You Will Be Called by a New Name
1 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. 2 The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You will be called by a new name, which Yahweh’s mouth will name. 3 You will also be a crown of beauty in Yahweh’s hand, and a royal diadem in your God’s hand. 4 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 Yahweh delights in you, and your land will be married. 5 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. 6 I have set watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent day nor night. You who call on Yahweh, take no rest, 7 and give him no rest until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise on the earth. 8 Yahweh 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, 9 but those who have harvested it will eat it, and praise Yahweh. Those who have gathered it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.” 10 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. 11 Behold, Yahweh 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!’” 12 They will call them “The Holy People, Yahweh’s Redeemed”. You will be called “Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken”.
Watchmen are posted to give God no rest, and a city called Forsaken is renamed for someone's delight in it.
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 speaker is not identified and the commitment is to keep talking. Whoever it is, silence is refused until something visible happens.
The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory. You will be called by a new name, which Yahweh’s mouth will name.
You will also be a crown of beauty in Yahweh’s hand, and a royal diadem in your God’s hand.
The crown is in his hand rather than on his head, which is where a man holds something he is looking at.
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 Yahweh delights in you, and your land will be married.
The two new names mean my delight is in her and married. The old ones were accurate — the city had been forsaken and the land had been desolate — and the renaming is not a denial of the history but a change in the fact.
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.
6 I have set watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent day nor night. You who call on Yahweh, take no rest, 7 and give him no rest until he establishes, and until he makes Jerusalem a praise on the earth.
The most startling instruction about prayer in the book. Watchmen are posted whose duty is not to watch for enemies but to pray, continuously, and the phrase is give him no rest.
The boldness is licensed by the promises it is asking about. What the watchmen are pressing for is what God has just said he intends, and the persistence is a kind of agreement rather than an imposition — which is how the parable of the widow and the judge uses the same idea Luke 18:7.
8 Yahweh 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, 9 but those who have harvested it will eat it, and praise Yahweh. Those who have gathered it will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”
The reversal of the curse Deuteronomy 28:33, and it is the most concrete promise in the chapter: you will eat what you grew.
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.
The highway of chapter forty, and the work has become specific. Somebody has to pick the stones out of the road, which is the least visionary task in the book.
They will call them “The Holy People, Yahweh’s Redeemed”. You will be called “Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken”.
settled What this mark means