Isaiah 35:1

Many scholars profess to see a close connection between this chapter and the preceding one, and to interpret the wonderful blessings portrayed in this as being the consequence of the destruction of God's enemies in Isaiah 34. We see no such thing. Whatever similarities may exist here between the great blessings of the Kingdom of Christ, which is most surely the focus of the chapter, and the return of a small remnant of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, it appears to us are very limited; and both in such types and the great reality itself, the cause of them must be discerned as being the intervention of God Himself in human affairs. Was it due to the destruction of enemies? Not entirely, because God still has enemies. The cause of the blessings in Christ's kingdom is Jesus Christ himself. He is the HIGHWAY to heaven. Christ is also the highway that brought the Jews back to Jerusalem after the captivity; because the very purpose of God's bringing them back was that the Jews should be preserved as a separate people until Messiah should be born.

The existence of a "highway" through the desert from Babylon to Judah, and that desert that blossomed like a rose as they came back home through that desert simply did not exist. This passage was not talking about such literal things as that.

There could, of course, be a prophecy here of a "highway" for the Jews to use on the way back from Babylon, if we could interpret such a highway as being the providential assistance that Cyrus the Persian ruler gave the Jews in allowing, aiding and encouraging it. Where else in these ten verses do we locate a prophecy of Jews returning to Jerusalem?

Isaiah 35:1-2

"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of Jehovah, the excellency of our God."

No such transformation of the desert between Babylon and Jerusalem is recorded as having taken place on the return of the remnant; and therefore we must see in these words a prophecy of a spiritual transformation that would take place at some future occasion afterward from the times of Isaiah. What was it? As Barnes explained it:

"The sense here (Isaiah 35:1,2) is that the desolate moral world would be filled with joy on account of the blessings which are here predicted ... and that the change would be so great under the blessings of the Messiah's reign, as if there should be suddenly transferred to the waste wilderness (the desert) the majesty and glory of mount Lebanon ... and that the blessings of the times of Messiah would be as great, as if the desert were made as lovely as Carmel, and as fertile as Sharon."[1]

Archer understood that blossoming and singing desert to symbolize, "The inward changes that take place in the redeemed";[2] and that certainly makes sense. As the sense of this chapter begins to appear, we may easily understand why Lowth complained that, "It is not easy to discover what connection the extremely flourishing state of the church or people of God described in Isaiah 35 could have with those events (of Isaiah 34)."[3] We will go much further and declare that, in fact, there is hardly any connection at all, except the resulting dramatic contrast between, "The future of the unrepentant, God-defying world and the future of the people of God."[4] There is also one other connection. The final glory of the Church will come after the execution of the final judgment; and since it is the final judgment that appears in Isaiah 34, it was most logical that the joy of the saints of God should immediately appear, as indeed they do, right here in Isaiah 35. However, the element of cause and effect is not in the two chapters, but only the element of their near simultaneous timing.

As indication of the many differences of scholars regarding these verses, take that word rendered "rose" (Isaiah 35:1) in our version. Peake gave it as, "the autumn crocus, "or "the narcissus." "The Septuagint (LXX) renders it `Lily,' the Vulgate gives us `Lilium' (the same thing); and the Syriac version translates it `the meadow-saffron.'"[5]

Of course, anyone can see that the exact identity of the flower in this passage is of little, if any, importance.

Rawlinson, as we see it, properly identified this whole chapter as a prophecy of, "The glory of the last times,"[6] and Hailey explained the reasons for doing so, as follows:

"The wilderness through which the redeemed came singing to Zion is not the road from Babylon to Judah, but the spiritual desert which led them into the captivity ... Afterward came the Medo-Persian role and oppression, then Alexander whose role was totally void of spiritual values ... then the Ptolemies, the Syrian Seleucids, the Maccabean wars ... and the Pharisees and Sadducees, religious rulers who corrupted the spiritual life of the nation ... and after them the Romans. It is obvious that the glorious picture in Isaiah 35 was certainly not realized at any time during the period between Babylon and the coming of Jesus Christ. Only a messianic interpretation of the chapter fits the text."[7]