Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Isaiah · About this commentary
The Branch of Yahweh
Isaiah 4:1-6
1 Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, “We will eat our own bread, and wear our own clothing. Just let us be called by your name. Take away our reproach.” · WEB
Six verses that begin with seven women competing for one surviving man and end with a canopy over the whole city.
Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, "We will eat our own bread, and wear our own clothing. Just let us be called by your name. Take away our reproach" Isaiah 4:1.
The verse belongs with the chapter before it and completes the picture. The men have fallen in the war Isaiah 3:25, and the arithmetic of survival has become grotesque: seven women to a man, offering to support themselves entirely and asking only for the name. Childlessness and widowhood were the reproach in question, and the verse measures the catastrophe by what women were prepared to accept to escape it.
In that day, Yahweh's branch will be beautiful and glorious Isaiah 4:2.
The turn is abrupt and unexplained, which is this book's habit. The word for branch is used elsewhere of a shoot coming up from a cut stump, and it becomes a title in the prophets — my servant, the Branch Zechariah 3:8, and the man whose name is the Branch who will build the temple Zechariah 6:12. Here it is Yahweh's branch, paired in the same verse with the fruit of the land, so that what grows is both his and the country's.
He who is left in Zion and he who remains in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even everyone who is written among the living in Jerusalem Isaiah 4:3.
The survivors are described by a register. Written among the living is the language of a citizen roll, and it recurs through Scripture as a book God keeps Exodus 32:32 Revelation 20:12.
When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from within it, by the spirit of justice and by the spirit of burning Isaiah 4:4.
The cleansing answers the two charges of the previous chapter — the daughters and the blood — and the instruments named are justice and burning, which is the refining of Isaiah 1:25 restated.
Yahweh will create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion and over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night Isaiah 4:5.
The pillar that led Israel through the wilderness Exodus 13:21, restored — and enlarged. In the wilderness it was one column at the head of the march; here it is over the whole habitation, and over every assembly in it.
For over all the glory will be a canopy. There will be a pavilion for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for a refuge and for a shelter from storm and from rain Isaiah 4:5–6.
The last word is the ordinary one for a booth — the temporary shelter of Isaiah 1:8, where it stood for a city reduced to a shack in a field. The same structure returns as the thing God builds over them.
settled What this mark means