Isaiah 55:12
“For you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break out before you into singing; and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.”
Where this sits
The close of the chapter that begins with an invitation to everyone who thirsts to come to the waters and buy without money.
Reflection
The chapter this ends began with an invitation to buy without money, and it closes with the countryside applauding.
Which is not the sort of image a prophet reaches for by accident. Isaiah has spent the chapter on things that cannot be earned — bread without price, pardon abundantly given, thoughts higher than ours. Then, at the end, he describes the created world reacting to it.
Mountains and hills breaking into singing. Trees of the field clapping their hands. These are not decorative. In the Hebrew imagination the land was not a backdrop; it participated in the covenant, suffered under judgment, and lay desolate when the people were exiled. If the land is celebrating, something has been put right at a scale larger than any individual.
And the two verbs at the start describe the people's part. You shall go out, and be led out. Both are exodus words. Isaiah is writing to exiles in Babylon and deliberately reaching for the vocabulary of Egypt — the previous impossible departure, invoked to describe the next one.
The difference is the second verb. Israel left Egypt in haste, at night, with unleavened bread. This departure is described as being led — unhurried, escorted, with peace. The same event, done a second time, without the panic.
- Theme:
- Joy
- Book:
- Isaiah