Taking back His bride

Please read Isaiah 53 on your own.

Everyone loves a good song. Music, rhythm, dance are all things that are written into our being. Isaiah was all about the music. He referenced singing or song over thirty times in his book. Chapter 54 is a song, a love song to be more specific. It's about the restoration of Israel.

God had set up for his people a theocracy. He was their king. He handed down the law and asked his people to obey it. Of course they couldn't obey it and they couldn't stand following something they couldn't see so first they tried to make an image of God and then they asked for a king.

In Samuel chapter 8 the people come to Samuel and ask him to appoint a king to rule over them because they feared his sons and they wanted a king "such as other nations have." The Lord told Samuel, "Listen to all the people are saying to you, it is not you they have rejected but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do." Samuel lays out for the people all the terrible things that a king will do to them. Read 1 Sam 8:10-18.

Even after they have heard these things they still asked for a king so they could, "be like other nations with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." God gives them what they ask for and the kings do all that He said they would.

God talks about how they are going to cry out to him but he isn't going to listen to them (1 Sam. 8:18). This is what He is talking about in Isaiah 54. God talks about how yes he was angry and he hid his face but that is in the past. Just as he will never again flood the earth, he will never again hide his face from his people.

Now the LORD is taking back his bride. She whored herself out to kings, idols; in general, she sold out to the ways of men. Nonetheless, God will have her back. “For your Maker is your husband—the LORD Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—a wife who married young, only to be rejected…” (54:5-6).

God is treating her not as a divorced woman who is shamed and despised, but as a woman who was rejected as a young bride and now mourning as a widow. Instead of giving Israel what she deserves, God is giving her a fresh start and a new hope.

Application:
1. Read the first verse. How can it be that a barren woman should rejoice? What is God communicating by saying that a “desolate” woman has more children than one with a husband?

2. Read verses 7 and 8. Does this image of a wrathful God compete with the image of God you have in your head? How do we respond to the fact that He is at once wrathful, vengeful even, and loving and compassionate?

3. Do you tend to think of yourself as one deserving judgment or one deserving sympathy?