ISAIAH - CHAPTER 4 - The daughters of Zion
ISAIAH – CHAPTER 4
Tuesday, July 4, 2013, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Chapter 4 of Isaiah is awesome, glorious to read, and even more glorious to teach.
Concerning the future, Isaiah brings together both literal and symbolic; both conditional and absolute predictions; both near and far-distant in the time-scale of history.
Verse one is such a prediction. The scholars and commentaries interpret it literal, symbolic, near and far-distant. I read four different interpretations covering all of the above. I would say that all are accurate.
I have chosen to begin by interpreting this as a literal “now” word.
Is. 4:1: ‘IN THAT DAY, seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, ‘We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach.”
To the shame of woman-hood in the United States and even in Christians, I have seen women chase men; offering themselves to them and requiring nothing in return. They do not require love, respect, loyalty, commitment, or his responsibility to provide for them.
If a man loves a woman, he will pursue her, honor her, and cherish her safety and well-being. Money cannot buy love, not can it be manipulated. All the evil maneuvers of Satan cannot destroy love.
Song 8:7: “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be condemned.”
In chapter 3, Isaiah under the anointing of thus says the Lord, charged the daughters of Zion for their haughtiness and wantonness, their seductions by their walk and gesture.
In chapter 3, there is prophesied a great slaughter of men. Through the devastations of war, Isaiah prophesies one man in seven left alive.
By reason of the scarcity of men, the women are reduced to the shame of courting the men rather than the natural order of men courting women.
They were willing to be wives upon any terms. All their care was to get husbands---modesty was forgotten, and with them the reproach of vice was nothing compared to the reproach of a single life.
Many women are in jail today because they helped their husbands by carrying their drugs, or helped them commit a crime. More often than not, the man put the woman out there to take the risk and the blame.
Exodus 21:10: by the law of God, the husband was obliged to provide food and raiment for his wife even if he took another wife. “If he takes another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, he shall not diminish.” This would be the principle of alimony in our courts of law.
Today women who work and have jobs are often exempt from the protection of receiving alimony even if the husband divorces his wife due to his adultery. It has not always been that way. This is another instance of our judicial system breaking with the Judaea-Christian principles on which this nation was founded.
After the severe judgment, the women will be cleansed in their heart. But when God’s day comes, and judgment is past, He will provide at the same time visible signs of His presence and the protection for His people.
“IN THAT DAY, shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel.”
Here again all four commentaries that I read have a different interpretation of the Branch of the Lord.
I have chosen to quote Matthew Henry with comments added by my own understanding.
“By the foregoing threatenings everything looks gloomy. But here the sun breaks out from behind the cloud. Many exceedingly great and precious promises we have in these verses, giving assurance of comfort, and these certainly speak of the Kingdom of God, and the great redemption wrought by Jesus under the figure of the restoration of Judah and Jerusalem.” (M.H.)
This may have some reference to the reforming reign of Hezekiah after Ahaz and the return out of the nation’s captivity in Babylon. However, this passage is prophetic of Jesus Christ.
God will raise up a righteous branch, which shall produce fruits of righteousness, IN THAT DAY.
Christ himself shall be exalted. He is the branch of the Lord. It is one of his prophesied names, “My servant the branch”
Zech. 3:8: “Behold I will bring forth My servant, the Branch.
Zech. 6:12: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, saying Behold the man whose name is The Branch; and he shall grow up out of His place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord.”
Isaiah 11:1: “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and Branch shall grow out of his roots.”
The ancient Chaldee paraphrase here in Isa. 4 reads, “The Christ, or Messiah, of the Lord”. He shall himself be advanced to the glory which he had with the Father before the world was.
“His gospel shall be embraced. The success of the gospel is the fruit of the branch of the Lord. All the graces and comforts of the gospel spring from Christ. It is called the fruit of the earth because it sprang up in this world. We may understand it of both the persons and the things that are the products of the gospel. If the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious in our eyes, even the fruit of the earth will also be excellent and comely, because then we may take it as the fruit of the promise.” (M.H.)
Isa. 4:3: “It shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remains in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem.”
Zion is the source of continual salvation. Those who discover Zion know the fullness of salvation, and yet learn day by day more of an increasing fullness. Zion is the joy of the whole earth experienced already by man, anticipated by others, travailed after by all. Zion is the source of strength and support for the people of God, especially in the day of trouble.
This Godly remnant are those whom Paul says will be alive and remaining. The wicked are taken, and the righteous are left to inherit the earth. (Mt. 24: 37-41).
God will reserve to himself a holy seed. The withered branches will be cut off by their own unbelief. Yet some shall be left. This is a remnant such as are written among the living. Those that are kept alive in killing times were written for life in the book of divine providence. They are written in the Lamb’s book of life. All that were written among the living shall be found among the living. For all that were given to Christ, he will lose none. It is a remnant under the dominion of grace, for everyone that is written among the living shall be called holy, and shall be accepted of God accordingly.
I bring this word forth in great humility as I think how the Lord confirmed our church body as among this Holy Remnant when he gave me the vision of this church in the midst of a cucumber patch (Isa. 1: 8-9).
The Lord called us to a study of Isaiah. He called the conference, “In That Day”. He identified our church with Isa. 1: 8-9 by vision.
“The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a
lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the Lord of hosts had left to us a
very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom and we should have been like
Gomorrah.”
It is a remnant under the dominion of grace, for everyone that is written among the living shall be called holy, and shall be accepted of God accordingly. (I didn’t write that ---it is written.)
Isa. 4:4: “When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.”
“God will reform his church and will rectify and amend whatever is amiss in it. The remnant shall be called holy, when the Lord shall have washed away their filth, washed it from among them by cutting off the wicked persons, washed it from within them by purging out the wicked thing. The Lord shall do it. Reformation work is God’s work. We are reconciled to God by the work of the Cross and God’s righteousness imparted to us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit acts enlightening the mind, convincing the conscience, guiding us, separating between the precious and the vile, quickening and invigorating the affections, and making men/women zealous in Kingdom work.
The filth of the daughters of Zion is listed in Isa. 3: 15-14 as being the pride, haughtiness, lasciviousness, and vulgar show of dress, worldliness, and seduction.
Isa. 4:5: “The Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defense. There shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from the storm and from rain.”
God will protect the church, and all that belong to it.
Jehovah’s branch, similar to the cloudy pillar in Tabernacle days, is available to Jerusalem’s remnant as a defense (canopy).
Their tabernacles shall be defended---tabernacles of their rest, their houses, where they worship God with their families. God takes particular care of the dwelling-places of his people, the poorest cottage as well as the stateliest palace. Their assemblies or tabernacles of meeting for religious worship---all the congregations of Christians, though but two or three meet together in Christ’s name, shall be taken under the special protection of heaven.
This writ of protection is drawn up in a similitude taken from the safety of the camp of Israel when they marched through the wilderness. God will give to the Christian church as real proofs of his care of them, as he then gave to Israel.
Similitude is taken from the outside cover of rams’ skins and badgers’ skins that was upon the curtains of the tabernacle, as if every dwelling place and every assembly were as dear to God as that tabernacle was; “Upon all the glory shall be a defense”, to save it from wind and weather.
The “Parousia” of Christ, the Word of God, gospel truths, Worship, gathering of the saints unto Jesus, loving God and one another before the throne of God is the Glory of God in our midst.
If God himself be the glory in the midst of it, he will himself be a wall of fire round about it, impenetrable and impregnable. Those who have it are kept by the power of God as in a stronghold. The divine power and goodness shall be a tabernacle to all the saints. God himself shall be their hiding-place. They shall be at home in Him. God is a refuge to his people in all the seasons of life.
Psalm 32:7: “You are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble You shall compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go; I will guide you with My eye.”
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
Scripture from K.J.V. I entered into the labors of Matthew Henry Commentary. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant reflect the views of Bro. Henry.