Isaiah 62

The writer doesn’t describe the setting. No surprise there. Many scholars say the poetic prophecy may refer to when the Jews were returning to the ruins of Jerusalem, from Babylonian exile in the mid-500s. They were starting the work of rebuilding. Apparently, they had already repaired the walls (62:6). But they had hostile neighbors to worry about. Some neighbors tried to stop the Jews from rebuilding the walls (Nehemiah 4:7-8).

Rulers sometimes renamed people, to mark an important event or simply to show that they had the power to do it. Bible writers report God and Jesus each renaming people to commemorate an event. God renamed Abram as Abraham, which is Hebrew for “Father of Many” (Genesis 17:5). That marked God’s promise to give Abraham many descendants. Jesus renamed Simon “Cephas.” (John 1:42). This Aramaic name translated into the Greek equivalent as “Peter.” It’s a bit like “Stephen” in English is “Esteban” in Spanish. Peter means “Rock.” And Jesus said he would build his church on this rock. Peter preached the sermon that launched the Christian movement and gained more than 3,000 followers (Acts 2).

Persians not only freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity, they sent them back to Jerusalem with supplies to begin rebuilding the city (Ezra 2:68-69; Nehemiah 2:8).

More literally “the city no longer deserted.” But many Christians say they see not only a prophecy of someone saving and restoring Jerusalem in the 500s BC. They say they see a foreshadowing of Jesus, Savior of the world, who came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, to the cheers of a crowd (Matthew 21; Mark 11; Luke 19; John 12). Some Jews at the time read passages like this and pinned them to their hopes for a kingly warrior who would free them from the Roman occupying force. No one seemed to anticipate the kind of Messiah and Savior God sent instead, a Savior whose salvation wasn’t limited to this lifetime.