Isaiah 4: A Chapter of Hope
- v.1 Continuation
- v.2-6 The Branch of the Lord & Restoration of Zion
[Comment: For further notes on this short chapter, see end of chapter]
v.1 Continuation
v.1 In that day seven women will take hold of one man and say, “We will eat our own food and provide our own clothes; only let us be called by your name. Take away our disgrace!”
[Notes: As God continues His work, with most men gone, self-sufficient women will seek identity.]
v.2-6 The Branch of the Lord & Restoration of Zion
v.2 In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.
v.3 Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem.
v.4 The Lord will wash away the filth of the women of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire.
v.5 Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy.
v.6 It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.
[Notes: See also the notes below. Yet there will be glorious survivors of the Lord’s judgment, the surviving remnant in Jerusalem will be holy, the Lord will have cleansed them of the sin that previously prevailed and He will set His glorious presence over them as it had been during the Exodus [Ex 13:21] and he will shelter them and be a refuge for them.]
Addendum
Note 1: The surprise about this chapter is not so much its shortness as the fact that it didn’t start at what is seen as verse 2, the first verse being a continuation of the previous chapter. Having said that, it’s position here is, in one sense, as a continuation.
Note 2: ‘the day of the Lord’
- announced, 2:12 The Lord Almighty has a day in store
- its effects, 2:17,20 The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day…(and they will throw away their idols) - its infliction, 3:18 In that day the Lord will snatch away their finery
- its poverty inflicted, 4:1 In that day seven women will take hold of one man
It is a day of judgment. The only query about it is whether it will be in the near future or it is the Final Judgment that scripture often speaks about. We should note that there is a feeling that in all this there is an implied ongoing existence of the people of God after the judgment.
Note 3: The ‘Branch of the Lord’ seen in verse 2, that appears often in the prophetic scriptures (e.g. Isa 11:1, Jer 23:5, 33:15, Zech 3:8, 6:12) is either an individual (the Messiah) or, as some commentators suggest, the holy remnant if Israel, the nation, from within which the Messiah comes
Note 4: The point of this chapter must surely be to insert hope. This is something that always happens in the Scriptures. Yes, there will be judgment, God will deal with the ungodly and the unrighteous, and as this specifically applies to Israel (Judah), the fear will be that this means the ultimate destruction of the nation. But that is never so, there are always references to ‘remnants’ and, as we now find here, the Lord’s declaration is that His intent is to ultimately bring good to the nation:
- the end result will be beautiful and glorious (v.2)
- a holy people will still inhabit Jerusalem (v.3)
- they will be a cleansed-of-sin people (v.4)
- His protection and guidance will hang over them the whole time (v.5)
- thus Jerusalem will be a shelter and protection for them (v.6)
Yes, we have gone along with the popular division of the book calling the first 39 chapters, “Words of Judgment” but we should always be on the lookout for these words of hope that occur in this division that explode in number in the second division so often titled “Words of Comfort”
For those who may wish to make a study of this chapter, to perhaps think some more about what you have been reading, use the link below: