After having been asked about Isaiah 54 in the context of my recent series on the Shekinah, I found enough material to make two additional posts. Here are the previous parts 1, 2 and 3.
The setting of Isaiah 54 is the latter-day gathering of Israel. It starts out with the imagery of the woman/wife, representing Israel, who was rejected in her youth because of unfaithfulness (see verse 6).
Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. (Isaiah 54:1)
The remarriage with Jehovah symbolizes the renewal of the covenant with "children" as a covenant blessing denoting the gathering of Israel. In verse 2 an expansion occurs to make room for all the covenant children. There is beautiful poetic parallelism here that is a bit lost in the KJV. A more direct translation reads something like this
A) Enlarge the site of your tent,
B) stretch out the curtains of your dwelling place
Here, tent is translated from "ohel", basically the conventional word for tent. Dwelling place (habitations in the KJV) is translated from "mishkan", the word I have discussed in this series that also means tent/tabernacle and comes from the root, shakan (dwell), from which Shekinah is derived. Since this word often seems to imply a divine presence, I think we can read this poetic parallelism to describe two steps in the context of the latter-day gathering of Israel:
- A) Make room for a covenant people
- B) Make room for God to dwell among them
We find a similar description in the Book of Revelation. In Revelation 19:7-9 we read
7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
8 And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
9 And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.
John the Revelator uses the wife imagery of Isaiah. There is a marriage supper at the onset of the millennium and the righteous covenant people are invited. This imagery continues in Revelation 21, adding the tent/dwelling symbolism that we also saw in Isaiah:
2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
There is quite a bit to unpack here. The tabernacle of God and him dwelling with his people fits Isaiah 54 and the Hebrew Shekinah concept very well, even though Revelation is written in Greek. The Greek word, skene, is both the noun translated into tabernacle and verb (skenoo) translated into dwell. Just like the similar Hebrew, "mishkan", skene/skenoo also frequently implies the divine presence. Examples of this is found in the Letter to the Hebrews
A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle (skene), which the Lord pitched, and not man. (Hebrews 8:2)
But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle (skene), not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building (Hebrews 9:11)
So what happens in the parallel prophecy of Isaiah and vision of John is that the covenant people is restored in a grand marriage feast in an expanding tent where God dwells among them. I believe this is the
grand feast that Lord Wilmore has written about that occurs when the "fruitful" Ephraim has been restored to Israel and to the fulness of the gospel.
I also think that Isaiah's prophecy of enlarging the tent marks a difference between the old and new covenant people. In part 3, I wrote about the Tsadiks (the Righteous/Holy Ones), like Abraham, Moses and Lehi, who lived in tents as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, isolated from the wicked world but enwrapped in the Shekinah glory. Enlarging and stretching out the tent in Isaiah 54:2 signifies not only the increasing number of Israelites gathered in, but the fact that latter-day Israel is not characterized by the sole, isolated Tsadiks any longer. Instead, Israel becomes a grand kingdom of priests and priestesses, where the ever expanding tent enwraps us all in God's glory. Notice in Revelation 19:8 that was quoted, how the bride is wearing fine linen representing "the righteousness of saints". The saints at the feast are all Tsadiks. Temples and stakes of Zion are flooding the earth and all covenant people can enter in all the way to the Holy of Holies and partake of the feast. This is in fact a fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles, a Jewish festival that I will discuss in the next post.