Deeper Commentary
Isaiah 64:1 Oh that You would tear the heavens, that You would come down, that the mountains might quake at Your presence-
Rending the heavens suggests He does this in anger rather than
to as it were open Heaven to give blessings to man. The allusion is to
Sinai and how He "tore asunder the nations" (Hab. 3:6). It is a request
for God to destroy the heavens of Babylon / Persia and just save His
people anyway. But God has had much to say about the judgment of Babylon.
He had asked His people to leave Babylon leather they be consumed in her
destruction. But they had chosen to remain. And so by grace He deferred
the destruction of Babylon. But they complain about that. Instead they ask
He send down intense heat that would make the mountains melt and boil
(:2). They want the condemnation of the world without pausing to reflect
that they are in that world and eagerly part of it, worshipping the same
idols.
This is all the language of Sinai. As discussed on Is. 63:16, the desire is for a new Sinai, a re-creation and re-acceptance of the Jews as God's people. But again, this prayer is out of sync with all God has been saying since Isaiah 40. The Jews had broken the old covenant, an He was offering them a new covenant, as Jeremiah and Ezekiel had done. But they didn't want that. They wanted to be partially obedient to the old covenant and ignore the gracious salvation offered in the new covenant. Of course the new covenant featured a reconstituted people of God, including Gentiles this time. But they were not keen on that. The argument of those praying seems to be that if God did something spectacular, then the Gentiles would turn to Him because of His display of mighty power. The LXX has "If you would open the heaven...", then the Gentiles would fear God's power. The paraphrase of the GNB gets the idea: "Why don't you tear the sky open and come down? The mountains would see you and shake with fear". But God has already explained what will draw the Gentiles to Him [an not just put them in fear of His power]- a humbled, repentant Israel proclaiming their salvation by grace and imputed righteousness through the suffering servant, lifted up as a banner to the Gentiles.
This chapter appears to be the continued request of some amongst God's people for Yahweh to no longer restrain Himself in (Is. 63:15). But that restraint had been because of their sins. There does indeed follow a confession of sin, but the plea seems to more be for immediate Divine salvation than for forgiveness. The mountains quaked at the exodus, and the prayer is that God would act again as He had acted then (as in Is. 63:15). But Is. 63:9-14 have stated that God indeed would act like that; the entire prophecy of God's intended restoration of His people is shot through with allusion to the wilderness journey and exodus from Egypt. He was willing and eager to do this. It was Israel's impenitence which precluded it.
Isaiah 64:2 As when fire kindles the brushwood- Perhaps a reference
to the burning bush. The plea was for God to act
as He had done at the exodus from Egypt.
And the fire causes the waters to boil- The idea may be as GNB "they would tremble like water boiling over a hot fire".
To make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence!- This trembling of the nations was to happen at the fall of Babylon and her confederacy (s.w. Is. 14:9), when Jerusalem would be restored (Jer. 33:9). But the attitude of the exiles precluded these things from happening. It is one thing to pray for things, but another to live in the spirit of them and act as if we do indeed really want them; see on Am. 5:18. Likewise it was one thing to pray that Yahweh's Name be known to His enemies; but it was quite another for them to make known His Name to them, as they were intended to (Is. 12:4 s.w.).
Isaiah 64:3 When You did awesome things which we didn’t look for, You came
down, the mountains quaked at Your presence- Again the plea is for
God to act as He had done at the exodus; the great salvation then had been
performed by grace, it was not what they had looked for. And so they ask
for God to do the same; but as explained on :1, Isaiah's entire prophecy
of God's intended restoration of His people is shot through with allusion
to the wilderness journey and exodus from Egypt. He was willing and eager
to do this. It was Israel's impenitence which precluded it.
Isaiah 64:4 For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear,
neither has the eye seen a God besides You, what God has prepared for him
who waits for Him- The idea is that the restoration and entry into
the reestablished Kingdom was going to be the most wonderful of all God's
saving acts seen throughout history; and no god besides Yahweh could
achieve this. But this is quoted in 1 Cor. 2:9 as if it means that God
alone appreciates the wonder of what He is going to do:
“Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye
seen, O God, besides you, what He has prepared for him that waits for
him”. Paul continues in 1 Cor. 2:9,10: “It is written, Eye has not seen,
nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man, the things which
God has prepared for them that love Him. But God has revealed them unto us by
His Spirit”. The passage in Is. 64 says that no one except God can
understand the things He has prepared for the believers. However 1 Cor. 2:10
says that those things have been revealed to us.
Isaiah 64:5 You meet him who rejoices and works righteousness- God is in search of man, and man is in search of God. "Meet" is the same word translated 'intercede'; that meeting is due to the intercession of the Lord Jesus (Is. 53:6,12; 59:16). Their 'meeting' is now in this life; and the heavens are electric with joy therefore when the lost sheep is found. All the Angels of heaven rejoice... when the Father meets the prodigal son. The Father (manifest in the Lord) runs out to meet the son. That story was masterfully tied back in to Is. 64:5-8: " Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways...we have sinned...we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags...but now, O Lord, thou art our father". The patient, hopeful father saw in the son a boy rejoicing and working righteousness; but this was hardly how he felt! And so it will be with Israel in the last days. And so it is with each of us now, in our times of repentance. That surpassing grace is ours; we are seen as working righteousness when all we have is a bitter self-loathing and desire to somehow get back to God.
Those who remember You in Your ways- The faithful Israelite was to remember the ways in which they were led through the wilderness to the promised land (s.w. Dt. 8:2; 24:9; 25:17). They were to perceive the hand of God in their personal history, leading them to meeting with Him. But the exiles chose their own ways and not His (Is. 66:3 s.w.).
Behold, You were angry, and we sinned. We have
been in sin for a long time; and shall we be saved?- AV "we shall be
saved". In this case we would have a confident expression of faith in
salvation despite recognizing that they had always sinned against Him
["for a long time" = olahm, eternally]. It could be that
Is. 65:8-16; Is. 66:5 etc. speak of a minority of Jews who trembled at the
word of prophecy and were Yahweh’s servants, who had been disfellowshipped
by the leaders of the Jewish community in Babylon. The majority of the
captives insisted, according to Ez. 18, that they hadn’t sinned, and they
were suffering unjustly because of the sins of their fathers; whereas this
righteous remnant in Babylon admitted that “we have sinned. Equally with
them of old time have we transgressed” (Is. 64:5). They took the message
of Ezekiel to heart- unlike the majority. And thus this was the sad end of
the great plan developed by the God of all grace for His people in
Babylon. They rejected it, and hated His servants who brought that good
news to them.
64:6 “No one calls on your name” = Is. 65:1 “I held out my hands to a
people who do not call on My name”
64:11 “Will you be silent?” = Is. 65:6 “I will not be silent”
63:19–64:2 requests Yahweh to judge with fire = Is. 66:16 “the Lord will
judge with fire”
63:17 Challenges Yahweh to act for the sake of His servants = Is.
65:8,13,14 Yahweh will act for the sake of His servants
64:8 requests God to act for His people = Is. 65:10 Yahweh defines His
people as those who seek Him, which Judah generally didn't: “My people who
seek Me”
64:10 laments the loss of the "holy house" = Is. 66:1 answers this by
redefining His house and explaining that a physical house was never what
he wanted: “where is the house that you will build for Me?”
64:8 asks God to “look” on His people = Is. 66:2 “to this one will I look
(s.w.).
In this case, Is. 65 and 66 are God's response to the prayer of Is. 63:7–64:11. This explains why those chapters offer the Kingdom of God to those who are humble and repentant, not idolaters. And it explains why the entire prophecy concludes on an apparently negative note at the end of Is. 66, threatening judgment on God's people who are apostate for Him despite all His best efforts. That is His final answer to this prayer of complaint.
Isaiah 64:6 For we have all become as one who is unclean, and all our
righteousness is as a polluted garment: and we all fade as a leaf; and our
iniquities, like the wind, take us away-
We
feel inadequate as employees, students, parents, partners... fearing we
won't make the grade. And we tend to feel the same way before our God too.
But in Christ, clothed with His righteousness, we need not feel like this.
Indeed, we
should not. We have tended to
misquote a number of Bible verses to justify our feeling that we can never
please God- e.g. Is. 64:6 "All our righteousness are as filthy rags". Yet
the context is clearly of a repentance from sin, recognizing that despite
all their external good works, Israel were ritually unclean before God. We
can and
do please God! The wonder of this should never cease to
impress us. J.R.R. Tolkien truly observed: "...the chief purpose of life,
for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge
of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and
thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: ...We praise
you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank
you for the greatness of your splendour". This admission of national
sin must be contrasted with :5 AV "we shall be saved"- despite all this.
But as discussed on :5, we can read this verse as the people saying that their righteous acts were treated as polluted by God; and therefore they had given up doing them. Implying He was just impossible to please. There are ample Bible verses that teach that God is in fact thrilled by our righteousness. Specifically in the context of the exiles: "Do well in Your good pleasure to Zion, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You will delight in the sacrifices of righteousness" (Ps. 51:18,19); "Yahweh is well pleased for his righteousness' sake" (Is. 42:21). God loved His Son because He "loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows" (Heb. 1:9). It's simply not the case that bearing human nature somehow cancels out any righteousness that man performs. The Lord had human nature but God still loved His righteousness. It is just not so that God looks at human righteousness and despises it. God "loves him that follows after righteousness" (Prov. 15:9); "Yahweh loves the righteous" (Ps. 146:8- and so many other scriptures).
So we have here the very common syndrome of 'Whatever I do, it's no good for him / her / them; whatever good I do for them, it's never enough or never good enough'. And so the person feeling this gives up on the relationship. It is the stuff of broken down relationships. I hear it all the time when chatting with people about their relationship difficulties. And the exiles are saying this to and about God Almighty. The answer of God is in Is. 65:3,4- their apparently righteous sacrifices and religious devotions were being performed to idols. In the name of Yahweh worship. As they had done before the exile, so they did throughout the exile and therefore on their return to the land. Only some time later did they quit idolatry.
They claim that all their righteous deeds were seen as unclean by God, like a menstrual rag [Heb.] that was totally abhorrent in terms of Levitical holiness and had to be cast away. The language has a strong flavour of detestation. But this is indeed how God had said He saw their prayers and sacrifices when at the same time they were worshipping idols. God found all that hypocrisy as a smoke in His nostrils. But they ignored that. His answer to their claim of righteous religious deeds is in Is. 65:3-5,7: "A people who provoke me to my face continually, sacrificing in gardens and making offerings on bricks; who sit in tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat pig's flesh, and broth of tainted meat is in their vessels; who say, “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.” These are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all the day... they made offerings on the mountains and insulted me on the hills, I will measure into their lap payment for their former deeds".
"And we all do fade as a leaf" is a repeated of God's opening
words to the exiles in Is. 40:7. Indeed the grass withered and the flower
faded because His Spirit blew upon them; but they had then been offered
the word of redemption that would last for ever, and a path back to Zion.
They had refused that, and now grumble at their humanity and the
conditions that arise from refusing God's word of salvation. It's like
complaining about death and all related aspects of the curse. God has
explained the cause, the fault is ours and we have a wonderful path out of
the situation.
They compare their sin to the wind, blowing them away against their will.
But again this is a studied rejection of the teaching of Is. 57:13: "When
you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you! The wind will carry
them all off, a breath will take them away. But he who takes refuge in me
shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain". God's response
in Is. 65 will be to rebuke and call out their idolatry.
Isaiah 64:7 There is none who calls on Your name, who stirs up himself to
take hold of You-
On one hand, this can be read as a confession of sin. But the argument seems to be that none calls on God because He has hidden Himself from them. God's answer is in Is. 65:1,2. He had pleaded with His people, beckoning them to Him with open arms. They had refused. But Gentiles whose name He had not called... came to Him, hopefully of His acceptance by grace.
God has repeatedly explained why He hid His face from the exiles,
and how that period had ended- if they wanted to see His face (Is. 54:8;
57:17; 59:2). We note that they hid their faces from the suffering servant
(Is. 53:3). And yet they are arguing that none of them made the conscious
mental effort to stir themselves up because it was no use, seeing God was
hiding from them and overly focused upon their sins. So like many people,
they fell into a spiritual stupor because they felt it was just all too
hard God was too far away and too focused on their admitted sins. This is
where the message of the cross, reflection on God's words and openness to
His Spirit can shake man from this malaise, from his spiritual lethargy
and this mire of mediocrity. These things make us eager to persuade others
of the great possibilities they have, and to turn back those who have
walked away from them. We are talking about eternal life and eternal
death. Nothing is more intensely serious. The same word for 'stirring up '
is used of how at the restoration, God had stirred up the spirit of both
Cyrus and the exiles to return to Judah (Ezra 1:1,5). But they had
resisted that, preferring to remain in Babylon and the soft life. They
said that they couldn't take hold upon God because He was hiding from
them. But He had urged them to take hold (s.w. "stir up") of His new
covenant (Is. 56:4,6), and multiple times said that He wanted to take hold
of them and bring them from Babylon to Zion. The same word is in Is.
51:17: "Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem!". He urged
the returned exiles to take hold of Him (s.w. Hag. 2:4; Zech. 8:9). But
God was as it were never good enough for them. They are arguing that they
can't take hold of God because He is maxed out on their sins and has
unreasonably hidden Himself. Man today mutters all the same things until
he comes to the end of his days of opportunity. The same attitude amongst
the exiles was encountered by Ezekiel in Ez. 33:10, “Our transgressions
and our sins are upon us, and we waste away in them, how should we then
live?". Ezekiel's response to that was to appeal for them to repentance
and accept the new covenant. But they didn't. They hid behind the excuse
that God wasn't good enough and unreasonable: "Yet you say, ‘The way of
the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you
according to his ways” (Ez. 33:20).
This is a recognition that the restored exiles had
not allowed themselves to be stirred up as intended.
God
'stirred up' the spirit of Cyrus and also of the Jews who returned (Ezra
1:1,5). Isaiah uses the same Hebrew term to describe how Israel's saviour
would be "raised up" [s.w.]- Is. 41:2,25; 45:13. And yet Isaiah pleads
with Zion, i.e. the faithful, to indeed be stirred up- Is. 51:17; 52:1
appeals to Zion to "Awake!"- the same word translated "stirred up". But
Isaiah tragically concluded that there were so few who would 'stir up
themselves'. God had given them the potential to be 'stirred
up' in their hearts and minds to leave Babylon and return- but they
wouldn't respond. And today, the same happens. God is willing to change
hearts, to stir up materialistic and complacent spirits- but because we're
not robots, we have to respond. And yet, God's grace still shines through.
Yahweh would "stir up" Cyrus (s.w. Is. 41:2,25; 45:13), so this could have been fulfilled through that stirred up "mighty man" of Is. 42:13. But he failed. The "mighty man", the gibbor, therefore became reapplied to the Lord Jesus (Is. 9:6 s.w.). But He will act through the stirring up of a repentant Judah (s.w. Is. 51:9,17; 52:1), seeing that no man would be 'stirred up' (s.w. Is. 64:7). All the potential candidates had refused the Divine nudges to be stirred up. There was apparently not a single one in the community who would 'hold fast' the offered new covenant (s.w. "who holds it fast" in Is. 56:2,4,6); apart from the Messianic "son of man" (see on Is. 56:2).
For You have hidden Your face from us, and have consumed us by means of our iniquities- Is. 30:20 describes the reestablished Kingdom as a time when Judah's repentant eyes would "see" the God who had taught them through the sufferings of defeat and exile (see note there). Their eyes would no longer be blinded, they would see and perceive the 'hidden' God who had tried to teach them through all their afflictions. Meaning will finally be attached to event, and the problem of evil resolved finally. God had as it were 'hidden' Himself during the exile (Is. 45:15; Mic. 3:4); but now He would be revealed to them. Just as Cain was exiled to the east of Eden (which I have suggested was the eretz promised to Abraham) and been hidden from God's eyes in his exile (Gen. 4:14; Dt. 31:17,18; 32:20 s.w.), so with Judah. The hidden things belong to God and only some are now revealed to us, but in the day of exile's end, all those things, the meaning attached to the events, will at last be revealed (Dt. 29:29 s.w.). Then there will be no need for Jeremiah's Lamentations and struggles about the exile, all developed in the story of the suffering Job, who felt God hidden from him (s.w. Job 3:23; 13:24) just as God was to hide His face from Zion at the time of the Babylonian invasion (Jer. 33:5) and exile (Ez. 39:23,24). Therefore all human attempts to see the hidden God were doomed to failure, as Job was finally taught (Job 34:29 s.w.). But the glorious truth of Is. 30:20 is that finally, the Divine teacher will not be hidden any more and our eyes shall see Him and His ways, as Job did at the end (Job 42:5). And yet Isaiah and his family / school of prophets did look or see the hand of the God who was hiding Himself from Judah (s.w. Is. 8:17). At the restoration, there was to be no need for Judah to feel that their way was "hid from Yahweh" (Is. 40:27 s.w.) any more, as it had been during the exile "for a little moment" when God hid His face (Is. 54:8). Their eyes would see / perceive. But tragically, the exiles didn't; God reflected that "I hid me... and he went on proudly in the way of his heart" (Is. 57:17). Their sins continued to hide His face from them (Is. 59:2; 64:7). By lamenting the fact God has hidden His face, they were refusing to accept why this was so. It was because of their sins (Dt. 31:17,18; Is. 8:17, 45:15, 54:8, 59:2; Jer. 33:5). But they are lamenting that, rather than being penitent about it. They seem to mind that God is not just ignoring their spiritually obnoxious behaviour. They are reasoning exactly like Cain in Gen. 4: "Behold You have driven me today away from the ground, and from Your face I shall be hid". Yahweh has already answered this objection in Is. 59:2: “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear". NIV "and have given us over to our sins" reasons as in Is. 63, that God was in fact to blame for their sins. There is no penitence here, only lament and God-blaming self justification.
Isaiah 64:8 But now, Yahweh, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You
our potter; and we all are the work of Your hand-
We could read this as a fatalistic comment, that God is going to do what He wants with us anyway and we have no say in the matter. Obviously missing the point [as does so much of this prayer] that it is how the clay responds which determines whether the potter makes something permanent out of it.
Isaiah 64:9 Don’t be furious, Yahweh, neither remember iniquity forever:
see, look, we beg You, we are all Your people-
The complaint was that surely God had gone on punishing for too long. It recurs in Ps. 79:8 and Zech. 1:12. But God has repeatedly said that they time of their slavery in Babylon was over, indeed His love was such that He had cut it short. The time of redemption had come. But they had refused it. In any case, if we are convicted that sin warrants death, we can hardly complain that suffering for sin ought to be shorter.
As noted on :1, this is asking Yahweh to do what He had Himself multiple times promised to do- to not remember sin forever, and to look on His people with pity rather than grace. But He would no longer remember iniquity if they accepted the new covenant (s.w. Jer. 31:34). And thus man is brought to God- desiring and praying for the very things which we then realize He has been earnestly offering us all the time. As the Yiddish couplet says, "And going out to meet Him, I met Him coming towards me".
Here we have yet again a willful ignorance of God's words to the exiles (see on Is. 63:17,9; 64:5). For God has specifically said that He will not remember their iniquity forever: "Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all... he will bear their iniquities" (Is. 53:6,11).
Isaiah 64:10 Your holy cities are become a wilderness, Zion has become a
wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation- Isaiah's later prophecies are in
response to the judgment of Is. 39, that Judah were to go into captivity
in Babylon and Jerusalem be desolated. This is therefore as it were a
pro forma prayer for the captives- which it seems they did not pray,
or prayed simply from the secular point of view of lamenting the loss of
what were the icons of their culture and self-identity, rather than being
the prayer of repentance.
As discussed on Is. 63:18, it was quite inappropriate to complain that the cities were a wilderness and the temple still in ruins. Isaiah had repeatedly offered them the gospel of the restoration of Zion and the cities of Judah: "They shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities" (Is 61:4). But they had refused the conditions, or probably not even paid serious attention to such promises.
Isaiah 64:11 Our holy and our beautiful house where our fathers praised
You is burnt with fire; and all our pleasant places are laid waste-
We could comment that they parallel "Your cities" with "our house...
places", as if recognizing that what is Yahweh's is theirs. Or we could
more negatively respond that it
was God’s house, not theirs. They only mourned for the loss of it insofar
as it was a reflection of what they revelled in anyway, as an expression
of themselves, rather than a means of worshipping God. And their fathers
not only praised Yahweh there but offered idol sacrifice there, as Ezekiel
demonstrates.
We note "our house... our precious things". They saw these religious symbols as theirs, not God's. John's Gospel therefore talks about the feasts of the Jews, when those feasts were originally feasts of Yahweh. God's response will be in Is. 66, where He will remind them that He never wanted that temple anyway, and was almost glad to see it gone because He wants to dwell in humbled hearts, not physical buildings. They had forgotten what Ezekiel had told them about the reasons for the destruction of their beloved temple: "Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the delight of your eyes, and the yearning of your soul, and your sons and your daughters whom you left behind shall fall by the sword" (Ez. 24:21). It was because they thought a physical temple could save them that it was taken away. God wants relationship,. Not religion. So He took away their religion. But they were demanding it back.
Isaiah 64:12 Will You refrain Yourself for these things, Yahweh?- God had earlier accepted that throughout the captivity He had been "restrained toward" Israel, but now He would be restrained no longer (s.w. Is. 42:14). But He did so because of the prayer of the faithful not to restrain Himself longer (Is. 63:15; 64:12). The tragedy is that His unrestrained desire to save and redeem the exiles was still refused by them; and perhaps there were few who really begged Him to no longer restrain Himself. For they were quite happy with their prosperous lives in Babylon and Persia. And so the events of the last days will elicit this more intense prayer, and Yahweh will finally act unrestrainedly in this earth.
The statement that God will not "rest" for Zion's sake (Is. 62:1) must be understood in the context of the faithful at that time urging God not to "be still" [same Hebrew word translated "rest"] for His people (Ps. 83:1; Is. 64:12). This is an allusion to Boaz not being at rest until he had redeemed Ruth and Naomi; see on Is. 49:26. God is not at rest, He is not distant from us; and yet His people in Babylon felt that He was. It's no wonder that we are tempted to feel the same. Yet we must give Is. 62:1 it's full weight- God is answering the complaint of His people by stating that no, He will never rest for them. In this same context we read that He that keeps Israel will "neither slumber nor sleep" (Ps. 121:4). Much of the later chapters of Isaiah speaks of the faithful remnant in Babylon. The prayers and thoughts of that faithful minority often surface- this and Is. 62:1 is an example. Thus they fulfilled the prophecy that Zion’s watchmen would give God no rest (Is. 62:6,7). But overall, the poor response of Judah seems to have led God to abandon the plan for the gloriously rebuilt Messianic temple. The plan of saving His people and reestablishing His Kingdom was reinterpreted, delayed and reapplied.
Will You hold Your peace, and afflict us very severely?- Afflicted" is the word used in Is. 63:18 of the Babylonian "adversaries" who destroyed Jerusalem. Whilst this was an act of Divine judgment, God still felt for His people all through it. Jeremiah's laments in Lamentations that God had somehow switched off from feeling for His people were therefore simply stating things as they seemed to him at the time. For in reality, in their affliction He was afflicted (Is. 63:9). Here again we see their confession of sin tinged by misunderstanding and a lingering sense of injustice on God's part.
The prayer ends abruptly and with no humility. Here we have yet again a willful ignorance of God's words to the exiles (see on Is. 63:17,9; 64:5). LXX "for all these things thou, O Lord, has withholden, thyself, and been silent, and hast brought us very low". But God has explained His silence: "I have been silent a long time, I have been quiet and restrained Myself; now I will cry out like a travailing woman, I will both gasp and pant" (Is. 42:14).
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