Isaiah 52:1 - Meaning and Application

Here, God calls his people to rise up and act with courage for their own rescue (Isaiah 52:1, Isaiah 52:2). Earlier they had prayed that God would awake and put on his strength (Isaiah 51:9). Now he tells them to awake and put on their strength, to stir themselves up, come out of despair, and take heart again. They should stop sinking under their burden and start hoping that God will still do great things for them.

He also calls them to wake from unbelief, look upward, look around, and look into God’s promises and providences, meaning the ways God is working for them. They should raise their expectations of what God can do. At the same time, they should wake from laziness, slowness, and carelessness, and use every proper means to seek favor with the conqueror and win a better standing with him. They must not take unlawful steps for their own relief, but act wisely within the limits of justice.

God gives them assurance that captivity will reform them. No longer will the uncircumcised and the unclean enter them (Isaiah 52:1). Their idolatrous habits will not be brought in again, or at least will not be allowed to stay. Later, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, when foreign marriages brought in impurity, the leaders quickly drove it out again and worked to keep Jerusalem a holy city. In the same way, the gospel Jerusalem is purified by Christ’s blood and God’s grace, and made truly holy.

He also assures them that their captivity will end and their chains will be broken. They will no longer be oppressed, and hostile nations will not keep invading them. The line can also be read as, “The uncircumcised and the unclean will no longer come against you.” The heathen will not again enter God’s sanctuary and defile his temple (Psalm 79:1). Still, this promise has a condition: if they stay close to God, he will keep the enemy out. If they turn back to corruption, later enemies such as Antiochus or the Romans will profane and destroy the temple. For the present, however, peace is coming.

Because of that coming change, they must ready themselves for joy. They are told to put on their beautiful garments and stop appearing in mourning clothes, the dress of a widow. They should take on a fresh and hopeful look, because a better scene is beginning. When the harps were hung on the willow trees, those garments were laid aside, but now both joy and strength should be taken up again. The joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10), and these beautiful garments also picture the armor of proof against temptation and trouble.

Jerusalem must wear her beautiful garments when she becomes a holy city, because holiness is her true beauty. The more holy we are, the more reason we have to rejoice. They must also prepare for liberty. They are told to shake themselves from the dust, the dust of sorrow and humiliation, and rise up. They should remove every mark of slavery and take hold of freedom with courage. The gospel announces liberty to those bound by fear, and it also calls them to receive it. Those who have been weighed down by sin and then found relief in Christ should shake off their doubts and fears and loose themselves from those bonds, because if the Son makes them free, they are truly free.

Next, God himself is stirred up with jealousy for his people’s deliverance. He pleads their cause with himself and moves toward saving them, because the reasons for mercy are found in his own heart. He first notes that the Chaldeans, the Babylonians who oppressed them, never honored God in gaining power over his people, just as Sennacherib did not understand God’s purpose when God used him to correct and reform his people (Isaiah 10:6, Isaiah 10:7). “You sold yourselves for nothing,” God says, “and you will be redeemed without payment” (Isaiah 52:3, Isaiah 45:13). When they sold themselves by sin, God, who had the first and only right to them, did not gain anything by the price. They did not even pay their debt to him. The Babylonians gave God no thanks for their victory, but instead insulted and blasphemed his name because of it. So they who got them for nothing will at last let them go for nothing. Those who give nothing should expect nothing, and God owes no man anything.

He also remembers that his people had been in similar trouble before, and had often suffered for a time under harsh masters. So it would be a pity to leave them always in the hands of these oppressors (Isaiah 52:4). His people went down into Egypt, meaning they went there peacefully to live, but the Egyptians made slaves of them and ruled them with cruelty. Yet God delivered them, despite Pharaoh’s pride, power, and schemes. Why should we not think he can deliver them again? Later, the Assyrians oppressed God’s people without cause, as when the ten tribes were taken away by the king of Assyria. Soon after that, Sennacherib, another Assyrian king, came with a destroying army and took the fortified cities of Judah. The Babylonians may also be called Assyrians, since their empire grew out of Assyria, and they too oppressed the people without cause. God was right to hand his people over to them, but they were wrong in the way they treated them. They could not claim them as lawful subjects, the way Pharaoh could when Israel was settled in Goshen. When we suffer at the hands of wicked and unreasonable people, it is some comfort to say that, as far as they are concerned, it is without cause. We have not given them reason to treat us so (Psalm 7:3-5).

Finally, God sees that his own glory is harmed by the injuries done to his people (Isaiah 52:5). He asks, in effect, what benefit he has received if his people have been taken away for nothing. He is no longer worshiped in Jerusalem as he once was. His altar is gone, and his temple lies in ruins. If, in place of that, he were being honored more fully in Babylon, either by the captives or by the native people, then the matter would be different, and God’s honor might seem to increase there. But sadly, it is not so.

The captives were so crushed in spirit that they could not praise God. Instead, they kept crying out in misery, and that grief moved his pity. Their rulers made them groan, just as the Egyptians once made Israel groan in Egypt (Exodus 2:23). The Babylonians treated them even more harshly and forced louder complaints from them. Their condition gives a sad picture of their hearts at the time, because their complaints were not as wise or godly as they should have been. They were more like animal cries than prayers, as in Hosea 7:14.

Even so, God heard them and came down to rescue them, just as he had done in Egypt (Exodus 3:7, 8). The native people, however, were so proud that they would not praise him. Instead, they kept blaspheming, which insulted him and stirred his anger. They boasted that they were stronger than God because they had overpowered his people. They mocked him as though he could not save them, and in that way his name was blasphemed every day among them.

When they praised their idols, they were lifting themselves up against the Lord of heaven (Daniel 5:23). God says, in effect, “This will not be allowed to continue. I will rise to deliver them.” He asks what honor he has in the world when his people, who should bring him honor and praise, instead bring him shame. Their oppressors would not praise God themselves, and they would not allow his people to do so either. The apostle Paul applies this same truth to the sinful lives of the Jews, because by their behavior God was dishonored among the Gentiles, just as he was dishonored then by their suffering (Romans 2:23, 24).

God’s glory would shine all the more clearly through their rescue (Isaiah 52:6). Because his name was being blasphemed, he would rise up, and his people would know his name, the name Jehovah. He had already made that name known when he delivered Israel from Egypt (Exodus 6:3). God will act to defend his own honor and to show his greatness. His people, who had almost forgotten that name, would know it again for their comfort and safety.

They would learn that God rules over the world and over everything that happens in it. They would learn that he speaks rescue by the power of his word, and that he alone can do it. He is the one who first spoke, and it came to be. They would also learn that the word of God, which Israel had been blessed with above other nations, would surely be fulfilled at the right time. He speaks through the prophet, and it is truly he who speaks, not the prophet on his own. Not one small part of what he says will fail.