Context No. 4102 of 4322 · Isaiah

Isaiah 49:17-26: in context

17Your children hurry. Your destroyers and those who devastated you will leave you. 18Lift up your eyes all around, and see: all these gather themselves together, and come to you. As I live,” says the LORD, “you shall surely clothe yourself with them all as with an ornament, and dress yourself with them, like a bride. 19“For, as for your waste and your desolate places, and your land that has been destroyed, surely now that land will be too small for the inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. 20The children of your bereavement will say in your ears, ‘This place is too small for me. Give me a place to live in.’ 21Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who has conceived these for me, since I have been bereaved of my children and am alone, an exile, and wandering back and forth? Who has brought these up? Behold, I was left alone. Where were these?’” 22The Lord GOD says, “Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and lift up my banner to the peoples. They shall bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. 23Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down to you with their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD; and those who wait for me won’t be disappointed.” 24Shall the plunder be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captives be delivered? 25But the LORD says, “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the plunder retrieved from the fierce, for I will contend with him who contends with you and I will save your children. 26I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh; and they will be drunk on their own blood, as with sweet wine. Then all flesh shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

God speaks tenderly to Zion, pictured as a bereaved and desolate woman, mourning her lost children and her ruined land. And into that grief he speaks a promise of astonishing reversal: her children will come streaming back, so many that the land once too empty will be too small to hold them, and she will marvel, who has borne me these?

Two things stand out in this comfort. God restores the desolate. To one who felt utterly bereft, alone, and forgotten, God promises not just a little relief but an overflowing restoration, more than she could have imagined. And he vindicates those who wait for him: those who wait for me shall not be put to shame. The waiting may be long and painful, but it will not end in disappointment; God will not fail those who hope in him. There is deep comfort here for anyone in a season of loss and desolation. God has not forgotten; he is able to restore beyond our imagining, filling the empty places, gathering back what was scattered.

In my seasons of loss and desolation, do I trust the God who restores the bereaved beyond their imagining and promises that those who wait for him shall not be put to shame, holding on through the long waiting to a God who will not disappoint?

Sources

Isaiah 49:23: "Then you will know that I am the LORD; and those who wait for me won't be disappointed."
Isaiah 49:20: "The children of your bereavement will say in your ears, This place is too small for me. Give me a place to live in."
Isaiah 49:25: "I will contend with him who contends with you and I will save your children."