Isaiah 54: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD speaks to a childless and abandoned wife, and tells her to sing and to make her tent larger because her children will spread out and settle empty cities. He says he turned away from her for a moment but is taking her back with lasting kindness, and swears not to be angry with her again, just as he swore after Noah's flood that the waters would not cover the earth again. He promises to rebuild her with precious stones, to teach her children himself, and to keep her safe from attack. The chapter closes by saying no weapon made against her will succeed, and that this is what the LORD's servants receive from him.

Claim by Claim

1. 54:1
   • The barren woman who has not given birth is commanded to sing for joy.
   • The woman who has not gone into labor is commanded to break forth into song and cry aloud.
   • The children of the desolate woman are more numerous than the children of the woman who has a husband.
   • The LORD said this.
2. 54:2
   • The addressed woman is commanded to widen the place of her tent.
   • She is commanded to have the curtains of her dwellings stretched out.
   • She is commanded not to hold back.
   • She is commanded to lengthen her tent cords.
   • She is commanded to make her tent stakes strong.
3. 54:3
   • She will spread out to the right and to the left.
   • Her offspring will take possession of nations.
   • Her offspring will settle the desolate cities.
4. 54:4
   • She is commanded not to fear.
   • She will not be put to shame.
   • She is commanded not to be humiliated.
   • She will not be disgraced.
   • She will forget the shame of her youth.
   • She will no longer remember the reproach of her widowhood.
5. 54:5
   • The one who made her is her husband.
   • His name is the LORD of hosts.
   • Her redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
   • He will be called the God of the whole earth.
6. 54:6
   • The LORD has called her like a wife who was abandoned and grieved in spirit.
   • The LORD has called her like a wife taken in youth who was rejected.
   • Her God said this.
7. 54:7
   • God forsook her for a brief moment.
   • God will gather her back with great compassion.
8. 54:8
   • In an outburst of anger God hid his face from her for a moment.
   • With everlasting steadfast love God will have compassion on her.
   • The LORD her redeemer said this.
9. 54:9
   • This situation is to God like the waters of Noah.
   • God swore that the waters of Noah would never again pass over the earth.
   • God has likewise sworn not to be angry with her.
   • God has likewise sworn not to rebuke her.
10. 54:10
    • The mountains may depart.
    • The hills may be shaken from their place.
    • God's steadfast love will not depart from her.
    • God's covenant of peace will not be shaken.
    • The LORD who has compassion on her said this.
11. 54:11
    • She is addressed as afflicted, storm-tossed, and not comforted.
    • God will set her stones in antimony.
    • God will lay her foundations with sapphires.
12. 54:12
    • God will make her battlements of ruby.
    • God will make her gates of sparkling gemstones.
    • God will make her whole boundary of precious stones.
13. 54:13
    • All her children will be taught by the LORD.
    • The peace of her children will be great.
14. 54:14
    • She will be established in righteousness.
    • She is to be far from oppression.
    • She will not fear.
    • She is to be far from terror.
    • Terror will not come near her.
15. 54:15
    • Someone will certainly attack or stir up strife against her.
    • Such an attack does not come from God.
    • Whoever attacks her will fall; whether he falls before her or falls over to her side is left unresolved.
16. 54:16
    • God created the smith who blows on the coals in the fire.
    • That smith produces a weapon fit for its work.
    • God created the destroyer to ruin.
17. 54:17
    • No weapon formed against her will succeed.
    • She will condemn every tongue that rises against her in judgment.
    • This is the inheritance of the servants of the LORD.
    • Their vindication comes from God.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

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

54:1

Throughout this chapter the one addressed is a single woman ("you" is feminine singular in Hebrew) and Hebrew poets regularly speak of a city and its people as a woman. In that society a woman who bore no children had no standing in the household and no one to provide for her in old age; childlessness was treated as a public disgrace, which is why the command to sing is startling. "The woman who was left alone" is one deserted or widowed. Where LORD is printed in capitals it stands in for God's personal name, written in Hebrew with four consonants (YHWH), which Jewish readers do not say aloud.

54:2

Tents were made of panels of woven goat hair. To house a larger household you added panels, which meant longer guy ropes and stakes driven further out and deeper to hold the wider roof steady. The picture is a family outgrowing the home it lives in.

54:3

People oriented themselves facing the sunrise, so "the right hand" is south and "the left" is north: the promise covers every direction. KJV's "Gentiles" translates a Hebrew word meaning simply "the nations", peoples other than Israel. "Seed" in KJV means offspring or descendants.

54:4

A widow had no husband's legal protection and often no property of her own, which left her near the bottom of the social order; "reproach" is the open contempt others showed her. What "the shame of your youth" refers to is not specified in the Hebrew.

54:5

"LORD of hosts" means LORD of armies, the word covers armed forces, and also the ranked armies of heaven. The word behind "Redeemer" is go'el: the near relative whose duty it was to buy back family land the family had been forced to sell, to buy a relative out of debt-slavery, and to take up a family member's cause in a dispute. It is a family and legal word before it is a religious one.

54:6

"A wife of youth" is the woman a man married when they were both young. Under the customs of the time a husband could dismiss his wife; a dismissed woman went back to her father's house, to public shame and often poverty.

54:8

Hiding the face is a standard idiom for withdrawing favor, refusing to look at, listen to, or have dealings with someone.

54:9

This refers to the flood in Genesis 6–9 and to the promise God made afterwards (Genesis 9:11) that flood waters would never again destroy the earth. The point of comparison is the sworn, once-for-all character of that promise.

54:10

A covenant was a formal sworn agreement, of the kind kings made in treaties and families made in marriage, binding both sides and normally sealed with an oath. The "peace" in it is Hebrew shalom, wholeness, safety and well-being, not merely the absence of fighting.

54:11

The word behind KJV's "fair colours" is the Hebrew name for antimony, the dark powder women used to line their eyes; stones set in it would be framed the way eye paint frames an eye. The stone KJV calls "sapphire" is more probably lapis lazuli, the deep blue stone ancient jewellers prized; the modern sapphire was not yet in use.

54:12

The Hebrew names of these stones cannot be matched with certainty to particular modern gems; "agate" and "carbuncle" (an old English word for a glowing red stone, probably garnet) are traditional guesses. "Windows" may instead mean the topmost points or battlements of the wall, and "borders" means the boundary wall enclosing the city.

54:13

In 1611 English "taught of the LORD" meant taught by the LORD. "Peace" is again shalom: security and flourishing, which is why some translations render it "prosperity."

54:14

"Righteousness" translates Hebrew tsedaqah, which covers both doing what is right and being publicly recognized as in the right. Here it is the footing the city is set on, the way a building is set on a foundation.

54:15

The Hebrew of this verse is compressed and disputed. The verb translated "gather together" can mean to attack or to stir up strife, and the last phrase, literally "shall fall to you" or "over you", has been read both as "will fall before you in defeat" and as "will come over to your side."

54:16

The smith raised charcoal to weapon-making heat by pumping air over it with skin bellows; fanning the coals is the picture of a working forge. "The waster" is the ravager, the soldier or army that lays a place waste.

54:17

The setting is a courtroom: "tongues rising in judgment" are accusers speaking against you at a trial, and to "condemn" them, in 1611 English, is to prove their case false. "Heritage" means inheritance, the allotted portion, like a family's share of land, held as theirs by right and passed on. "Righteousness" here is the verdict that a person is in the right, hence the rendering's "the proof that they are in the right."