read as a word for gnats or vermin (so some modern versions: people die like gnats). Both readings are old.

51:8

Cloth was made by hand and cost a lot. Moths in the wool could ruin a family's clothes for good.

51:9

Rahab here is not the woman of Jericho but a name for a sea monster of ancient Near Eastern storytelling, defeated at the beginning of the world; in some prophetic passages Rahab is also used as a nickname for Egypt. "The dragon" (Hebrew tannin) is the same kind of creature, a sea serpent of the deep. The verse deliberately lets the monster and Egypt overlap, since the next verse moves to the drying of the sea.

51:10

The drying of the sea and the road through its depths refer to Israel's escape from Egypt, when the water parted and the people walked across on dry ground. "The great deep" is the same word used for the primeval ocean in the creation account, which is why the sea monster of the previous verse and the escape from Egypt run together here.

51:11

"Bought back" (King James "redeemed") is a commercial word from family law: buying a relative out of slavery or debt, or buying back land the family had lost. Applied to a nation it means being reclaimed by someone with a family obligation to do it. This verse repeats, almost word for word, an earlier passage in Isaiah.

51:12

The King James "son of man" is a Hebrew idiom that simply means a human being, a member of the human race; it carries no special title here. The pairing "a man... a son of man" is ordinary poetic repetition.

51:14

This verse is one of the more obscure sentences in the book, and translators differ widely over the opening words, a stooping or bowed captive, a prisoner hurrying, or simply one soon to be released. "The pit" is a cistern or underground hole used as a lockup; prisoners were let down into them and could starve there.

51:15

The Hebrew verb can mean either to stir the sea up or to still it, and the King James took it a third way, as the parting of the sea at the exodus. "LORD of hosts" (here "LORD of Armies") is a fixed title; "hosts" means massed armies, and the phrase was understood variously of Israel's fighting forces, of heavenly armies, or of the stars as a marshalled array.

51:16

Who "you" is here is disputed and the Hebrew does not settle it: the words could be addressed to the prophet, to the servant figure of the surrounding chapters, or to Zion herself, who is addressed directly in the next verse. Putting words in someone's mouth is the standard idiom for commissioning a spokesman.

51:17

A cup handed to someone to drink is a stock image in the prophets for a share of punishment being dealt out, drunk down to the sediment at the bottom. The wine in the cup makes the drinker stagger and collapse, which is why the city is pictured in the following verses as a woman too drunk to stand.

51:18

A woman helpless with drink would be helped up and steadied by her grown sons. The city has none, because her "sons", her inhabitants, are the ones described in verse 20 as lying in the streets.

51:19

The Hebrew says "these two," then lists four items; they are read as two pairs, ruin with destruction and famine with the sword. "The sword" is the standard shorthand for war, as "hunger" is for siege and crop failure.

51:20

The animal is a wild ox or a large antelope, an animal known for its strength, thrashing itself useless once tangled in a hunter's net. "The top of every street" means the corners where the streets begin, the open, public places where the collapsed bodies could not be missed.

51:22

"Takes up the case" is courtroom language: to act as someone's advocate, argue their side, and win the verdict for them. The doubled title in the King James ("thy Lord the LORD") renders two different Hebrew words, the ordinary word for a master and the personal divine name.

51:23

Conquerors are shown in ancient Near Eastern reliefs and inscriptions treading on the necks or bodies of the defeated, a public act of humiliation rather than a way of killing. The command "lie down so we can walk over you" belongs to that practice.