The Arm Is Called to Wake, and Jerusalem Is Called to Rise

“Follow after righteousness” is rodfei tsedeq, those who chase it, the verb of Deuteronomy 16:20, “That which is altogether just shalt thou follow.” “Hewn” is chatsav, the quarryman’s verb for cutting building stone out of the hillside (1 Kings 5:15). The people are pictured as blocks cut from a quarry face.

Sarah is named nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible outside Genesis. “I called him alone” is literally “one”. Ezekiel 33:24 records the survivors in the ruins using the same fact as a boast: “Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many.” Isaiah uses it as a promise.

The garden of Eden is named only here in Isaiah; the “Eden” of 37:12 was Bit-Adini on the Euphrates. Ezekiel 36:35 uses the same comparison: “This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden.” The “voice of melody” is zimrah, song with instruments, the sound of a place lived in.

“My nation” is le’ummi, and le’om is a word usually used of foreign peoples; a few Hebrew manuscripts and the Syriac read “O peoples”. “Make my judgment to rest” uses a verb that elsewhere means to do something in a moment, the root of rega, the “small moment” of 54:7-8.

“Mine arms” is plural in the first line, “mine arm” singular in the last, as though one arm is enough. The isles that were ordered to keep silence before the court in 41:1 are now pictured hoping in that arm, yeyachelun, the patient waiting of those who expect it to move.

“Vanish away” is nimlachu, from a root used for worn-out rags; Jeremiah was lowered into the cistern with “old rotten rags” (Jeremiah 38:11). The heavens fray like cloth. “In like manner” is kemo ken, which many read as “like gnats”, ken being the word behind the gnats of the third plague.

“In whose heart is my law” is the condition Jeremiah promises in the new covenant, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33), and Psalm 37:31 says of the righteous, “The law of his God is in his heart.” “Men” is enosh, man in his frailty.

“The worm” is sas, a word found only here, probably the larva of the clothes moth that eats wool, set beside ash, the moth itself. The verse turns the reproach of verse 7 around: those who insult are the ones pictured as a moth-eaten garment.

“Put on strength” is the language of clothing, and 52:1 turns the same words to Zion: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion.” The “dragon” is tannin, the sea creature of Genesis 1:21, the “great whales”. Psalm 74:13 says, “thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.”

“The great deep” is tehom rabbah, the phrase for the fountains of the great deep that broke open in the flood (Genesis 7:11). The flood waters that destroyed and the sea that parted are called by the same name. What was a grave for Pharaoh’s army was a road for the ransomed.

The Hebrew is almost identical to 35:10, the same refrain word for word. The King James varies its English, “ransomed” there and “redeemed” here, “sorrow and sighing” there and “sorrow and mourning” here, though the Hebrew nouns are the same: yagon va’anachah.

Three times in two verses the person addressed changes: “you” plural, then “who art thou” in the feminine, speaking to Zion, then “forgettest” in the masculine. “A man that shall die” is enosh again, the frail one; “the son of man” is ben adam, a mortal born of mortals.

“As if he were ready to destroy” is ka’asher konen, “when he takes aim”, the verb for fitting an arrow to the string (Psalm 11:2). “Where is the fury of the oppressor?” asks the same kind of question as 33:18, “Where is the scribe?” The threat is spoken of as already gone.

“The captive exile” is tso’eh, one bent low, stooping under chains. “The pit” is bor, the dungeon, the word Joseph used of the prison he had been thrown into (Genesis 40:15). The fear of dying there and the fear of running out of bread are the two fears of every prisoner.

The line is repeated almost exactly in Jeremiah 31:35: “which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name.” The verb raga can mean to stir up or to still, so the same word covers raising the storm and splitting the sea.

“Plant the heavens” is lintoa, where “stretch out”, lintot, would be the expected verb, one letter different; the Syriac reads “stretch out”. “The shadow of mine hand” is the phrase used of the servant in 49:2. What was said of the servant is said here of the one addressed.

The appeal of verse 9 was uri, awake, addressed to the LORD’s arm; this command is hit’oreri, rouse yourself, addressed to Jerusalem. “Dregs” is qubba’at, a goblet, a word found only in this chapter. Jeremiah 25:15-17 has the prophet hand round the cup of fury to the nations.

A good son’s duties in the Canaanite epic of Aqhat, from Ugarit, include taking his father by the hand when he is drunk and carrying him home when he is full of wine. Jerusalem has raised many sons, and not one is in a state to lead her.

“Two things” are then given as four, in two pairs: desolation and destruction for the land, famine and sword for the people. “By whom shall I comfort thee?” echoes Lamentations 2:13, “what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee?” The Qumran scroll reads “who will comfort thee?”

“Wild bull” is to’, an antelope or oryx, listed among clean game in Deuteronomy 14:5, thrashing in a hunter’s net. “At the head of all the streets” is the phrase of Lamentations 2:19, where young children “faint for hunger in the top of every street”.

“Drunken, but not with wine” repeats 29:9 almost word for word: “they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.” In chapter 29 the drunkenness was a stupor sent as judgment on those who would not see. Here it describes a city that has already drunk the judgment.

Lamentations 4:21 had warned Edom that the cup would pass on: “the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken.” Jeremiah 25:28 said the nations must drink whether they would or not. “Thou shalt no more drink it again” is the first time the cup is taken from Jerusalem instead of handed on to her.

Conquerors put their feet on the necks of the defeated, as Joshua’s captains did to the five kings (Joshua 10:24), and Assyrian reliefs show kings standing on prostrate enemies. “To thy soul” means to thee, to thy very person. The city had to lie flat and let armies march across her back.