1Sing gladly, O barren one who has not given birth,
burst out in glad song, exult, who has not been in labor,
for the desolate one’s children number more
than the children of the one with a husband.
2Spread wide the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your dwelling stretch out—
do not stint.
Lengthen your cords
and strengthen your tent pegs.
3For to the north and the south you shall burst forth,
and your seed shall take hold of nations
and shall settle desolate towns.
4Do not fear, for you shall not be shamed,
and you shall not be disgraced, for you shall not be dishonored.
For the shame of your youth you shall forget,
and the dishonor of your widowhood you shall no longer recall.
5For he who takes you to bed is your Maker,
the LORD of Armies is His name,
and your redeemer is Israel’s Holy One,
God of all the earth He is called.
6“For as a forsaken woman
and pained in spirit the LORD called you
and a wife of one’s youth who is spurned,”
said your God.
7“In a brief moment I forsook you
but with great compassion will I gather you in.
8In surge of fury I hid My face from you,
but with everlasting kindness I have compassion for you,”
said your redeemer, the LORD.
9“For as Noah’s waters is this to Me,
as I vowed not to let Noah’s waters go over the earth again,
so have I vowed
not to be furious with you nor to rebuke you.
10For though the mountains move
and the hills totter,
My kindness shall not move from you
nor My pact of peace totter,”
said He Who has compassion for you, the LORD.
11Afflicted, storm-tossed woman, uncomforted,
I am about to lay your stones with turquoise.
And I will set your foundations with sapphires
12and make your battlements rubies
and your gates of beryl
and all your walls of precious stones.
13And all your children—disciples of the LORD,
and great the well-being of your children.
14In righteousness shall you be firm-founded.
Keep far from oppression that you need not fear
and from terror that it not draw near you.
15Why, none shall strike fear if it is not from Me,
who would strike fear in you, before you shall fail.
16Why, it is I Who created the smith,
who fans the charcoal fire
and makes the weapons for his deeds—
but it is I Who created the Destroyer to wreak havoc.
17Any weapon fashioned against you shall fail,
any tongue that contends with you in court you shall show wrong.
This is the estate of the LORD’s servants,
and their triumph through Me, says the LORD.
CHAPTER 54 NOTES
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1. Sing gladly. Although the natural association of song and joy is virtually idiomatic in biblical poetry, this prophet’s repeated emphasis on song implicitly points to his own use of the medium of poetry to conjure up a joyous vision of the people restored to its land.
the one with a husband. The passive form beʿulah designates a woman who has a husband, baʿal, but it also has a sexual connotation because the active verb showing this root means “to cohabit,” “to possess sexually.” Thus, the beʿulah is the woman who has a bedmate, unlike “the desolate one.” Compare verse 5, where the active verbal form boʿalayikh is translated as “he who takes you to bed.”
2. your tent. While the actual habitations would of course have been stone houses, poetry, with its intrinsic attachment to archaic language, invokes the tent as the archetypal dwelling.
4. the shame of your youth . . . / the dishonor of your widowhood. As is often the case in biblical poetry, there is an implied temporal progression from the first verset to the second. First, Israel was a young bride who shamefully betrayed her husband. As a result, the bitter fate of widowhood was inflicted on her (God was “dead” to Israel), a condition that in this society was a humiliation because the woman was left without the sustaining support of the husband.
5. he who takes you to bed . . . / your redeemer. The widow again has a husband, who provides the “desolate one” with the gratification a woman needs. The parallel term “redeemer” is used here less in a theological sense than in a social one—the “redeemer,” goʾel, is the man who marries the widow, thus redeeming her from her condition of abandonment. The Book of Ruth uses goʾel precisely in this sense.
8. with everlasting kindness. The Hebrew noun ḥesed is a nexus of several related meanings. It can mean “kindness” or, as some render it, “love” (and the King James Version joins the two with “loving kindness”). It also suggests the “loyalty” or “faithfulness” of one party to another in a covenantal or conjugal relationship, and that sense is also obviously in play here. The connotation of “faithfulness” may be especially strong when “kindness” is used again in verse 10.
11. I am about to lay your stones with turquoise. Although this new prophecy begins with “Afflicted, storm-tossed woman,” the focus of the vision of national restoration now shifts from the widowed and/or childless wife to the buildings of the city. The resplendent restored Jerusalem is to be built not out of stones but with precious jewels. The reader should be alerted that the precise identification of most of these precious stones, as elsewhere in the Bible, is uncertain. The dazzling bejeweled Jerusalem is obviously a poetic hyperbole, but it lays the ground for eschatological imaginings of Jerusalem as the glorious City of God.
15. none shall strike fear if it is not from Me. The Hebrew syntax is ambiguous, and the verb gor is anomalous, though it probably is related to the more familiar noun, magor, “terror,” as this translation assumes.
16. the weapons. The all-purpose keli can also mean vessel, tool, or gear, but it is used in the very next verse in the sense of “weapon,” and that is probably what it means here as well.
the Destroyer to wreak havoc. The “Destroyer” would be the mythological agent who stalks through the land of Egypt in the terrible tenth plague, killing the firstborn. The intended relation of this verset to the preceding one is oppositional: man—himself created by God—forges his weapons in the workshop of the metalsmith, but God has the power to create a Destroyer who has an incomparably more devastating instrument of destruction. The image of God defending Israel with insuperable force complements the image of the jewel-studded Zion that precedes it: God promises to rebuild Jerusalem as a city of supernal splendor, and He then guarantees that no enemy will be able to assail the city.