Isaiahchapter 4
6 verses · BSBIsaiah book hub →
Speaks with:Genesis 30×1Isaiah 2×1Luke 1×1Jeremiah 23×1Zechariah 6×1Zechariah 3×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Seven women take hold of one man in that day, asking only to bear his name and remove their reproach: the aftermath of chapter 3's slaughter. Then the tone reverses: the branch of Jehovah becomes beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land excellent for the escaped of Israel. Those left in Zion and Jerusalem are called holy, everyone written among the living, once the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and purged Jerusalem's blood by a spirit of justice and a spirit of burning. Over the whole site of Mount Zion and her assemblies Jehovah creates a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night, a covering over the glory: a pavilion for shade from heat and a refuge from storm and rain.
Context
Prophecy · Isaiah — Isaiah overview
- A. 1 Seven Women Take Hold of One Man
- B. 2–6 The Branch, and a Canopy of Cloud and Fire
The outline
A.Seven Women Take Hold of One Manv. 1
Read v. 1 →B.The Branch, and a Canopy of Cloud and Firevv. 2 to 6
Read vv. 2 to 6 →
The world behind this chapter
Isaiah 4The history
Seven women taking hold of one man is a war statistic, not a joke. Battle killed men; deportation took men. A woman without a husband in that society had no share in the land, no protection in a lawsuit, and no future, since inheritance ran through sons. That is why the seven offer to pay their own way — we will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes — and ask for nothing but the name. They want the shame of childlessness taken away.
The Branch is an agricultural word before it is a royal one. When a tree is cut down, a fresh green shoot can push up out of the stump. Isaiah will use the picture again at chapter 11, of the stump of Jesse.
The last picture is a wedding canopy. At a Jewish marriage the couple stood under a covering, and the word here is the same one later used for that canopy. Over it, Isaiah puts the cloud by day and the fire by night — the pillar that had stood over Israel in the wilderness. God is described as moving back in over the city and, quite literally, throwing a wedding canopy over the whole of Mount Zion.
What it meant to them
After three chapters of stripping, this told the first hearers that God's aim was never demolition. What comes through the fire is a small, washed, recorded remnant — everyone written down among the living in Jerusalem.
And the shelter language mattered. A booth for shade from the heat and cover from the storm was what a farmer built for himself; here God builds it, over the city, and stays.
Sources cited
- Edward J. Young, The Book of Isaiah (3 vols.)
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Isaiah 4. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.