Isaiah 54 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Prophecy set in the Babylonian exile, roughly 550 to 539 BC, looking to the restored city
Location
Jerusalem in prospect, addressed from Babylon as a woman living in a tent that needs enlarging
Audience
Judean exiles, especially those who felt permanently shamed by the loss of their city
Situation
Jerusalem is addressed as a childless woman told to sing, widen her tent and lengthen her ropes because her children will outnumber those of a married woman. God calls the exile a brief moment of anger and pledges a covenant of peace as unbreakable as his promise to Noah never to flood the earth again.
Key Background
Childlessness and widowhood left a woman without economic support or social standing in that world, which is why they serve as the image for a city emptied by deportation. Tents were expanded by adding panels and moving the pegs further out, so the instruction is a practical picture of a household growing beyond its current frame. The promise of foundations of sapphire and gates of jewels borrows the language of royal building inscriptions, in which kings boasted of the precious materials used in their temples.
out, — you who never gave birth! Break into loud, joyful shouts, you who never went through labor! Because the will have more children than the who has a husband, says Yahweh.
Make your bigger — stretch it wide! Spread out the fabric of your dwelling without holding back. Lengthen your ropes and drive your in deep.
Because you will spread out to the right and to the left. Your will take over nations and resettle cities that were left in ruins.
Don't be afraid — you won't be put to shame. Don't hold back — you won't be humiliated. You'll forget the of your youth and never again remember the disgrace of your
Because your is your husband, Yahweh of is his name. The No Other in is the who you. He is called God of the whole earth.
Yahweh has you back like a wife who was abandoned and in — a wife married young and then rejected, says your God.
"For just a I abandoned you, but with I will gather you back.
In a of I hid my face from you for a moment, but with I will have compassion on you," says Yahweh, the who you.
"This is like the of for me — just as I that Noah's floodwaters would never cover the earth again, so now I swear I will never be angry with you or rebuke you again.
Even if the mountains shift and the hills are shaken loose, my for you will never shift and my of with you will never be shaken," says Yahweh, who has on you.
"You city, with no one to comfort you — look, I am setting your stones in antimony and laying your foundations with
I will make your towers out of rubies, your gates out of jewels, and all your walls out of precious stones.
All your children will be by Yahweh, and your children will have
You will be established through justice. You will be far from — you'll have nothing to fear. Terror will not come near you.
If anyone does you, it won't be from me. Whoever attacks you will fall because of you.
"Look — I created the blacksmith who fans the coals into flame and forges weapons for their purpose. And I created the to bring ruin.
No against you will succeed, and you will prove wrong every tongue that accuses you. This is what Yahweh's — their comes from me," declares Yahweh.