Arguably, Isaiah shows a deeper insight into a woman’s experience than does any other author’s voice in the Hebrew Bible. Not until Jesus’ uncanny empathy with women, especially marginalized women, do we find in the Bible an empathic touch that is similar to this prophet’s ability to speak from within feminine metaphor.
‘Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,’ says the Lord. ‘Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.’ (Isaiah 54:1–2 ESV)
In our time, to speak of a woman in terms of her function vis-à-vis men invites a scolding. For the moment, let’s read this ancient literature for what it is rather than imposing upon it the ‘obvious’ standards of post-modernity.
To be a childless woman was to find oneself in an unenviable state. If this seems inconceivable, we are likely viewing the world in the company of a privileged and tiny subsection of its people. Isaiah without apology plays on the tropes of childlessness/barrenness, abandonment/divorce, and widowhood/bereavement in order to press home the table-turning revolution that return from Babylonian exile will be.
The children that personified Jerusalem never had will now come pouring over the property line, ebullient and in need of somewhere to sleep.
Such will be the tumbling lot of them that this mother’s tent will not only have to be widened but also strengthened. Isaiah serves up a reversal of the deep ache of childlessness that quickly runs beyond imagining.
On the suddenness of redemption in the book of Isaiah we shall have more to say.
As the liquid metaphors flow from barrenness to widowhood to abandonment, the removal of shame comes to the fore. It is a phenomenon that must be read against the way in which the exile of an ancient nation served as a cosmic pulling out from under that people of a rug that had been presumed immoveable. Exile was the failure of human rulers and of a nation’s god or gods. It brought the utter loss of both national identity and national pride. All that is now put right.
For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. (Isaiah 54:3–6 ESV)
The prophet’s rhetoric surges now, nearly bullying the language in order to derive from it its full repetitive potential:
You will not be ashamed!
You will not be disgraced!
You will forget the shame of your youth!
The reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.
The features of this oracle that I have underscored reach to the heart of Jerusalem’s experience as personified woman. The passage also sketches YHWH’s experience as husband, father, maker, and redeemer, but that consideration must await another moment.
Exile is the loss of everything but breath and, eventually, even of that. Isaiah, from within the experience of a woman of his day, envisages the captives’ redemption as the sudden recuperation of virtually everything that matters.
Zion’s disappointment, her grief, and her shame are gone in a moment. It becomes clear why the language of the terrible past becoming forgotten begins naturally to emerge as a stock image in the Isaian repertoire.
For you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.
Everything is new, everything is now.
With all these children running about, who has time to think about yesterday?
Canter Bridge 
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