“Shout for joy, O barren one … Break forth into joyful shouting” is the exhortation that flows from Isaiah 53 and the atonement provided by the Servant.[1] Though there is a close connection between Isaiah 54:1-56:8 and Isaiah 53, these chapters are a new section. The bookends of Isaiah 401:1-11 and 52:7-12 indicated that that major section was coming to a close. One might then suppose that the final Servant song should begin a new section rather than end this section, but there is a major shift in Isaiah’s servant language after Isaiah 53. In Isaiah 40-53 the servant is always in the singular (whether it refers to the nation or to the Messiah), but after Isaiah 53 the occurrence of servant is always in the plural. Thus, a major break in the book occurs with the climatic 53rd chapter.[2] Notably, just as the text preceding Isaiah 53 captured in one text several of the most important theological themes in Scripture, Isaiah 54-55 brings together all the biblical covenants in a single passage. It opens with an allusion to the Abrahamic covenant (54:1-3). Sarah, the barren one, would become the mother of an innumerable seed. The enlargement of the tent and “spread[ing] abroad to the right and to the left” alludes to Genesis 28:14: “Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”[3] In fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, Israel will possess the nations. There may also be an allusion to Genesis 9:27, “and let him [Japheth] dwell in the tents of Shem.” In verses 9-10 there is an explicit reference to the Noahic covenant. God says that just as he committed in the Noahic covenant not to flood the earth again, so his new covenant commitments (here identified as the covenant of peace) will be maintained. He then looks forward to the New Jerusalem, filled with the righteous and immune to attack. In chapter 55 Isaiah calls all people to come to Yhwh for satisfaction and to seek Yhwh rather than wickedness or any other thing, since those will not satisfy. In this context Yhwh says that the covenant promises he made with David will be taken up into the new covenant (here called the “everlasting covenant”) and fulfilled among all the nations. In 56:1-8 those who were excluded from temple worship under the Mosaic covenant, the eunuch and the foreigner will keep God’s covenant and worship Yhwh in his house, which is to be “a house of prayer for all peoples” (56:7). When the Lord Yhwh gathers “the outcasts of Israel,” he will also gather “others,” Gentiles (56:8).
[1] Oswalt, NICOT, 2:413-14; Motyer, 444; Williamson, Sealed with an Oath, NSBT, 160-61.
[2] See Daniel L. Wagner, “The Dynamic ‘Structure’ of Isaiah 40-66: An Analysis of Organization Based on Transitions in the Servant and Other Orienting Motifs,” PhD diss. Bob Jones University, 2004.
[3] Motyer, 445.