The language of the landscape rejoicing is particularly powerful because one normally thinks of the ground beneath our feet as a stage, not a performer. It is inert, the platform and the background of the interesting and significant activities of those who appear upon it.
Not so in the book of Isaiah. Arriving at one of its critical hinges, the book here portrays a desert come alive in exuberant bloom before YHWH’s promised restoration of his imperiled people.
The desert rejoices. It finds itself bedecked with Lebanon’s finery. YHWH’s glory bedazzles in its company and so weak hands and fluttering hearts are both calmed and strengthened.
There has been a turning.
Returning to the constituent themes of sight-and-blindness, of mobility-and-lameness, of hearing-and-deafness, the thirty-fifth chapter of the book bursts with literary and spiritual energy. When YHWH has turned towards Zion with vivifying mercy, the reader is led to understand, everything will be different.
Water will flow in the driest place. Locked limbs will propel their owner into celebratory leaps. A holy vigor will become the order of the day.
Like pursuing enemies, joy and gladness will overtake and undo frightened travelers, the most benign of attackers. Sorrow and sadness, to reverse the metaphor, will flee the onslaught in terror.
YHWH’s people will walk this way.
Canter Bridge 
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