Deeper Commentary
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).
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). The fact that God will never 'hold His peace'
for His people's sake (Is. 62:1) means that we should likewise
not 'hold our peace' for them (the same Hebrew is used in Is. 62:6). In
our prayers for them, we are to give God no rest (Is. 62:7). And so the
connection between Is. 62:1 and 6 leaves us with an amazing challenge:
His restless activity and concern for His people should be ours. It
must be ours, if we are His children. Being bored from having
‘nothing to do’ just isn’t part of the believer’s life; His huge activity,
the endless surging of His Spirit, is to be replicated in us as we too
seek the good of others. If this connection is firmly established between
His activity and ours, His Spirit and ours… then quite naturally we will
seek to maximize our time for Him and be minimalists in the hours we spend
upon the things of this life. As He never slumbers nor sleeps in His
restless activity and thought for His people, so we shall likewise be in
the Kingdom age; and our desire to be there is not because we fancy an
eternal tropical holiday with palm trees blowing in the mind, but because
we wish to be more closely aligned with His activity, with His Spirit, and
not be held back by the limitations of our current natures.
Some prophecies are dependent on prayer for their fulfilment. This is
an example: “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s
sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as
brightness”. But this is dependent upon prayer: “I have set watchmen upon
thy walls, O Jerusalem…ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence,
and give him no rest
till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (:6,7). The
prophecy that “I will not rest” was dependent for fulfilment upon the
faithful continuing to pray and thereby not giving Him rest. Of course,
they pray from their own freewill; there is the possibility they won’t
pray, and thereby, surely, there’s the possibility the statement “I will
not rest” is purely conditional on our prayers…?
Isaiah 62:2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all kings your
glory, and you shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of Yahweh
shall name- They would perceive that their righteousness was in the
Lord Jesus, "the Lord our righteousness", and that He was the glory of the
people of Israel (Lk. 2:32). As is the case today, the witness to the Lord
Jesus is most powerfully through the people whom He has redeemed. Their
new name would be related to their being counted righteous; just as today,
baptism into the name of the Lord Jesus means we are covered in the
clothing of His righteousness.
Isaiah 62:3 You shall also be a crown of beauty in the hand of Yahweh, and
a royal diadem in the hand of your God- It is God's people who are in
His hand (Dt. 33:3). The idea is that God is crowned with His people, they
are His glory, and He is theirs, just as Paul's converts were his joy and
crown.
God not only forgives, but He delights in doing so (as Mic. 7:18); the way He is spoken of as ‘delighting’ in spiritually weak Israel is part and parcel of Him lavishing grace as He does (Num. 14:8). It must be so awful to have such a wonderful spirit of lavishing grace and love, consciously giving out life and patient forgiveness to so many; and yet not be appreciated for it, to have puny humans shaking their fist at God because they die a brief moment of time sooner than they think they should, to have tiny people arrogantly questioning His love. Seeing that God is Almighty, and God could have made [and could re-make] His creation to ‘understand’ and respond in a robot-like way... and seeing God has real and deep emotional feelings... it all makes God almost a tragic figure.
Isaiah 62:5 For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons shall marry
you- LXX makes this more relevant to the exiles returning and living
in Zion: "And as a young man lives with a virgin, so shall thy sons dwell
in thee". But most of the sons of Zion didn't return there, preferring
Babylon; and of those who did, most wouldn't live in Jerusalem but
preferred living outside the city and developing their own farmsteads (see
on Neh. 11:1,2). "Sons" is banayich but this is
And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will
rejoice over you- This suggests
Isaiah 62:6 I have set watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they shall never
hold their peace day nor night: you who call on Yahweh, take no rest-
The watchmen were looking for the return of the exiles from Babylon and
were giving Yahweh no rest until He brought this about. But they were
"set" there, just as God gives repentance. He gave them that mindset. See
on :1.
Is. 62:6,7 speaks of watchmen [= the prophets, Ezekiel 3:17; Jer.
6:17; Hab. 2:1] set upon Jerusalem’s walls as watchmen, keeping no silence
[in their prophesying] until Jerusalem was established. For the link
between the prophets and standing on a watchtower, see Hab. 2:1. Is this
not a reference to Malachi, Haggai and Zechariah prophesying as the basis
upon which the newly built walls of Jerusalem would be preserved, and the
city develop into the Messianic Kingdom hoped for? Note that the rebuilt
Jerusalem of Ezra’s time and the latter day Jerusalem are the same thing
in Isaiah; the Kingdom could’ve come then. Watchmen upon the walls were
looking for something- for the approach of the Messianic messenger with
good tidings of Judah’s full return from captivity, of which Isaiah had
spoken in Isaiah 52:7,8. But most of Judah preferred to stay in Babylon,
took up a collection for the few who did return… and no Messiah could
appear with that news. God had promised this- but He asked to be put in
remembrance of His promises (Isaiah 43:26), i.e. He asked for those
watchmen to be His ‘rememberancers’, even though He cannot in that sense
forget them (Psalms 119:49; Jer. 14:21). In all this we see an exquisite
picture of how God works with men, how His promised faithfulness and
omnipotence all the same has built into it a requirement for human
prayerfulness and response. The reality was that the watchmen / prophets
of Israel were blind, ignorant and sleepy (Isaiah 56:10).
Compare the following passages:
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never
hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not
silence, And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make
Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Is. 62:6,7)
with
“Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and
love unto all the saints, Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention
of you in my prayers; That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:15-17).
Isaiah 62:7 And give Him no rest, until He establishes and until He makes
Jerusalem a praise in the earth- See on :6.
Our prayers are to give the Father no "rest" (Is. 62:7), no cessation
from violent warfare (Heb.). Isaiah had prophesied that God would not
rest until Zion be restored. Watchmen would be set upon Zion’s walls who
would give Him no rest until the walls be rebuilt (Is. 62:1,6,7). At this
time, Zion was felt by God to be the “apple of his eye” (Zech. 2:8). This
prophesy started to be fulfilled straight after the Babylonian invasion
when Jeremiah urged the desolated people to pray: “O wall of the daughter
of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no
rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease” (Lam. 2:18). The prayerful
remnant gave themselves
no rest; and thus was fulfilled the prophecy that God would
have no rest. Sincere prayer according to God’s will meant that there was
a strange mutuality between the Father and those who prayed to Him. Both
He and they considered Zion to be the apple of their eye; and thus the
prayers were ultimately answered and Zion was restored.
The failure of the restored exiles to fulfill these things led to their
reapplication and reinterpretation.
Paul in Rom. 1:9
["unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers"]
is surely alluding to Is. 62:6,7: “On your walls, O
Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall
never be silent. You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and
give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in
the earth”. Paul saw the Gentile believers in Rome as spiritual Jerusalem.
It’s not that God forgets and needs reminding, but rather that by our
prayers for others we as it were focus His special attention upon them.
Paul several times states that he is day and night, continually in prayer
for others. He likely had the Isaiah passage in mind; his brethren in
Christ were now for him the Jerusalem upon whom his hopes were set, rather
than upon the physical city as had been the case in Judaism.
Isaiah 62:8 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 shall not drink your new wine, for which you have
laboured- To lose the fruits of agricultural labour to invading
foreigners was part of the curses for breaking covenant with Yahweh. He
promises here, therefore, not to punish sin any more. This would be
because of His right hand and strength, terms which apply to His
manifestation in His Son the Lord Jesus (Ps. 80:17). Such a situation
implies the emergence of a situation where sin has already been
appropriately punished, and Israel are not going to sin any more. The
intention of the new covenant was to place God's Spirit within His people
so that they didn't sin and were immortalized. If this Spirit is within us
and is already beginning to work, we likewise have thereby the guarantee
that we too shall emerge into the Kingdom of God, immortal and unable to
sin (Eph. 1:14).
Isaiah 62:9 But those who have garnered it shall eat it, and praise
Yahweh; and those who have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of My
sanctuary- The "it" refers to the new wine made from grapes they had
themselves gathered (:8). The allusion is to the commands to bring their
tithes and offerings to the sanctuary and eat them there, rather than in
their homes (Lev. 19:23-25; Dt. 12:17,18). This at best would be fulfilled
in essence rather than to the letter in the final fulfilment of the last
days. The new covenant offered to the exiles was not the same as the
Mosaic law, which was the old covenant which they had broken. But the
flavour of this idea of bringing tithes and eating them in the sanctuary
suggests that this was intended to have happened at the time of the
restoration. So much potential was wasted.
Isaiah 62:10 Go through, go through the gates! Prepare the way of the
people! Cast up, cast up the highway! Gather out the stones!-
Isaiah 62:11 Behold, Yahweh has proclaimed to the end of the earth-
The ends of the eretz were Babylon and Persia, where the exiles
were. They were being asked to repent and quit exile because their
salvation was coming. But they stayed put.
Isaiah 62:12 They shall call them The holy people, The redeemed of Yahweh:
and you shall be called Sought out, A city not forsaken-
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