Isaiah 54:6
Hebrew Bible
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.
Date: 7th-5th Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Malachi 2:14
Hebrew Bible
12 May the Lord cut off from the community of Jacob every last person who does this, as well as the person who presents improper offerings to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! 13 You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. 14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. 15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. What did our ancestor do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. 16 “I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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Notes and References
"... In Proverbs 5:18 and Malachi 2:14, the “wife of one’s youth” describes a spouse to whom a man should be intimately committed. Conversely, Proverbs 2:17 rebukes the immoral woman who abandons the partner of her youth. The deserted spouse of one’s youth is thereby regarded as the innocent party. The description of the forsaken wife in Isaiah 54:6-8 also alludes to Lamentations 5. The words reused in Isaiah 54:6-8 are indicated in Lamentations 5:20-22 ... Willey points out that [these words] appear together nowhere else except in Lamentations 5:22 and Isaiah 54:4, 6-8 ... The appearance of this unique cluster of words in practically the same order shows that Deutero-Isaiah again alludes to Lamentations 5:20-22. Also, the theme of these two texts concerns YHWH abandoning the people / Zion in anger during the exile. However, in Lamentations 5, the abandoned people admit their culpability (Lamentations 5:7, 16), while Zion is portrayed by Deutero-Isaiah simply as the abandoned and possibly wronged wife of YHWH’s youth ..."
Low, Maggie
Mother Zion in Deutero-Isaiah: A Metaphor for Zion Theology
(pp. 104-105) Peter Lang Publishing, 2013
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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