Isaiah35chapter 35

The flowering desert is a real event on a small scale. After the winter rains, the Negev throws up crocus and asphodel across ground that looked dead a week before, and it lasts a few weeks. Isaiah takes that brief annual miracle and makes it permanent, then piles on the three regions everyone used as the standard of lushness — the glory of Lebanon with its cedar forests, the splendor of Carmel on the coastal ridge, and the plain of Sharon.

One word in the middle is a desert traveler's word. The parched ground becoming a pool is literally the mirage becoming a pool — the shimmer on the horizon that has killed men who walked toward it. Isaiah says the mirage turns into actual water.

The highway is the center of the chapter, and every detail is a traveler's relief. Ancient roads were unimproved tracks, and the dangers were lions in the scrub, bandits in the passes, and getting lost. This road is raised and cleared, it is named so nobody has to ask directions — the way of holiness — no lion is on it, no ravenous beast goes up it, and it is so plainly marked that even a fool cannot wander off it.

The healings listed are the same four that the Gospels record and that the deaf and blind of Isaiah's own generation would have known were incurable: blind eyes opened, deaf ears unstopped, the lame man leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the mute singing.