Isaiah 35

The chapter opens by handing joy to the one place least equipped to feel it. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose (v. 1). A desert is, by definition, where life fails - dry, empty, the haunt of nothing. That is precisely why Isaiah chooses it. The promise is not that pleasant fields will get a little greener; it is that the dead ground itself will break into flower. And the bloom is not thin or grudging: It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing (v. 2). The most barren stretch of the world is given the glory of the most fertile - the glory of Lebanon with its famous cedars, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon with their lush slopes - all of it poured out on the wasteland. This is the way the LORD characteristically works in Isaiah: He does His most lavish work where everyone else sees only ruin. And the point of the flowering is not the flowers; it is what they let people see: they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God. The renewed desert becomes a window. Where there had been only emptiness, now the glory of God stands visible.³

Then the vision turns from the land to the people living on it, and the tone shifts from description to command: Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not (vv. 3-4). The picture is of exhaustion - hands gone slack, knees buckling, the body language of people who have stopped expecting good news. To them the word is not a scolding but a steadying. Notice that the strengthening is something the community does for one another: strengthen ye… say to them. Those who have heard the promise are told to take it to the discouraged, to put courage back into the fearful heart. And the ground of that courage is not a pep talk; it is a Person and an event: behold, your God will come… he will come and save you (v. 4). The reason to be strong is not that things are not as bad as they seem, but that God Himself is on His way. The verse holds two things together that the world keeps trying to split: God comes with vengeance and a recompence - setting wrong things right - and in the very same breath He comes to save. The coming that judges and the coming that rescues are one coming. For the fearful heart, that is the whole gospel in a sentence: he will come and save you.

Now Isaiah names the signs by which the coming of God will be recognized, and their concreteness is the whole point: Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing (vv. 5-6). The repeated Then ties the healings to the moment God arrives - when He comes, this is what follows. These are not soft, spiritual-only images. They are eyes, ears, legs, tongues: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame do not merely walk but leap as an hart - the bounding deer being the very emblem of strength let loose - and the mouth that could make no sound breaks into song. Each clause reverses a specific, daily affliction, and each reversal overshoots mere repair into joy: not just mobility but leaping, not just speech but singing. And the same life floods the ground beneath them: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert (v. 6). The healing of bodies and the watering of the waste are one act of God. The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water (v. 7); even the habitation of dragons - the desolate lair where only wild things crouched - turns to marsh-grass and reeds, the soft green of a place where water now stands. Wherever God comes to save, death runs backward.

Through the blooming wilderness Isaiah now lays a road: And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness (v. 8). A highway is a built-up road, raised and cleared - not a faint desert track you might lose, but an obvious, prepared way. And its first quality is its clarity: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. This is striking. The road home is not reserved for the clever or the spiritually elite; it is so plainly marked that even a simpleton cannot wander off it. No one is shut out for lack of skill. The second quality is purity: the unclean shall not pass over it. The way of holiness is exactly what its name says - a clean road, set apart, on which what defiles has no place. These two notes belong together. The road is wide open to the simple and the failing, yet it is genuinely holy; the way that excludes the unclean is the same way the fool walks safely. The gate is low enough for anyone to enter, and the path is clean enough to be called the LORD's own. It is a road that asks not cleverness but cleansing - and then keeps even the least able traveler from straying.

The next note is safety: No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there (v. 9). In Isaiah's world an open road through wild country meant real danger - lions, predators, bandits lurking where the desert met the way. The way of holiness has none of it. The threats are not merely held back but not found there at all; the danger is simply gone from the road. And the travelers are named for the first time: the redeemed. This is who walks here - not the self-sufficient or the strong, but those who have been bought back, rescued, brought out of bondage by Another. The whole picture quietly inverts the world's idea of a safe journey. We tend to think safety comes from our own competence, our own readiness for whatever lurks in the dark. Isaiah locates it elsewhere: the road is safe because of whose road it is. The redeemed are not safe because they are formidable; they are safe because the One who redeemed them has cleared the way. They walk a path with no predators on it, kept not by their strength but by His.

And the road leads home. And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (v. 10). Every image in this last verse is motion toward joy. They return; they come to Zion; they arrive with songs. The joy is pictured as a crown - everlasting joy upon their heads - worn openly, the way a victor wears a wreath, and it is everlasting: not a mood that will lift by evening but a gladness with no expiry. Then comes the line the whole chapter has been moving toward: sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Notice the verb. Sorrow does not merely fade or lessen; it flees - it turns and runs, put to flight, gone. The chapter that opened in a desert closes in a homecoming where grief itself is evicted. This is the destination of the way of holiness: not just survival, not just arrival, but a joy that lasts forever and a sorrow that is finally, permanently chased off the field. The wilderness has not only bloomed; it has become the road that ends in unending song.