World English Bible
- For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning lamp.
- The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You will be called by a new name, which the LORD’s mouth will name.
- You will also be a crown of beauty in the LORD’s hand, and a royal diadem in your God’s hand.
- You will not be called Forsaken any more, nor will your land be called Desolate any more; but you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the LORD delights in you, and your land will be married.
- For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.
- I have set watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent day nor night. You who call on the LORD, take no rest,
- and give him no rest until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
- The LORD has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, “Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners will not drink your new wine, for which you have labored,
- but those who have harvested it will eat it, and praise the LORD. Those who have gathered it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”
- Go through, go through the gates! Prepare the way of the people! Build up, build up the highway! Gather out the stones! Lift up a banner for the peoples.
- Behold, the LORD has proclaimed to the end of the earth: “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your salvation comes! Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him!’”
- They will call them “The Holy People, The LORD’s Redeemed”. You will be called “Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken”.
Reading: Isaiah 62 (World English Bible)
Isaiah 62 begins with a refusal to be quiet. Zion’s suffering will not be treated as finished simply because the battle has ended. A conquered city could have walls again and still be desolate: its people scattered, its fields worked for someone else’s gain, its old name spoken with pity. God’s promise reaches all the way into that loss. Those who harvest the grain will eat it. Those who gather the wine will drink it. Salvation is not complete while people remain strangers to the fruit of their own labor (see Deuteronomy 28:30–33).
Then comes a change of names. Forsaken and Desolate give way to Hephzibah—“my delight is in her”—and Beulah, “married.” For Western readers, the image of a land being married may sound strange. For a people whose home had been emptied, it speaks of the end of separation: people returning to dwell where they belong. Yet the poem goes further. God himself rejoices over Zion as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. The city’s deepest healing is not that others finally admire her. It is that God declares his delight where abandonment seemed to have the last word.
God places watchmen on her walls, but they are not told to look for invading armies. They are told to pray. The Hebrew expression behind “you who call on the LORD” also carries the sense of those who remind the LORD. This is a daring picture: God appoints people to give him no rest until his promise is fulfilled. They do not need to awaken a forgetful or unwilling God. Their persistent prayer is one of the ways he keeps hope awake among his people.
Nor does prayer leave them standing still. “Go through, go through the gates”; “Build up, build up the highway.” The repeated commands sound like footsteps. Stones must be cleared from a real road so that people can come home. Isaiah will not let us choose between asking God to act and making a path for our neighbors.
Matthew 21:5 echoes Isaiah’s call to the daughter of Zion to behold the one who comes, joining it to Zechariah’s promise of a king. Christians see Jesus entering that promise—not as a ruler who seizes another’s harvest, but as one who gives himself for his people. His coming deepens our longing for the day when no one is forsaken, and no prayer for justice remains unanswered.
Suggested hymn: “The Church’s One Foundation,” especially its line, “From heaven he came and sought her.”
Prayer: Lord, keep us from making peace with what you have promised to heal. Teach us to pray without giving up, to clear the roads we can clear, and to trust your delight when shame tells us another name. Amen.