Isaiah51chapter 51

Isaiah 51:1-2

The chapter opens to those who follow after righteousness and seek the Lord with a call to remember their own origin: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. That rock is named in the next breath, look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you, for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him, a single childless couple made into a nation by the same power now promising Zion's restoration. Delitzsch reads the pairing of quarry and patriarch as the argument itself, the God who made a nation from one man can remake a nation from its ruins.

Isaiah 51:3

For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places, and make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. The promise reaches back past the exile to the garden itself, naming Eden and the garden of the Lord in the same breath as the ground of what Zion will become, joy and gladness found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. Barnes reads the Eden language as deliberate, the restoration pictured as a new creation rather than a mere return of the exiles.

Isaiah 51:4-6

The Lord calls his people and his nation to hearken, for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people, language the older writers read toward a teaching that will reach beyond Israel's own borders since the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust. Against that permanence the heavens and the earth are set as temporary, they shall vanish away like smoke, and wax old like a garment, while my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Calvin reads the contrast as the whole point, everything visible is passing and the word that goes out from the Lord is the one fixed thing in the picture.

Isaiah 51:7-8

Those who know righteousness and carry the Lord's law in their heart are told plainly, fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings, because the reproach itself is passing. The moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool, the same picture of decay used of the servant's accusers in the previous chapter, turned here against anyone who reviles the righteous. Matthew Henry reads the verse as comfort against persecution built on the same ground as the promise just given, the permanence of the Lord's righteousness against the certain decay of its opponents.

Isaiah 51:9-10

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord: The prayer cries out for the arm of the Lord to wake as it worked in the ancient days, in the generations of old, art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon, naming the same power that broke Egypt at the exodus in the language of a defeated sea monster, a figure the bench reads as poetic personification of Egypt and the sea rather than a separate myth borrowed whole. Verse 10 makes the reference plain, art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep, that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over, the exodus itself and the creation language of the deep fused into one appeal. Delitzsch reads Rahab and the dragon as Isaiah's own poetic names for Egypt at the Red Sea, the same event named twice, once in myth-shaped language and once in plain historical language.

Isaiah 51:11

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: the same line that closes chapter 35 in nearly identical words, joining the exodus imagery just given to the promise of the exiles' own return. Sorrow and mourning shall flee away is stated as fact rather than hope, the certainty carried by the same voice that just claimed the exodus and the creation as its own handiwork. Gill reads the verse as the hinge between the historical argument of the verses before it and the personal comfort that follows.

Isaiah 51:12-13

I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass, the Lord's own comfort turning immediately into a rebuke of misplaced fear, mortal oppressors measured against the God who stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. And forgettest the Lord thy maker names the root of the fear directly, a forgetting rather than an ignorance, and asks where is the fury of the oppressor, a question that assumes the fury has already passed. Barnes reads the whole unit as an argument from proportion, the creator of heaven and earth set beside a man who shall die, meant to dissolve the fear rather than merely rebuke it.

Isaiah 51:14

The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should fail, a single verse promising speed and provision together, release near enough that the exile himself hastens toward it. The older writers read the pit as the language of prison and near death both, the exile's condition described at its worst just before the promise turns. Delitzsch reads the verse as deliberately brief, a single sharp assurance set between the longer arguments on either side of it.

Isaiah 51:15-16

But I am the Lord thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared, the Lord of hosts is his name, the exodus claimed again as this God's own credential, the same claim made twice already in the chapter and repeated here as the ground for everything promised. I have put my words in thy mouth, and covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people, creation language applied to Zion's own restoration rather than reserved for the world's first beginning. Calvin reads the fusion of exodus and creation vocabulary as the chapter's own argument, the God strong enough to make the world is the same God who split the sea and now restores his people.

Isaiah 51:17-20

The cry that woke the Lord's own arm earlier in the chapter now wakes Jerusalem herself, awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, the same word awake carrying judgment where before it carried deliverance. No one is left to guide her, her sons have fainted and lie at the head of the streets as a wild bull in a net, full of the fury of the Lord, a description of a city exhausted by the very judgment the earlier chapters warned was coming. Barnes reads the desolation named here as the low point the chapter must reach before the reversal of the verses that follow.

Isaiah 51:21-23

Hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine, addresses the same exhausted city and gives it the reversal the chapter has been moving toward: the Lord that pleadeth the cause of his people declares, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury, thou shalt no more drink it again. The cup is not emptied, it is transferred, and I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee, the same measure of judgment turned back on the oppressors who made Zion lie down as the ground for them to walk over. Gill reads the transfer of the cup as the chapter's answer to its own opening question, the God who made a nation from Abraham alone remains strong enough to reverse a nation's whole judgment in one sentence.