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Isaiah 60: What the Passage Says

94 claims across 22 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Isaiah 60 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God calls Zion to rise and shine, because his glory has risen on her at a time when darkness covers the earth and its peoples. Nations and kings come toward that light, bringing her sons and daughters home from far away along with gold, incense, flocks, and cargo from the ships, while foreigners rebuild her walls and their kings serve her. God says he struck her in anger but now shows mercy, and promises an end to violence inside her borders, walls named Salvation and gates named Praise. He says the LORD himself will be her everlasting light in place of sun and moon, her people will be righteous and possess the land forever, and the smallest of them will become a strong nation.

Claim by Claim

  1. 60:1
    • Zion is commanded to arise.
    • Zion is commanded to shine.
    • Her light has come.
    • The glory of the LORD has risen upon her.
  2. 60:2
    • Darkness covers the earth.
    • Thick darkness covers the peoples.
    • The LORD will rise upon her.
    • His glory will be seen upon her.
  3. 60:3
    • Nations will come to her light.
    • Kings will come to the brightness of her dawn.
  4. 60:4
    • She is commanded to lift up her eyes and look around.
    • She is commanded to see.
    • They all gather together.
    • They come to her.
    • Her sons will come from far away.
    • Her daughters will be carried at the side, or nursed at the side; the word can mean either.
  5. 60:5
    • Then she will see.
    • She will be radiant.
    • Her heart will tremble.
    • Her heart will swell wide.
    • The abundance of the sea will be turned over to her.
    • The wealth of the nations will come to her.
  6. 60:6
    • A multitude of camels will cover her.
    • Young camels of Midian and Ephah will cover her.
    • All those from Sheba will come.
    • They will carry gold and frankincense.
    • They will proclaim the praises of the LORD.
  7. 60:7
    • All the flocks of Kedar will be gathered to her.
    • The rams of Nebaioth will serve her.
    • They will go up with acceptance on the LORD's altar.
    • The LORD will glorify the house of his beauty.
  8. 60:8
    • A question is asked: who are these that fly like a cloud?
    • A question is asked: who are these that fly like doves to their openings?
  9. 60:9
    • The coastlands will wait for the LORD.
    • The ships of Tarshish will be first.
    • They will bring her sons from far away.
    • Their silver and gold will be with them.
    • They come for the name of the LORD her God.
    • They come for the Holy One of Israel.
    • The Holy One of Israel has glorified her.
  10. 60:10
    • Foreigners will build her walls.
    • Their kings will serve her.
    • The LORD struck her in his wrath.
    • The LORD had mercy on her in his favor.
  11. 60:11
    • Her gates will be open continually.
    • Her gates will not be shut day or night.
    • The wealth of the nations will be brought to her.
    • Their kings will be led in.
  12. 60:12
    • The nation and kingdom that will not serve her will perish.
    • Those nations will be utterly laid waste.
  13. 60:13
    • The glory of Lebanon will come to her.
    • The cypress, the plane, and the box tree will come together; the identity of these trees is uncertain.
    • They will beautify the place of the LORD's sanctuary.
    • The LORD will make the place of his feet glorious.
  14. 60:14
    • The sons of those who afflicted her will come to her bending low.
    • All who despised her will bow down at the soles of her feet.
    • They will call her the city of the LORD.
    • They will call her the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.
  15. 60:15
    • She has been forsaken.
    • She has been hated.
    • No one passed through her.
    • The LORD will make her an everlasting majesty.
    • The LORD will make her a joy of generation after generation.
  16. 60:16
    • She will suck the milk of nations.
    • She will nurse at the breast of kings.
    • She will know that the LORD is her Savior.
    • She will know that her Redeemer is the Mighty One of Jacob.
  17. 60:17
    • Instead of bronze the LORD will bring gold.
    • Instead of iron the LORD will bring silver.
    • Instead of wood he will bring bronze.
    • Instead of stones he will bring iron.
    • The LORD will make her overseers peace.
    • The LORD will make her taskmasters righteousness.
  18. 60:18
    • Violence will no longer be heard in her land.
    • Ruin and destruction will no longer be heard within her borders.
    • She will call her walls Salvation.
    • She will call her gates Praise.
  19. 60:19
    • The sun will no longer be her light by day.
    • The moon will not give light to her for brightness.
    • The LORD will be her everlasting light.
    • Her God will be her glory.
  20. 60:20
    • Her sun will no longer go down.
    • Her moon will not withdraw.
    • The LORD will be her everlasting light.
    • The days of her mourning will be ended.
  21. 60:21
    • Her people will all be righteous.
    • They will possess the land forever.
    • They are the shoot of the LORD's planting.
    • They are the work of the LORD's hands.
    • This is so that the LORD may be glorified.
  22. 60:22
    • The little one will become a thousand.
    • The small one will become a mighty nation.
    • The speaker is the LORD.
    • The LORD will hasten it in its time.

Words Worth Explaining

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

60:1
Throughout this chapter the "you" is grammatically feminine and singular in Hebrew: the city of Jerusalem, spoken to as a woman. English "you" hides this. "Glory" translates a word whose root sense is weight or heaviness, used of a visible blaze of splendor surrounding God.
60:3
"Nations" (King James "Gentiles") renders the Hebrew *goyim*, the ordinary word for all the peoples other than Israel.
60:4
Small children were carried on the hip or along the forearm. The picture is of children too young to walk being carried home by others from distant countries.
60:5
The KJV says the heart will "fear, and be enlarged." The picture is a heart pounding with amazement and then opening wide with joy, not a heart full of dread.
60:6
Midian and Ephah were tribes of the north-western Arabian desert, Ephah counted as a branch of Midian; Sheba was a rich kingdom in south-western Arabia (roughly modern Yemen) that controlled the incense trade. All three are named here as camel-caravan traders. The incense is frankincense, a fragrant tree resin burned in worship and one of the most valuable goods carried on those routes.
60:7
Kedar and Nebaioth were nomadic Arab peoples of the desert east and south of Israel, listed in Genesis as sons of Ishmael and known for their vast flocks. Rams were prime animals for sacrifice, and "accepted" is the technical term for an offering that qualifies as fit to be presented. "My glorious house" is the temple in Jerusalem.
60:8
The verse is a riddle, and the next verse supplies the answer: ships coming in under sail across the sea. Doves in this region nested in holes in cliff faces and in man-made dovecotes, and returned to them in flocks.
60:9
"Islands and far shores" translates a word covering both islands and coastlands, the distant Mediterranean shores that marked the edge of the known world from Jerusalem. "Ships of Tarshish" was a standing phrase for large ocean-going cargo vessels, named after a remote port, probably in the far western Mediterranean. "The Holy One of Israel" is the title for God most characteristic of the book of Isaiah.
60:10
Jerusalem's walls had been broken down when the Babylonians took the city. A city without walls was both defenseless and disgraced, so foreigners rebuilding them reverses the earlier destruction.
60:11
City gates were normally barred at nightfall and at any hint of danger. Gates standing open day and night meant a city with nothing left to fear, and here also a constant stream of goods and people coming in.
60:13
The mountain forests of Lebanon supplied the region's finest timber, the wood used for Solomon's temple and palace. The three tree names in the Hebrew are uncertain; they are evergreens of some kind, rendered variously as cypress, fir, pine, plane or box. "The place where my feet rest" pictures the temple as God's footstool, with God enthroned above it.
60:14
Zion was first the name of the fortified hill David captured, and came to stand for the temple mount and for Jerusalem as a whole. Bowing face down to the ground was the standard gesture of submission to a superior in this world.
60:15
Jerusalem sat on major trade routes, so "no one even traveled through you" pictures a ruin that travelers went out of their way to avoid.
60:16
The nursing image continues verse 4's picture of Jerusalem as a mother, now fed herself by foreign nations and kings as a child is fed by a nurse. "The one who... buys you back" translates *go'el*, the relative whose legal duty it was to buy a family member out of debt-slavery or to buy back land the family had lost; applied to God, it keeps that picture of a kinsman paying to recover what is his. Jacob is the ancestor of the Israelites, whose sons gave the tribes their names.
60:17
Each pair moves up the scale of value: bronze, iron, wood and stone were the ordinary building materials, and each is replaced by something costlier. In the second half, peace and right living take the place of the human governors and tax-collectors a city would normally have.
60:18
Cities really did name their walls and gates, Jerusalem had a Sheep Gate, a Fish Gate and others. "Salvation" here means rescue and safety, the everyday sense of the Hebrew word.
60:20
"Your moon will never fade" refers to the moon's waning, its monthly shrinking away to nothing.
60:21
"Hold the land as their own forever" uses the vocabulary of Israel's tribal land allotments: property passed down within a family and never permanently lost. The "young shoot" pictures the people as a plant God himself put in the ground.
60:22
"A thousand" was also the name of a clan-sized unit in Israel's tribal organization, so the line steps up from a single person to a clan to a full nation.

Read Isaiah 60