Background
Chapter 51 belongs with the first two verses of chapter 52; the chapter break falls in the middle of a unit. The passage is built out of two sets of triple commands. First the Lord says “Hearken” three times (verses 1, 4, 7), each time to the faithful remnant who “follow after righteousness.” Then comes a series of three “Awake, awake” cries. The first is the people’s prayer to the Lord’s arm (verse 9). The second and third are the Lord’s answer, addressed to Jerusalem (verse 17) and to Zion (52:1). The people ask God to wake up. God replies that it is Jerusalem who has been lying unconscious.
The audience is the same discouraged community as in chapters 49 and 50: exiles who believe the Lord has forgotten them (Isa. 49:14) or divorced their mother (Isa. 50:1). Chapter 51 answers them with memory. It points them back to Abraham and Sarah, to the Creation, and to the crossing of the Red Sea, and argues from what God has done to what He will do.
Jacob read this chapter to the Nephites immediately after chapter 50, and he continued straight through Isa. 52:1–2 before stopping (2 Ne. 8). His division confirms that 51:1–52:2 was read as one unit. His text differs from the KJV in more than a dozen verses, most of them in small ways, but in verses 19–20 in a way that changes the meaning.
The thread through the chapter
Isaiah 51 is about waking up, and about who needs to.
It starts with people who are awake to righteousness but afraid. The Lord tells them to look back: at the quarry they were cut from, Abraham and Sarah, one old couple through whom He made a nation (verses 1–3). Then look up: the heavens will vanish like smoke, but His salvation won’t (verses 4–6). Then look around: the people who mock you are moth food (verses 7–8).
Encouraged, the people cry out, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD” (verse 9). You slew the sea monster; You dried up the sea; do it again. The Lord answers with reassurance: “I, even I, am he that comforteth you. Who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die?” (verse 12). He is not the one who has been asleep.
Then He turns the cry around: “Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem” (verse 17). Jerusalem is sprawled in the street, drunk on the cup of God’s wrath, with none of her children able to lift her up. The chapter ends with the Lord taking the cup out of her hand and giving it to her oppressors (verses 22–23). The prayer asked God to rouse Himself. The answer is that He never slept; His people did. And the thing that wakes them is His taking away the cup they could not stop drinking.
Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.
Look to the quarry
Listen to Me, you who pursue what is right and seek the Lord. Look at the rock you were cut from, at the quarry you were dug out of. Look at Abraham your father and at Sarah who gave birth to you. When I called him, he was only one man, and I blessed him and made him many. So the Lord will comfort Zion. He will comfort all her ruins. He will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found there, thanksgiving and the sound of song.
1 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.
2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
A law and a light for the peoples
Pay attention to Me, My people; listen to Me, My nation. Instruction will go out from Me, and My justice will become a light for the peoples. My righteousness is close; My salvation is on its way, and My arm will bring justice to the peoples. The distant coastlands wait for Me and put their hope in My arm. Look up at the sky and down at the earth. The sky will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like clothing, and its inhabitants will die like gnats. But My salvation will last forever, and My righteousness will never fail.
4 Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people.
5 My righteousness is near; my salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people; the isles shall wait upon me, and on mine arm shall they trust.
6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.
Don’t fear the scoffers
Listen to Me, you who know what is right, you who have My law in your hearts. Don’t be afraid of people’s scorn or shaken by their insults. The moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But My righteousness will last forever, and My salvation for all generations.
7 Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.
8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.
“Awake, O arm of the Lord”
Wake up, wake up, arm of the Lord, and clothe Yourself with strength! Wake up as You did in days long ago, in generations past. Weren’t You the one who hacked Rahab to pieces and pierced the sea dragon? Weren’t You the one who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, and made a road through the depths so the redeemed could cross? Those the Lord has ransomed will come home. They will enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will run away.
9 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
10 Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?
11 Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.
I am the one who comforts you
I, yes I, am the one who comforts you. Who are you to be afraid of mortals, who die, of human beings, who wither like grass? You have forgotten the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. All day long you live in terror of the oppressor’s rage, as if he were about to destroy you. But where is the oppressor’s rage now? The prisoner bent in chains will soon be set free; he will not die in the dungeon, and he will not lack bread. For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of Hosts is My name. I have put My words in your mouth and sheltered you in the shadow of My hand, to plant the heavens, to lay the foundations of the earth, and to say to Zion, “You are My people.”
12 I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass;
13 And forgettest the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth; and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor?
14 The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should fail.
15 But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The LORD of hosts is his name.
16 And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.
Awake, Jerusalem; the cup is taken away
Wake up, wake up! Stand up, Jerusalem! You have drunk from the Lord’s hand the cup of His wrath. You have drained the goblet that makes people stagger, to the last drop. Of all the children she bore, none is there to guide her; of all the children she raised, none takes her by the hand. Two disasters have struck you, and who will grieve with you? Ruin and destruction, famine and sword. Who will comfort you? Your children have collapsed. They lie at the corner of every street like an antelope caught in a net, full of the Lord’s wrath, of your God’s rebuke. So listen to this, you who are afflicted and drunk, but not with wine. This is what your Lord says, the Lord your God, who defends His people: Look, I have taken out of your hand the cup that makes you stagger. You will never drink from the goblet of My wrath again. I will put it into the hands of your tormentors, who said to you, “Lie down, so we can walk over you.” And you made your back like the ground, like a street for them to walk on.
17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out.
18 There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth; neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought up.
19 These two things are come unto thee; who shall be sorry for thee? desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword: by whom shall I comfort thee?
20 Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net: they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God.
21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:
22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again:
23 But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.
Seeing Christ in Isaiah 51
The chapter is built around a question and an answer. The people ask the Lord’s arm to wake up and put on strength. The Lord answers, “I, even I, am he that comforteth you,” and then does something they didn’t ask for: He takes the cup of wrath out of Jerusalem’s hand.
For Latter-day Saints, both halves point to Jesus Christ. The arm of the Lord is about to be revealed, and in chapter 53 it turns out to be a man of sorrows (Isa. 53:1–3). The cup taken from Jerusalem is the kind of cup He prayed would pass and then drank to the dregs: “I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me” (3 Ne. 11:11). The comfort of this chapter is not that judgment stops mattering. It is that someone else takes the cup out of our hands.
Liken it to yourself
- The Lord tells the discouraged to look back at Abraham and Sarah, one old couple. When I feel that too little is happening in my life or my congregation, what does the “quarry” I came from teach me?
- Where am I letting “the reproach of men” decide what I do? What would it take to say, as Nephi did, “we heeded them not”?
- The chapter says fear grows when I forget “the LORD thy maker.” What am I afraid of right now, and what have I forgotten about God that makes it loom so large?
- I may pray for God to wake up. Is He answering, “Awake, awake, stand up”? What is He asking me to put on?
- Of all Jerusalem’s sons, none took her by the hand. Who near me is staggering, and could I be the one who helps them home?
Worth exploring next
- The three “awakes.” Read Isa. 51:9–11, Isa. 51:17–23, and Isa. 52:1–2 together, then D&C 113:7–10.
- The arm of the Lord. Trace it through Isa. 40:10, Isa. 51:5–9, Isa. 52:10, and Isa. 53:1.
- The sea monster. Compare verse 9 with Ps. 74:12–17, Ps. 89:9–10, Job 26:12–13, and Isa. 27:1.
- The cup. Read Jer. 25:15–29, Matt. 26:36–46, 3 Ne. 11:10–11, and D&C 19:16–19.
- Jacob’s text. Compare the chapter verse by verse with 2 Ne. 8, especially verses 7, 11, 12, and 19–20.
This chapter elsewhere in scripture
Nephi’s text of this chapter (2 Ne. 8) reads differently from the King James Version in 20 verses. The BoM markers show the 15 where more than a small word changes.
- 2 Ne. 8 — Jacob reads the whole chapter, and continues through 52:1–2, with many variants, including “these two sons.”
- Isa. 35:10 — Verse 11 is nearly identical.
- D&C 113:7–10 — The Lord explains the related “Awake, awake” of 52:1–2.
- Rev. 11:3–12 — Two witnesses in Jerusalem, often connected with the “two sons” of the Book of Mormon text.
- 1 Ne. 8:26–33 — The mockers in the great and spacious building.
- Matt. 26:39 — The Savior accepts the cup.
Sources & further reading
- Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40–66: Translation and Commentary, Eerdmans Critical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.
- John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986–1998.
- Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah, Anchor Bible, 3 vols. New York: Doubleday, 2000–2003.
- Claus Westermann, Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969.
- Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, Old Testament Library. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
- H. G. M. Williamson, The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah’s Role in Composition and Redaction, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
- Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch, eds., Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998.
- “Rahab”, Bible Dictionary.
- James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
- The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ), The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
- Martin Abegg Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.
- Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012.
- Victor L. Ludlow, Isaiah: Prophet, Seer, and Poet, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982.
- Monte S. Nyman, “Great Are the Words of Isaiah”, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980.
- Chapter 17: The Gathering of Israel and the Coming of the Messiah (Isaiah 48–54), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003).