Isaiah 54:1-10 — The Stumbling Block of Shame

Last week, we studied the death of the Suffering Servant, which was the prophetic vision of Jesus’ death on the cross. That sacrificial death achieved the pardon for sin that ended the spiritual conflict between God and His people and paved the way for Israel’s return to Him. Ending the spiritual conflict was one of the two main objectives in the Highway Project. But there is still more work to do. Even as God begins to elevate Israel toward her future glorification, there are still some walls that need to be broken down and stumbling blocks to overcome as Israel begins the process of realigning her thoughts and ways with God’s thoughts and ways. She needs to let go of earthly values and pursuits and set her sights on heavenly ones.

Isaiah now embarks on the new theme of abundant life in the coming kingdom. It hinges on the death of the Suffering Servant in Chapter 53 and will span Chapters 54-57. The theme opens with a discussion of Israel’s fruitless past. Before she can enter into the abundant life God has in store for her, she must overcome the stumbling block of shame over her past. It is hard enough to face conviction for our sins under neutral circumstances. When a victim has suffered injustice and humiliation at the hands of an abuser or oppressor, facing conviction for her own sin can be an overwhelming obstacle, and that is the obstacle that Israel now faces—at least as many as are willing to look on their Savior and accept His death as the payment for that sin.

Just as God addressed Israel’s fear of the oppressor’s fury in Isaiah 51, He now addresses her fear of shame and humiliation at the hands of her oppressors. God once asked, what is the oppressor’s fury compared to Mine? Our relationship is the one that must be reconciled if you want to escape the oppression. It’s a matter of maintaining perspective and discerning what was really causing the problem. Here in Isaiah 54, He deals with her shame in the same way. It’s a matter of keeping God and the world in their right places. There is beneficial shame that stems from God’s conviction of her, and there is destructive shame that stems from the world’s conviction of her. Once her shame before God is dealt with, the human oppressor will lose his power over her. Forgiveness from sin is an empowering experience. It is a way of breaking the power of oppression.

Isaiah 54:1-10
The chapter begins with joyous imperative commands: “Sing! . . . Break forth!” Why?
“For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman” (Isaiah 54:1). The LORD is speaking to Israel, but notice how He describes her. He calls her barren.


Barrenness equates to fruitlessness in the human experience. Barrenness is an outworking of disobedience, as prescribed in the Mosaic Law. The LORD promised Israel abundant life so long as she obeyed His commandments, and the fruit of the womb was part of that covenant blessing (Deuteronomy 7:14) but if she disobeyed, He promised He would curse her with fruitlessness of field and womb. A woman suffering from barrenness was looked upon as cursed, and, therefore, was shamed and shunned by her peers. A good example of this is Samuel’s mother, Hannah, who was barren and wept because of the continual taunting and harassment she received from her sister-wife, Peninnah (1 Samuel 1:1-7). According to the Law, barrenness and exile were the curses for disobedience. When Israel broke that covenant relationship between them, God took from her the abundance that would have come from that relationship and sent her into exile and oppression, just as He had warned her that He would in that Law.

In the Hebrew, the word for desolate invokes the essence of silence—silence in a land or a life that has been laid to waste. The desolate are the ones who have been shamed into silence. We previously talked about being forced into silence in the face of anger. Silence is also a reaction to shame. And yet, it is the silent who are now called to sing. The fruitfulness of the one who was barren will now eclipse the fruitfulness of the one who had many children by a husband.

But now the LORD commands her: “Enlarge the place of your tent! . . . Do not spare! . . . Lengthen your cords! . . . Strengthen your stakes!” There is a glorious sense of anticipation. The barren woman will soon have children—so many that she will need a bigger tent.


The death of the Suffering Servant in the previous chapter. Repentance and return on Israel’s part are necessary, but the payment for her sins still had to be made. The Servant’s death lifted the curse caused by her disobedience and satisfied the Law so that she could enter into that blessing of abundance and new life again. The lesson of grace is embodied in the figure of the barren woman. All barren women in Scripture had to endure that condition for a time to show that the problem could not be lifted by human effort or will. They had to come to the end of their own resources before they could experience abundant life gifted by God’s grace and grace alone. And so the picture of the barren woman becomes an illustration of salvation by grace, according to the promise.

The LORD has extended grace to Israel, just as He promised. She has been redeemed without money (Isaiah 52:3), and not just redeemed but promised an explosion of abundant life.

Q:   Is the LORD promising Israel children of a physical nature or of a spiritual nature?
Q:   Let’s take me as a model of the barren wife. After 25 years of marriage, I have never been able to have children, though not for lack of trying. I am a barren woman, now past my child-bearing years. Is a woman like myself barred from this promise of abundant life for lack of physical children?
Q:  This is the beginning of the kingdom pictures in Isaiah, but what kind of kingdom is coming into view—an earthly kingdom, a spiritual kingdom, or both?

The immediate focus for Israel will be on the return of a future generation of physical children—a remnant that the LORD preserves throughout the exile—and theirs will be the task of rebuilding the earthly Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. There is a near fulfillment of this in a very physical sense. And yet, there is another Jerusalem on the horizon—a heavenly Jerusalem filled with spiritual children who are born of a spiritual Husband and by grace. The woman who is redeemed by the grace of a heavenly Husband from a past life of fruitless living will enjoy an abundant life that far eclipses any fruitfulness experienced by the woman with an earthly husband.

This is a comfort to me personally. I am grateful that the LORD’s promise of abundant life is not defined by the number of earthly children I have. I would never experience abundant life if abundant life was defined purely by earthly possessions like children, who are a fleeting comfort at best. But I, too, can be fruitful in a more enduring way and have children of a different nature, and I will see the fruit of that when I enter the kingdom, if I persist in faith. And I am content with that, although, sadly, I have met many women in life who are not. There are many women in life whose value and sense of personal worth is often wrapped up in their role as mothers, and I have had good Christian women harangue me for not adopting or at least fostering children. One woman wept in despair when yet another attempt at in-vitro fertilization failed. She and her husband had sunk thousands of dollars into fertility clinics to no avail. Their pursuit of children was almost an obsession with these women, and they could not understand why I wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth to have them. Nothing much has changed in past 5,000 years.

What none of them understood is that the LORD does not withhold abundant life from the barren woman. I have had a greater freedom to pursue the tasks that the LORD has given me--tasks that I might not have done if I had been constrained by children--and have experienced abundant life in my own way. It all boils down to how you define abundant life, and realigning our understanding on this is the next stage of God’s Highway Project. He has made a way out of a crooked place with the death of the Suffering Servant, but now there has to be some realigning of perspective and values on the part of His people in the wake of that.

Verse 4 begins with the imperative command. “Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed, neither be disgraced” (v4). The barren woman enlarging her tent with this kind of anticipation is like Noah building the Ark. The world will view the effort with amusement, derision, taunting, and scoffing. They shame her for her hope as well as her cursed condition. Thus, shame becomes something she fears and a stumbling block she must overcome before He can restore her. Here, God uses a number of Hebrew words to describe the experience of shame:

• Ashamed, Hebrew: boosh meaning simply to be ashamed.
• Disgraced, Hebrew: kalam meaning to wound or hurt, to insult, shame, humiliate, make blush. A person can deal out that disgrace or be the recipient of it—to be ashamed, be put to shame, be reproached or humiliated.
• Shame, Hebrew: khapher meaning to blush or be ashamed in the sense of being detected by someone digging away at you or prying into your life. Thus, there is a fear of one’s shame being discovered and brought to light.
• Shame, Hebrew: bosheth. This is a noun variation of the adjective, boosh) meaning a shameful thing (like an idol). Thus, “the shame of your youth” translates into a past lived in pursuit of shameless, fruitless things (like idols).
• Reproach, Hebrew: kherpa meaning to taunt, carp at, reproach, defy, jeopardize. It comes from the root word, kharaph, which literally means to be “pulled off” in the sense of being exposed as if by stripping. It can mean to scorn in the sense of count one’s life as of little worth.

The LORD describes all the kinds of shame that can be felt and then applies them to women in various life experiences: the youth, the widow, the forsaken woman, and a youthful wife who has been refused. All of these women share the experience of “barrenness” or unfruitfulness that results in shame. The text pairs the youth and widow together first (v4).

• The youth. “Youth,” in the Hebrew, describes a kind of juvenile vigor. The youth has a fruitful life ahead of her, and yet there is an experience of shame in it. What kind of shame is associated with one’s youth? Perhaps it is in the things she pursued. Perhaps she put her energy into running after trivial things that have no lasting value or, worse, a life of dissipation that got her off the path and into sin. Looking back, the fruitlessness of her early life can be a source of regret and shame.
  
  
• The widow. The widow is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the youth. Her fruitful days are past. In Old Testament times, widows suffered a lack of support after the death of their husband and lived on the margins of society as charity cases. They were often victims of neglect and denied justice in court. The widow is the one who suffers the kherpa—the taunting, the stripping of her value, the exposure and neglect. Her life is of little value in the world’s eyes.

The LORD then addresses women who have experienced shame and a loss of fruitfulness because of a broken relationship with their husband: the forsaken woman and the youthful wife who has been forgotten. Remember Israel’s cry in Isaiah 49:14,  "The LORD has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me." She has cast herself in this role.

• The forsaken woman is like the widow in verse 4. “Forsaken” describes a woman who has been “loosed” from a husband or left behind when a husband deserts her. There is a shame associated with that abandonment and loss of fruitfulness.
  
  
• The youthful wife is like the youth. She has all the promise of fruitfulness in her, but that fruitfulness is denied to her by a husband who has developed an aversion to her and refuses to have relations with her.

In verses 2-3, God commanded the barren woman to enlarge her tents in hope. In verse 4, He command her not to be afraid of being humiliated for speaking out and stepping out in faith. Why? Because He is her Husband (v5), and He is calling to her.


He is a merciful Husband. He put her away for a little while, until the shame of her unfaithfulness is felt strongly enough to bring about her repentance and return to Him, but He promises that He will gather her again with “great mercies” (v7). His words describes a deep, deep compassion for her, like the compassion a mother has for the child she carries in her womb. He says He will have mercy on her and show her an everlasting kindness. Do you feel the tenderness in the LORD’s words? Don’t we ache for tenderness from our husbands when we have been at odds with one another?

Israel is the youth who pursued her lusts. She is the widow who has reaped a bitter end. She is the woman who grieves over being abandoned for her unfaithfulness and suffers a fruitless life as a result, but now God holds out His arms to her. God models mercy for us in the way He handles Israel. The promises He makes to her—a literal release from Babylonian exile and restoration to her land and inheritance—are made specifically to her in the immediate context, but His character is universal, and His extends this same grace and mercy to all people. We see a reflection of Israel in our own experiences.

Q:   How does He help us forget the shame of our youth?
Q:   For those of you who are widows, how has God been a husband to you?

Some women among us may actually have experienced the pain of being abandoned by a husband or suffer from one who is physically or emotionally distant. It is devastating when it happens with a physical husband. Imagine what it would be like if it happened with our spiritual Husband as well. Fortunately, we have a merciful God who promises He will not abandon us, even when our earthly husbands do.

Isaiah 54:9-10
In verses 9-10, God gives Israel a comparison to help illustrate His mercy. He says that Israel’s exile is like the “waters of Noah”, that is, the Flood. That was another instance of His outpouring of fury on sinful and idolatrous people, and yet He preserved a remnant who would enter into abundant life in a new world.


God promised not to be angry and punishing to His people forever. He didn’t let His anger and judgment rule His relationship with them permanently. His mercy and kindness toward them will always be there, and He desires peace with them.

The Stumbling Block of Shame
We have all experienced shame in life. It’s a universal human experience.


By definition, shame is something that is felt when a person’s conscience convicts them for having violated a set of rules, values, or even social norms. Shame is, therefore, closely tied to values, validation, and personal worth. Shame can motivate us to change our behavior to get acceptance and validation.


There is a healthy shame that convicts us of sin—violating God’s righteous rules and values—and that shame is necessary to motivate us to repent and return to God. This is the kind of shame being addressed in this passage. God is able to remove Israel’s shame by providing a substitutionary sacrifice for her sin through the Servant’s death. The Servant identified with that shame. He took it from her and bore it Himself, then took it to the grave with Him. That pivotal act was meant, above all, to remove guilt and shame, and not just for Israel, but for us. Because of our identification with Christ and acceptance of His sacrifice for our sins, we now have that same covenant of peace with God the Father and there should be no reason to stand before God our Husband, naked and ashamed. It remains for us to experience an abundant life with the King in His coming kingdom.


Shame enters only when we let go of that identity with Him—when we don't cling to that cross and God’s grace. That is when we stumble back into shame, and with it, fear and despair over not being loved by God. God’s grace and forgiveness were meant to empower us and protect us from the world’s condemnation, and when we let go of those and seek validation for our works instead, we open ourselves to the world’s condemnation because the world has its own skewed values and social norms. The world does not understand grace, and it will never, ever grant us grace.

Shaming and humiliation has become a severe problem in our modern culture. It is a bullying tactic used by people who seek to dominate and force compliance with their skewed ideals. It is also used for amusement. God forgives and forgets, but the world never forgives, and social media never forgets. Every mistake and ill-spoken word can be captured and broadcasted before the world in the blink of an eye. And that is just the stupid stuff we do. What happens when they catch us taking a stand for our faith? It’s brutal. And the world loves it. They support it and encourage it. But it destroys a person’s worth, and those feelings of inferiority and guilt can still linger long after the oppressor is gone or another video has gone viral.

Shaming and humiliation have also become methods of punishment that God never, ever intended to be used. When He laid out the rules for punishing someone, it was to be done in a way that was just and brought about repentance, but did not rob a person of personal worth or value in the eyes of society. There was a set punishment for a set crime, the person knew what that punishment would be before they sinned, and when the punishment was delivered, that was the end of it (Deuteronomy 25:3). There was a distinction made between a controlled punishment and a beating. A controlled punishment was meant to bring repentance so a person could be restored to fellowship. A beating was forbidden because it was humiliating and destructive and prevented a person from returning to fellowship with others afterward.

But our culture has skewed God’s values on this. Here is an example that I have seen play out over my own lifetime. I grew up in the generation that believed in corporal punishment and spanked children, and, granted, there were abuses of that form of punishment. But when society saw a child being physically beaten, instead of realigning with God’s values and punishing the individual abuser as God would, it banned all forms of physical punishment and substituted verbal punishment instead. You talk to the child. You reason with the child. My generation soon discovered that was not effective very often, and so parents began to resort to verbal shaming that was just as humiliating as a physical beating. Again, God forgives and forgets, but people don’t. This has been the work of several generations, but we now have a generation of children who have perfected the art of verbal abuse and humiliation, and we have given them social media as a platform on which to practice it. And for the record, the world’s solution hasn’t stopped the physical abuse at all. In fact, it is more rampant than ever. Substituting physical punishment with verbal punishment only amplified the problem.


With more shaming. Any criticism that might be considered to undermine a person’s worth, even when it is good, healthy counsel given in the person’s best interests, is labeled as shaming and the alleged shamer then gets shamed in return. Here is an example:


The military retiree is not some 6th grader running around the school yard taunting her son. He speaks the truth learned from a negative life experience, and out of concern for his nephew, he desires to warn the young man from pursuing a path down which he himself struggled. And yet he is shamed for giving healthy criticism that would lead to his nephew’s future health and well-being, and the shaming is done by the very woman who should be equally concerned but isn’t. This is the culture in which we live now, where children are taught not to listen to good counsel and healthy criticism that would benefit them, and this is what is being promoted in our public schools.


The world shames us when we run counter to its values, but even more so when we step out in our faith as a witness for Christ. The world loves nothing more than to dig up our past failings and throw them in our faces, and when we offer faith-based comfort, it blows back at us with a vengeance. The fear of being shamed or humiliated can impact our witness for Christ, but we are warned against being sway by this. We are called to take up the cross with Christ. Jesus said,



Questions for Reflection:
Perhaps the solution to shaming begins with us. Here are some questions for self-reflection:
Shame is a stumbling block because it prevents healing and restoration to fellowship. Do not put this stumbling block in your brother's or sister's path.

We have dealt with the past. Now on to the abundant future.