Scripture Daily

Context No. 323 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 4:1-6: in context

1Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, “We will eat our own bread, and wear our own clothing. Just let us be called by your name. Take away our reproach.” 2In that day, the LORD’s branch will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the beauty and glory of the survivors of Israel. 3It will happen that he who is left in Zion and he who remains in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even everyone who is written among the living in Jerusalem, 4when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from within it, by the spirit of justice and by the spirit of burning. 5The LORD will create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion and over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night, for over all the glory will be a canopy. 6There will be a pavilion for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for a refuge and for a shelter from storm and from rain.

Isaiah 4 comes right after a chapter of judgment, and it opens on a bleak image: so many men have fallen in war that seven women take hold of a single man, begging only to bear his name and take away their disgrace. That is where the passage starts, in the wreckage. But then it turns, and the turn is toward shelter.

God promises that a purified remnant will remain, the survivors of Zion called holy, everyone recorded among the living. The cleansing that gets them there is not gentle; it comes, the text says, by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning, washing away the filth and the bloodguilt of the city. But notice what God builds over the people once they are purified. He creates over the whole of Mount Zion a cloud by day and the shining of flaming fire by night, and the reader is meant to recognize it: this is the pillar of cloud and fire that led Israel out of Egypt, now returning to settle over the survivors. And its purpose is named plainly. Over all the glory there will be a canopy, a shelter for shade in the heat of the day, and a refuge and covering from the storm and the rain. The presence of God spreads over his people not as a spotlight but as a tent.

That is a particular picture of what it is like to live under God once the hard purging has done its work. His presence is a canopy, shade from the heat, a roof against the storm. Do I imagine God's nearness mainly as exposure and scrutiny, when the promise here is a covering stretched over me, a shelter I can actually rest under?

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