God will save the children of Abraham
1 Listen to me, you who pursue justice,
you who go in search of Yahweh. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, to the pit from which you were quarried.
2 Look to Abraham, your father, and to Sa rah, who gave you birth. He was alone when I called him; but I blessed and increased him.
3 Truly Yahweh’s compassion is for Zion, his mercy is upon all her ruins. He will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like Yahweh’s garden. In her will be found joy and rejoicing, melody and song of praise and thanksgiving.
4 Listen to me, you peoples,
hear me, O nations.
I am to give you my law,
my justice will be a light to the nations.
5 Suddenly my justice will appear,
my salvation is on the way,
and my arm will impose my rule.
The islands also wait in hope for me,
trusting in my arm.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens
and look upon the earth beneath.
Like smoke, the heavens will vanish,
and the earth wear out like a garment;
its inhabitants will fall like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
my justice will never fail.
7 Hear me, you who know righteousness,
you who have my law in your hearts:
do not fear the reproach of men
or be terrified by their mocking.
8 For they will be like garments eaten by moths,
like wool consumed by grubs.
But my justice will last forever
and my salvation for all generations.
Awake, Yahweh
9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh!
Awake as in ancient days,
in times of generations long ago.
Was it not you who split Rahab in two
and pierced the dragon through?
10 Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
to make a way on the seabed
for the redeemed to pass over?
11 The redeemed of Yahweh will return
and come to Zion singing with joy,
crowned with everlasting gladness,
while sorrow and mourning flee away.
12 I, yes I, am your comforter.
How then can you be afraid of the one who dies,
of humans who fade like grass?
13 Are you forgetting Yahweh who made you,
who stretched forth the heavens
and laid the foundations of the earth?
Why live every day in constant fear
of the fury of the oppressor,
when he sets out to destroy you?
And where is the fury of the oppressor?
14 The captive exiles will soon be free;
they will not die in a deep prison,
nor will they want for food.
15 I am Yahweh, your God,
the one who stirs the sea,
making its waves roar.
My name is Yahweh Sabaoth.
16 I have put my words in your mouth as I stretched out the heavens; When I laid the foundations of the earth, I said to Zion: “You are my people, and I have shielded you in the shadow of my hand.”
17 Awake, awake!
Arise, O Jerusalem, you who drank at the hand of Yahweh the cup of his fury, the cup which made you tremble, that you drank to the last drop!
18 Among all the children she bore, she has no one to guide her; among all the sons she reared, she has no one to take her by the hand.
19 These double calamities have befallen you – ruin and destruction, famine and sword.
Who is there to console you?
20 Your children were found helpless at the corner of every street, like wild bulls in a net. They had drunk to the full the fury of Yahweh, the wrath of your God.
21 Therefore hear this now, you afflicted one, you who are drunk but not with wine. 22 Thus says your Lord Yahweh, your God, defender of your people’s cause:
22 See, I am taking out of your hand the cup of trembling; the cup of my anger – you will drink of it no more.
23 But I will put it into the hands of your tormentors, those who ordered you to bow down, that they might trample on you, while you laid your body as a pavement, as a street for them to walk on.
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Comments Isaiah, Chapter 51
• 51.9 This poem is a double call to Yahweh and to Jerusalem that they may awaken. Yahweh is described as a hero asleep and Jerusalem as a humiliated and discouraged woman. The two must work together for the restoration of Jerusalem:
– Yahweh is the one to indicate the timing, preparing the historical conditions to make it feasible, and infusing hope in their hearts.
– First, the children of Jerusalem must want their own liberation and then they must go to rebuild the city.
God seems absent from the world where people follow their own fancies and seems asleep until his hour comes. We should not be fatalistic because of that, believing that problems will be resolved when God decides. To call God and wake him means to go ahead and advance before the fog has lifted. Who is it that God encourages? The defeated who pay the price of their errors. He does not speak to saints but to sinners: in pardoning their past sins he gives them strength to rebuild the Holy City.
It is easy to criticize these realistic and prim itive biblical expressions concerning Yahweh of Hosts. We should not replace the image of the Conqueror with that of a calm and unruffled God more in keeping with a conservative mentality. The events which were announced here were about to overturn the course of history.
Note the expressions redeemed and sold which were already used in 50:1. Each person belongs to God and finds freedom in obeying him. If we reject this dependence, we fall into another since we have been created for this kind of freedom which develops in mutual relationship and dependence of another one. Christ “purchases” us, or rescues us from every slavery as it is written in Isaiah 53:10 (Rom 6:15), but so as to make us sons and daughters.