Zion Receives a Light That Does Not Set

Both imperatives are feminine: Zion is addressed as a woman, as in 52:2, where she was told to shake herself from the dust and arise. “Is risen” is zarach, the verb for the sun coming up, which gives the Hebrew word for the east. The light is announced as already here before she is told to stand in it.

“Gross darkness” is araphel, the thick cloud of Sinai, “the thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21). The picture recalls the ninth plague, when darkness lay over Egypt yet “all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings” (Exodus 10:23). The verb for the LORD arising is the sunrise verb again.

“Thy rising” takes the sunrise verb used of the LORD in verses 1 and 2 and makes it Zion’s: the dawn that broke upon her is now called her own dawn. “Brightness”, nogah, is the glow of the sky as the light comes on. The Gentiles, goyim, are simply the nations, the peoples outside Israel.

The first half repeats 49:18 word for word, where the bereaved mother Zion was told to look up and see her children gathering. “Nursed at thy side” is literally “carried on the hip”, the way a small child rides on an adult; 66:12 returns to the picture of children “borne upon her sides”.

“Flow together” reads a verb that also means to beam with joy, as in Psalm 34:5, “they looked unto him, and were lightened”; most modern versions have “be radiant”. “Forces” is chayil, which can mean an army but here, as in verse 11, means wealth. The heart that trembles and widens is a pulse racing with excitement.

Ephah was a son of Midian in Genesis 25:4, so the two names are a father’s tribe and his son’s. Sheba in south Arabia was the land of the queen who brought Solomon gold and spices (1 Kings 10:2). This gold and incense, with the kings of verse 3, fed the later tradition that the Magi of Matthew 2:11 were kings.

Nebaioth and Kedar are Ishmael’s first two sons in Genesis 25:13, and their flocks are the herds of the desert Arab tribes. “Minister” is sharat, the verb for priestly service, so the rams themselves serve at the altar. “Acceptance” is ratson again, the favour that the self-regarding fast of 58:5 failed to win.

The “windows” are arubbot, the openings of a dovecote, the same word as the windows of heaven opened at the flood (Genesis 7:11). Doves at dusk fly straight for home. The question lets Zion see a white cloud on the horizon before she knows what it is; the next verse names ships.

The ships of Tarshish were the great ocean-going merchantmen, named for a far western port, probably Tartessus in Spain. In 2:16 they stood among the proud things the day of the LORD would bring low, and in 23:1 they were told to howl over Tyre. Here they lead the fleet, and their cargo is Zion’s children.

The contrast of wrath and favour restates 54:8, “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee.” “Minister” is the priestly verb of verse 7 again, now used of kings. In the event it was Persian kings who paid for the rebuilt temple (Ezra 6:8).

City gates were normally shut at dusk, as Jericho closed its gate at dark (Joshua 2:5) and Nehemiah ordered Jerusalem’s kept shut until the sun was hot (Nehemiah 7:3). “Their kings may be brought” uses a verb for being led, which may picture a royal procession or rulers led in like captives.

“Utterly wasted” doubles the verb charav, the root of the “old waste places” that Zion’s children rebuild in 58:12; the ruin once hers now waits for the refusers. The verse runs in prose rhythm rather than the chapter’s poetry, and many commentators regard it as an expansion that spells out the reversal.

The three trees are the trio planted in the desert in 41:19; the identifications are uncertain, and “box” may be a kind of cypress. Solomon built the first temple with timber brought down from Lebanon (1 Kings 5:6). “The place of my feet” is the sanctuary as God’s footstool, as David calls the ark in 1 Chronicles 28:2.

Bowing at the soles of the feet goes beyond a bow of greeting; it is full prostration, the posture of 49:23, where kings lick up the dust of Zion’s feet. “The Holy One of Israel” is the Book of Isaiah’s own title for God, used about twenty-five times in this book and only a handful of times in the rest of the Old Testament.

“Hated” is the word used of the unloved wife, as Leah was “hated” beside Rachel (Genesis 29:31); with “forsaken” it pictures Zion as a rejected bride, the image 62:4 will reverse. “No man went through thee” describes empty roads, the deserted ways of Lamentations 1:4. “Excellency” is pride in a good sense, a city worth boasting of.

The image is deliberately startling: kings with breasts, nursing a city. It develops 49:23, “kings shall be thy nursing fathers”. The closing title, “the mighty One of Jacob”, comes from Jacob’s own blessing on Joseph in Genesis 49:24, and the whole last line repeats 49:26 almost word for word.

The exchange runs Solomon’s decline backward. After Shishak carried off the golden shields, Rehoboam “made in their stead brasen shields” (1 Kings 14:27); now brass gives way to gold. “Exactors” are nogesim, the taskmasters of Exodus 5, the same verb the fasters were accused of in 58:3.

“Wasting and destruction” were in the people’s paths in 59:7; the same rhyming pair is now silenced. Jerusalem’s real gates bore working names, the Sheep Gate, the Fish Gate, the Dung Gate (Nehemiah 3:1–14). Walls named Salvation fulfil the song of 26:1: “salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks”.

Genesis 1:15 set the sun and moon in the sky “to give light upon the earth”, and this verse reuses that verb to say they will no longer be needed for it. Isaiah 24:23 had already shamed the sun and moon when the LORD reigns in Zion. “Glory” here is tiferet, splendour, the word of verse 7’s “house of my glory”.

“Withdraw itself” is the verb asaph, to be gathered in, used of the moon waning like a harvest taken off the field. It is the root of the rear guard in 58:8 and of the dead being “gathered unto his people” (Genesis 25:8). “Ended” is shalem, completed: mourning has served its full term and is over.

“Branch” is netser, the shoot that springs from Jesse’s stump in 11:1. Here the whole righteous people is that planted shoot. The phrase “that I may be glorified” returns in the next chapter almost unchanged, where the mourners become “trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD” (61:3).

The Hebrew elef, “a thousand”, is also the word for a clan within a tribe, as when Gideon says his “family is poor in Manasseh” (Judges 6:15). Either way the least grows into a people. The book has already pointed to Abraham as the pattern: “I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him” (51:2).