World English Bible
- “Listen to me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the LORD. Look to the rock you were cut from, and to the quarry you were dug from.
- Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, I blessed him, and made him many.
- For the LORD has comforted Zion. He has comforted all her waste places, and has made her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in them, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
- “Listen to me, my people; and hear me, my nation, for a law will go out from me, and I will establish my justice for a light to the peoples.
- My righteousness is near. My salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples. The islands will wait for me, and they will trust my arm.
- Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish away like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment. Its inhabitants will die in the same way, but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will not be abolished.
- “Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law. Don’t fear the reproach of men, and don’t be dismayed at their insults.
- For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”
- Awake, awake, put on strength, arm of the LORD! Awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Isn’t it you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the monster?
- Isn’t it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?
- Those ransomed by the LORD will return, and come with singing to Zion. Everlasting joy shall be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
- “I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you, that you are afraid of man who shall die, and of the son of man who will be made as grass?
- Have you forgotten the LORD your Maker, who stretched out the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth? Do you live in fear continually all day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he prepares to destroy? Where is the fury of the oppressor?
- The captive exile will speedily be freed. He will not die and go down into the pit. His bread won’t fail.
- For I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar. the LORD of Armies is his name.
- I have put my words in your mouth and have covered you in the shadow of my hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and tell Zion, ‘You are my people.’”
- Awake, awake! Stand up, Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the LORD’s hand the cup of his wrath. You have drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it.
- There is no one to guide her among all the sons to whom she has given birth; and there is no one who takes her by the hand among all the sons whom she has brought up.
- These two things have happened to you— who will grieve with you?— desolation and destruction, and famine and the sword. How can I comfort you?
- Your sons have fainted. They lie at the head of all the streets, like an antelope in a net. They are full of the LORD’s wrath, the rebuke of your God.
- Therefore now hear this, you afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:
- Your Lord GOD, your God who pleads the cause of his people, says, “Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my wrath. You will not drink it any more.
- I will put it into the hand of those who afflict you, who have said to your soul, ‘Bow down, that we may walk over you;’ and you have laid your back as the ground, like a street to those who walk over.”
Isaiah 51 begins with three calls to listen (verses 1, 4, 7). God speaks to people who want to live rightly but have begun to measure their future by their ruins. He tells them to look back—not to a golden age, but to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham was one man; Sarah had borne no child. The “rock” from which Israel was cut was not a mighty nation waiting to happen. Their beginning was a promise that had no visible way to come true.
That is why the promise to make Zion’s wilderness like Eden is more than a promise to repair damaged land. God is saying that barrenness has never been the final word over his people. Yet his comfort is not private escape. In verse 4, God’s torah—his teaching—goes out as justice and light even to distant peoples. The restored garden has open gates.
Then the people cry, “Awake, awake,” to the arm of the LORD (verse 9). They remember the sea crossing and name Rahab, a poetic image of the sea monster also associated with Egypt—not Rahab of Jericho. To people facing exile, the old deliverance raises an urgent question: Will you make a road for us again? God answers, “I, even I, am he who comforts you” (verse 12). He has not been asleep. But neither does he scold them for needing to ask.
The next command to awake is addressed to Jerusalem (verse 17). This is no brisk order to pull herself together. Isaiah pictures the city as a mother whose children have fallen in the streets. She cannot stand because she has drained the cup of judgment. God himself takes it from her hand. He also names what her oppressors have done: they treated a human back as a road beneath their feet. Divine comfort does not ask the wounded to pretend that cruelty was small.
One phrase near the center of the chapter holds these promises together. God says he will “plant the heavens” (verse 16). The Hebrew verb is the ordinary word for planting. The God who promises Eden in ruined Zion speaks of the heavens as something he can plant. Even the sky, which seems more lasting than every empire, is not beyond renewal; it will wear out, but his righteousness will not.
Christians hear a solemn echo of Jerusalem’s cup when Jesus prays about his own cup in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42). We should not flatten Isaiah’s image: the chapter also promises judgment upon oppressors. But at the cross we see how far God’s mercy goes to bring sinners home. The One who pleads his people’s cause does not offer comfort from a safe distance.
For further reading: Genesis 21:1–7; Exodus 14:21–22; Hebrews 1:10–12. A hymn for today: O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.
Prayer: Lord, when the ruins look more real than your promise, help us listen. Name the wrong we have suffered and the wrong we have done. Plant your hope in us, and teach us to live by the righteousness that lasts. Amen.