Isaiah 51 explained: Comfort for a Broken City

Remember Abraham and Sarah (vv. 1-3)

The people are told to look back at where they came from, like stone looking at the quarry it was cut from: Abraham was called as one man, and from him and Sarah came a nation. If God did that once, a small and battered community can hope to grow again, and ruined Zion (Jerusalem) can bloom like the garden of Eden.

Justice reaching every nation (vv. 4-8)

God's teaching and justice will go out as a light even to distant coastlands, and Christians later read this as pointing to the message about Jesus spreading to all peoples. Sky, earth and the insults of enemies will all wear out like old clothes eaten by moths, but God's rescue will last.

A cry to God's arm (vv. 9-11)

The people call on God's "arm", meaning his power, to wake up and act as it did long ago. Rahab and the sea monster are poetic images of chaos and probably of Egypt, and the sea that dried up recalls the escape from slavery there, so they hope for a new journey home to Zion with singing.

Why fear mere humans? (vv. 12-16)

God answers that oppressors fade like grass, while he made the heavens and the earth. Prisoners will soon go free and not starve, and God gives his words to his people, protects them and calls Zion "my people" again.

Jerusalem drunk on judgment (vv. 17-20)

Jerusalem is pictured as a mother who has drained a cup of God's anger and now staggers, with none of the children she raised able to take her by the hand. The ruin, famine, war and children lying faint at every street corner most likely reflect Babylon's destruction of the city around 587 BC, which the text openly calls God's judgment.

The cup passes to the oppressors (vv. 21-23)

God takes the cup away for good and puts it in the hands of those who tormented her. Conquerors sometimes literally walked on the backs or necks of the defeated, which is the humiliation behind the last verse.

Key verse: Isaiah 51:12

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether these promises to Zion were fulfilled in the return from Babylon, are fulfilled spiritually in the church, or still await a future restoration of Israel.

Something to think about

What does remembering where you or your people came from do to your sense of what is still possible?