Isaiah 12
After the long opening sweep of warning, judgment, and promise - through the vision of the throne, the sign of Immanuel, the great light in the darkness, the branch from the stump of Jesse, and the highway of return - the first major movement of Isaiah comes to rest on a song. And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee (v. 1). It is the shortest chapter in the book, and deliberately so: it is the held breath let out, the worship that follows deliverance.
The pattern is ancient. When Israel came up out of the sea, the response was not a report but a song - I will sing unto the LORD… the LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation (Exod. 15:1-2). Isaiah reaches for those very words now, casting the redemption still to come as a second exodus that will end, like the first, in praise.
The song is not the easy gladness of people who have never suffered. It opens by naming the hard road honestly: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me (v. 1). These are people who passed through correction and came out on the far side into comfort, and the joy is all the deeper for it. At its center stands the confession that gathers up everything the prophet has been driving toward: Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation (v. 2).
Fear is finished because of who God has become to them. And He is no exhausted spring; He is wells of salvation from which the redeemed draw with joy (v. 3), returning again and again to a source that does not run dry.
Then the song turns outward and upward. Joy like this cannot stay private; it overflows into proclamation. Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people… Sing unto the LORD; for he hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth (vv. 4-5). What God has done for one rescued soul becomes news for the nations, a song meant to be carried beyond Zion's walls. And the whole chapter comes to its peak on a single astonishing line: Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee (v. 6).
The Holy One - the very title that left Isaiah undone in the temple, crying Woe is me! - is here said to dwell in the midst of His people. The song that began with one forgiven heart ends with the redeemed shouting that God Himself has drawn near to stay.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 12:1-3Behold, God Is My Salvation
1And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. 2Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. 3Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
The song opens by setting the moment in time and then doing something unexpected for a hymn of praise: it tells the truth about the past. And in that day thou shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me (v. 1). The phrase in that day reaches back to everything the prophet has promised - the branch from Jesse's stump, the gathering of the scattered, the highway of return in the chapters just before.
When that day comes, this is the song it will sing. And notice that the praise does not pretend the hard road never happened. It names it plainly: thou wast angry with me. The discipline was real; the correction was felt. But the sentence does not end there. Thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Here is the whole shape of Isaiah's message in a single verse: comfort is God's final word.
The book that began with a wounded nation and a holy God closes its first movement on a people gathered back into comfort, able at last to look honestly at what they passed through and to praise the One who brought them out of it.
Now comes the line the whole chapter is built around: Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation (v. 2). Weigh the exact wording, because it is more than a turn of phrase. The song says God is my salvation - the rescue and the Rescuer bound together; to have Him is to have it. That is precisely why the next words are possible: I will trust, and not be afraid. Fear is conquered by a Person, the LORD Himself present as salvation.
When the LORD Himself is your salvation, dread loses its grip, because what could undo you is smaller than the One who holds you. And the confession deepens with two more claims: He is my strength - the power that is not your own - and He is my song - the very joy you sing about. The same God is both the rock under your feet and the music in your mouth. These are not new words; they are lifted almost exactly from the song Israel sang at the Red Sea, when the LORD is my strength and song first broke out on the far shore of deliverance (Exod. 15:2).
Isaiah puts that ancient song on the lips of a people yet to be redeemed, as if to say: the God who saved then is the God who saves now, and the only fitting answer is the same - a song.
The first movement closes with one of the most beautiful images in the book: Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation (v. 3). To grasp its weight, picture a dry land where water is not a convenience but the difference between life and death. A well in such a place is everything - the spot the whole town is built around, the destination people return to every single morning because no one can live on yesterday's water.
That, the song says, is what God's salvation is like: wells - an unfailing source to which the redeemed come back again and again. The word therefore ties it to the verse before: because God has become their salvation, there is now a place to draw from, and it will not run dry. And the drawing is done with joy. The people do not trudge to this well as to a grim duty; they come singing, the way a thirsty traveler runs to water.
There is something quietly searching in the picture. It asks the reader to consider the difference between having once received from God and learning to draw from Him daily - between a memory of grace and a habit of it. The redeemed in Isaiah's song have learned the second. They keep coming back to the wells, and they come back glad.
What Isaiah's song confesses in the abstract - God is my salvation - the Gospel announces in a Person who carries that meaning in His own name. The aged Simeon, taking the infant in his arms, says it plainly: mine eyes have seen thy salvation (Luke 2:30) - salvation now a face he could hold. The same note runs through the apostles' preaching: Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
And the fear-conquering trust the song commands - I will trust, and not be afraid - is the very rest He held out to His own: Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (John 14:27). Here, then, is the line drawn from Isaiah to the manger: a song that dared to say God is my salvation, and a Savior who came bearing that exact word as His name, so that the trust the prophet sang could rest at last on One who could be seen, named, and held.
Isaiah 12:4-6Cry Out and Shout, Thou Inhabitant of Zion
4And in that day shall ye say, Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted. 5Sing unto the LORD; for he hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth. 6Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.
The song now turns outward, and the change of direction is the point. The first three verses were intensely personal - my salvation, my strength, my song. But joy like this cannot stay sealed inside one heart. And in that day shall ye say, Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted (v. 4). Watch the verbs pile up: praise… call… declare… make mention. The grateful soul becomes a herald.
What God has done is news, and news is for telling. And notice where the telling goes - among the people, the nations beyond Israel's borders. The mercy shown to one rescued people is meant to spill over the walls and reach the whole earth. This is the missionary instinct buried in the heart of worship: when God truly becomes your salvation, you do not only sing to Him, you tell others what He has done.
The redeemed of Isaiah's song are not content to be glad alone. They want the nations to know the name that saved them.
The summons rises to a fuller pitch: Sing unto the LORD; for he hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth (v. 5). The reason given for the song is His deeds - he hath done excellent things. The word reaches for grandeur, for works so far above the ordinary that they astonish: the gathering of the scattered, the turning away of wrath, the becoming of salvation itself. And the scope of it widens again: this is known in all the earth. What God has done is not a local rumor confined to one nation's memory; it is meant to be world-wide knowledge, the report of His greatness carried to the ends of the earth.
There is a quiet logic running through the whole chapter here. It began with one forgiven heart in verse 1, opened into the wells of salvation in verse 3, turned to the nations in verse 4, and now reaches all the earth in verse 5. The circle keeps widening. Salvation that starts with a single soul does not stay small; it presses outward until it fills the world with a song. And the only fitting response to works of such excellence is exactly what the verse commands: song.
The chapter reaches its summit in a single, almost overwhelming line: Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee (v. 6). The volume rises to its highest here - cry out and shout - the language of a joy that can no longer be held at a reverent murmur but must break out loud. And the reason given is the most staggering thing the song has said.
The cause for all this shouting is not only what God has done but where He now is: great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. Two phrases sit side by side that might seem impossible together. The Holy One of Israel is Isaiah's favorite name for God, and it is a name of awful distance - the title that left the prophet himself crying Woe is me! for I am undone when he glimpsed that holiness filling the temple (Isa. 6:5).
Holiness like that ought to mean separation, the unapproachable God set far above unclean people. Yet here the Holy One is said to be in the midst of thee - dwelling right among His people. That is the wonder the whole song has been climbing toward. The God too holy to look upon has come near to dwell. And it is precisely because He is near that the redeemed can shout instead of tremble.
The child to be born is named for it: they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (Matt. 1:23) - the promise of Isaiah's own earlier sign now arriving in a Person. John says the same with a word that recalls the tabernacle pitched in Israel's midst: the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory (John 1:14).
The Holy One in the midst of His people is no longer only a song sung in Zion; He is a life lived among us, walking the roads of Galilee, the holiness of God drawn near enough to touch. And the same Christ who offered living water at the well (John 4:14) and cried in the temple courts, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink (John 7:37), is the One in whom the wells of salvation and the Holy One in the midst meet in a single Person, God Himself come near, the source the redeemed draw from with joy.
The song's last word points to the Bible's last vision, where the cry of Zion becomes the cry of a renewed creation: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them (Rev. 21:3). What Isaiah's redeemed shouted over - the Holy One in the midst - is the destiny of all things: God with His people, to stay.
Isaiah's redeemed do the opposite: what God has done for one of them becomes news for everyone. So take the song's movement as the week's practice. First, draw from the well yourself - name honestly, the way verse 1 does, both the hard road you have been on and the comfort God has given, and let that turn into actual praise rather than vague gratitude. Then take the harder step the song takes: make mention of it to one other person.
Tell someone - plainly, without sermon - one thing God has done for you. The wells are not meant to be drunk from in secret forever. A joy that has truly tasted that God is salvation will, sooner or later, want the people around it to know.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Behold, God Is My Salvation
- Exodus 15:1-2I will sing unto the LORD... The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation.The Song of the Sea that verse 2 quotes almost word for word - deliverance answered, then as now, with a song.
- Isaiah 26:4Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.The same doubled divine name as verse 2, underwriting the same call to fearless trust.
- Matthew 1:21thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.The name drawn from the very word for salvation in verses 2-3 - salvation given at last as a name.
- Psalm 46:1God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.The confession of verse 2 echoed - God Himself as strength, so His people need not fear.
- John 4:13-14the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.The wells of salvation of verse 3 named in person - the living water Christ gives that never fails.
Cry Out and Shout, Thou Inhabitant of Zion
- Psalm 105:1O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people.Nearly the words of verse 4 - the grateful heart turned herald, telling the nations what God has done.
- Isaiah 6:3-5Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts... Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone.The holiness of the One now said to dwell in the midst (v. 6) - the same title that once left the prophet undone.
- Matthew 1:23they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.The Holy One in the midst of verse 6 made flesh - God come near to dwell with His people.
- Zephaniah 3:14-17Sing, O daughter of Zion... the LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty... he will joy over thee with singing.The same summons and the same wonder as verse 6 - Zion told to shout because the LORD is in her midst.
- Revelation 21:3Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people.The hope of verse 6 carried to its end - God dwelling in the midst of His people forever.