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ISAIAH CHAPTER 54
The blessings and fulness of the gospel church, Isa_54:1-3; the Gentiles becoming Christ’s spouse; to whom his love is everlasting, Isa_54:4-10. Her glories, Isa_54:11,12. The gifts of the Holy Ghost, Isa_54:13. Her sure preservation, Isa_54:14-17.
Sing, O barren. The prophet having largely discoursed of the sufferings of Christ, and of the blessed fruits or effects thereof, among which one is, that he should have a numerous seed that should believe on him, and that when the Jews rejected him, the Gentiles should gladly receive him, and here foreseeing by the Spirit of God that glorious state of the church, he rejoiced in it, as Abraham did upon the like occasion, Joh_8:56, and breaks forth into this song of triumph. He turneth his speech to the church and spouse of God, or of Christ, as is manifest from the following words, and especially from Isa_54:5, and from Gal_4:27, where it is so expounded. And although this chapter is by some understood of the flourishing condition of the Jewish church and state after their return from Babylon, yet the magnificent and glorious promises here following do so vastly exceed their condition at that time, which was full of uncertainties, and distractions, and troubles, as all the histories of those times assure us, and far from that glory and lasting tranquillity which is here assured to her, that it must necessarily be referred to the times of the gospel, in which all that is here said was or will be remarkably fulfilled. And therefore as the foregoing chapter doth directly and literally speak of Christ, so doth this literally speak of the church of Christ, or of the kingdom of the Messiah, of whom the ancient Hebrew doctors understood it. And this church, consisting at first of the Jews, and afterwards of the Gentiles, who were incorporated with them into the same body, he calleth barren, not because it now was so, but because before and until the coming of Christ it had been so; as Simon is called the leper, Mat_26:6, after he was cured. Now this church of the Jews might well be called, and had been, barren, because the sincere converts brought forth to God by her ministry had been but few among the Jews comparatively, and simply few among the Gentiles.
More are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife: the church or congregation of the Gentiles, which in the times of the Old Testament was desolate, having neither husband nor children, doth now under the gospel bring forth unto God a far more numerous posterity than the church of the Jews, which had been married to God for many ages, until by her apostacy from God, and from her Messiah, she provoked God to put her away, He alludeth here either to the history of Sarah, who was long and naturally barren, but by the supernatural power of God was enabled to bring forth a numberless issue; or to that remarkable passage of God’s providence concerning Hannah and Peninnah, 1Sa_2:5, The barren hath born seven, and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.