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Isaiah

About this book
Chapter 54

1 “Shout for joy, O barren one who has not given birth! Give a joyful shout and cry out, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one are more numerous than the children of the married woman,”⁠ says the Lord. 2 Make your tent larger, stretch your tent curtains farther out! Spare no effort, lengthen your ropes, and pound your stakes deep. 3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your children will conquer nations and will resettle desolate cities. 4 Don’t be afraid, for you will not be put to shame. Don’t be intimidated, for you will not be humiliated. You will forget about the shame you experienced in your youth; you will no longer remember the disgrace of your abandonment. 5 For your husband is the one who made you—the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name. He is your Protector, the Holy One of Israel. He is called “God of the entire earth.” 6 “Indeed, the Lord will call you back like a wife who has been abandoned and suffers from depression, like a young wife when she has been rejected,”⁠ says your God. 7 “For a short time I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you.⁠ 8 In a burst of anger I rejected you momentarily, but with lasting devotion I will have compassion on you,” says your Protector, the Lord. 9 “As far as I am concerned, this is like in Noah’s time, when I vowed that the waters of Noah’s flood would never again cover the earth.⁠ In the same way I have vowed that I will not be angry at you or shout at you.⁠ 10 Even if the mountains are removed and the hills displaced, my devotion will not be removed from you, nor will my covenant of friendship be displaced,” says the Lord, the one who has compassion on you. 11 “O afflicted one, driven away, and unconsoled! Look, I am about to set your stones in antimony and lay your foundation with lapis lazuli.⁠ 12 I will make your pinnacles out of gems, your gates out of beryl, and your outer wall out of beautiful stones. 13 All your children will be followers of the Lord, and your children will enjoy great prosperity.⁠ 14 You will be reestablished when I vindicate you. You will not experience oppression; indeed, you will not be afraid. You will not be terrified, for nothing frightening will come near you. 15 If anyone dares to challenge you, it will not be my doing! Whoever tries to challenge you will be defeated. 16 Look, I create the craftsman, who fans the coals into a fire and forges a weapon. I create the destroyer so he might devastate.⁠ 17 No weapon forged to be used against you will succeed; you will refute everyone who tries to accuse you. This is what the Lord will do for his servants—I will vindicate them,” says the Lord.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 6:6 and Isaiah 54:9 and 1 Samuel 15:11

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Genesis, 1 Samuel, and Isaiah use the same word for regret to show moments where God changes his mind. In Genesis, it leads to the flood, in 1 Samuel it leads to Saul’s rejection, and in Isaiah it leads to a move from destruction to renewal.

Passages

Genesis 6:6

Hebrew Bible
5 But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out* humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

Isaiah 54:9

Hebrew Bible
8 In a burst of anger I rejected you momentarily, but with lasting devotion I will have compassion on you,” says your Protector, the Lord. 9 “As far as I am concerned, this is like in Noah’s time, when I vowed that the waters of Noah’s flood would never again cover the earth. In the same way I have vowed that I will not be angry at you or shout at you. 10 Even if the mountains are removed and the hills displaced, my devotion will not be removed from you, nor will my covenant of friendship be displaced,” says the Lord, the one who has compassion on you.
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

1 Samuel 15:11

Hebrew Bible
10 Then the Lord’s message came to Samuel: 11 “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned away from me and has not done what I told him to do.” Samuel became angry and he cried out to the Lord all that night. 12 Then Samuel got up early to meet Saul the next morning. But Samuel was informed, “Saul has gone to Carmel where he is setting up a monument for himself.” Then Samuel left and went down to Gilgal.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Samuel

References

"... “comfort” is ambiguous, in that it refers to a change of mind or mood. To comfort is to induce a change, to leave behind the past, to forget. But God is precisely the one who cannot forget, as Deutero-Isaiah insistently reminds us (Isaiah 40:27; 49:15). It is because God cannot forget that we can forget, traverse the catastrophe, step beyond the abyss. God, however, is notoriously characterized by his changes of mind, denoted by the same verb נחם. God regrets his creation of humanity in the Flood Story (Genesis 6:6-7 ... another instance is God's retraction of sovereignty from Saul in 1 Samuel 15:11, 35), with which the catastrophe in Deutero-Isaiah is compared (Isaiah 54:9). Here the verb signals a transformation in God, from judgment to compassion. But as such it is unstable, since it can always be reversed ..."
Francis Landy, “Spectrality in the Prologue to Deutero-Isaiah,” in The Desert Will Bloom: Poetic Visions in Isaiah, ed. A. Joseph Everson and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, AIL 4 (Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 131–158.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 6:6 and Isaiah 54:9 and 1 Samuel 15:11

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