1Awake, awake,
don your strength, O Zion.
Don the garments of your glory,
O Jerusalem, holy city.
For no longer shall they enter you,
the uncircumcised
and the unclean.
2Shake yourself from the dust, arise,
sit on your throne, O Jerusalem.
Loose the bonds round your neck,
captive Daughter of Zion.
3For thus said the LORD: For nothing were you sold and for no silver shall you be redeemed. 4For thus said the Master LORD: To Egypt My people at first went down to sojourn there, and then Assyria oppressed them for no payment. 5And now, what do I have here, says the LORD, for My people was taken for nothing. Those who ruled them howled, said the LORD, and constantly all day long was My name reviled. 6Therefore shall My people know My name. Therefore shall they know on that day that it is I Who speak to them.
7How lovely on the mountains
the steps of the bearer of good tidings,
announcing peace, heralding good things,
announcing triumph,
saying to Zion: Your God reigns.
8Hark! Your watchmen raise their voice,
together they sing gladly.
For with their very eyes they shall see
when the LORD comes back to Zion.
9Burst out in song, sing gladly together,
O ruins of Jerusalem,
for the LORD has comforted His people,
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
10The LORD had bared His holy arm
to the eyes of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth have seen
the triumph of our God.
11Turn aside, turn aside, come out from there,
no unclean thing do touch.
Come out from its midst,
bearers of the LORD’s vessels.
12For not in haste shall you come out,
nor in flight shall you go,
and your rearguard is Israel’s God.
13Look, My servant shall prosper,
be lofty, exalted, and very high.
14As many were appalled by him,
so marred beyond human his looks
and his features unlike humankind’s,
15so he shall astound many nations,
kings shall seal their lips because of him,
for what was never told them they shall see,
and what they never heard they shall behold.
CHAPTER 52 NOTES
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1. Awake, awake. This unit of text includes two prophecies, this one at the beginning and another near the end, that begin with a twice-repeated imperative verb in the second-person feminine singular addressed to Zion (the other is “Turn aside, turn aside,” verse 11ff.). The repetitions are dictated by a powerful impulse of exhortation: Zion, long sunk in the dust and plunged in captivity, is urged to forget her sorrows and bestir herself to embrace her triumphant restoration.
2. sit on your throne. The Masoretic Text says only “Sit, O Jerusalem.” The transition follows the Targum, which adds “on your throne,” two Hebrew words that in all likelihood were dropped in a scribal error.
3. For nothing were you sold. You were sold into slavery (this is the verb generally used for enslavement), but nobody paid a price for you—your captors simply took you into slavery. Enslavement here amounts to a hyperbole because the exiled Judahites were not necessarily enslaved, or, in any case, surely not all of them.
4. To Egypt . . . then Assyria. There is, then, a history of being subject to slavery that goes back to the beginnings of the nation: first Egypt, then Assyria (which “enslaved” the northern kingdom), and now Babylonia.
5. howled. The Hebrew verb suggests a kind of derisive yelp.
6. shall they know on that day. The repetition of the verb “know” either has been scribally omitted or is meant to be implied.
7. How lovely on the mountains / the steps of the bearer of good tidings. The poet makes a boldly poignant choice in using “lovely,” the same word that is attached to the beautiful features of the beloved in the Song of Songs, for this is surprising in a reference to the feet of a messenger. The focus on the feet is because the messenger is running across the mountains to bring the good tidings.
8. Your watchmen. This probably continues the idea of the preceding verse—the watchmen, no doubt stationed on towers, see from afar the approach of the bearer of good tidings.
10. and all the ends of the earth have seen / the triumph of our God. As before, the return to Zion is imagined as an event enacted in a global theater, the restoration of an exiled people to its land being, at least as the prophet sees it, an unprecedented historical event that manifests God’s power.
11. come out from there. “There” has to be the condition of exile.
12. for the LORD goes before you, / and your rearguard is Israel’s God. This is a purposeful paradox: as you march back to Zion, God both leads the way as vanguard and protects you from behind as rearguard.
14. so marred beyond human his looks / and his features unlike humankind’s. This whole line vividly demonstrates the power of personification and hyperbole. Collective Israel is imagined as a person. In point of historical fact, the exiles, undergoing a fate that was by no means unprecedented, would scarcely have been perceived as having lost their humanity. In the poetic hyperbole, personified Israel, deprived of sovereignty, homeland, and place of worship, is envisaged as someone so degraded, humiliated, and abused by his condition in history that those who see him are appalled and can scarcely recognize a human form in this disfigured person.
15. he shall astound many nations. This is another instance in which the verb is anomalous, and so the translation is based on context.
kings shall seal their lips. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “kings shall purse their mouths closed.”