The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Joy” it comes from the Hebrew Word “sasson” which means “joy, gladness.”
Isaiah urges genuine trust while promising comfort for Zion and calling for God’s arm to awake. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is Isaiah 51.
Isaiah urges those who follow after righteousness, who seek the Lord, to look to the rock from which they are hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which they are dug, looking to Abraham their father, and to Sarah who bore them, since He called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him, describing how the Lord will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places, making her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord, “joy,” “sasson” in Hebrew, and gladness being found in it, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
Isaiah urges his people to hearken to Him, since a law shall proceed from Him, and He will make His judgment to rest for a light of the people, His righteousness being near, His salvation gone forth, and His arms shall judge the people, urging them to lift up their eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath, since the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, but His salvation shall be forever, and His righteousness shall not be abolished.
Isaiah cries out, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?” recalling how the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing to Zion, everlasting joy being upon their head, obtaining gladness and joy, sorrow and mourning fleeing away, describing God comforting them, and asking who they are, that they should be afraid of a man who shall die, and of the son of man who shall be made as grass, closing with the reminder that they have forgotten the Lord their maker, who has stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth, urging them to fear continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor.
Isaiah’s beautiful promise that God will make Zion’s wilderness like Eden captures genuine hope for restoration extending beyond mere survival toward abundant, flourishing beauty comparable to paradise itself. His urgent, poetic cry, awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, models the kind of bold, expectant prayer that confidently calls upon God’s proven, historic power to act again in the present crisis.
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