A Place for Joy

A Place for Joy July 12, 2014

Joy is the keynote of the new heavens and new earth that Yahweh will create, as Isaiah announces in the chiastically structured prophecy in 65:18:

A. Be glad (sus)

B. and rejoice (giyl) forever

C. in what I myself create

C’. for behold I create Jerusalem

B’. for rejoicing (giylah)

A’. And her people for gladness (masos).

Once Jerusalem was filled with the sound of weeping and lamentation, but the new Jerusalem is a city of joy. She exists to be a site of festivity. Sounds are indicators of life. A change of sound is a change in the mode of life, from mourning to joy, from crying to song.

And the joy is not only Zion’s, but Yahweh’s: “I rejoice (giyl) in Jerusalem, and I am glad (sus) in My people” (v. 19). Yahweh Himself has mourned and lamented (Isaiah 16:9), but now His voice will change. Jerusalem becomes a place for Yahweh to display His own joy.

These verses (vv. 17-19) are replete with references to Genesis 1: “heaven and earth,” “create,” a form of ro’sh, here “former things” and in Genesis 1 “beginning.” We can thus read back from Isaiah to a conclusion about creation: Creation itself is the formation of a place where Yahweh rejoices. Creation  is a temple, a place for Yahweh to inhabit with gladness. And of that gladness in creation, the Sabbath is a sign.


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