2. And you shall be called a new name. In the biblical world, as in many other cultures, the name was conceived as incorporating the essence of the person or object. The most striking illustration of this notion is Jacob’s wrestling with the mysterious stranger in Genesis 32. He is given a new name, Israel, instead of his old one (“Jacob” is etymologically associated with crookedness or deception), while the stranger refuses to reveal his own name, saying it is a mystery. The prophet of these chapters is particularly preoccupied with changing names: Israel’s disastrous destiny is about to be transformed into triumph, and the poetry marks this transformation by assigning a cluster of new names.

4. My Delight Is in Her. A transliterated version of the Hebrew for this name, Hephzibah, at one time had some currency among Bible-reading speakers of English.

The One Bedded. Again, the transliteration, Beulah, became an English name. Most translations render it as “espoused,” but that is too formal and too decorous. This passive form of the verb baʿal does indicate a woman who has a husband (the noun baʿal), but it has a sexual connotation: Zion, the woman who has been forsaken, will now enjoy consummation again. The sexual implication of the term is clearly suggested in verse 5: “and a bridegroom’s rejoicing over the bride / shall your God rejoice over you.”

5. your sons shall bed you. This sounds inadvertently like incest (in the next line of poetry, it is rather God’s relationship with Israel that is analogous to the bridegroom’s relationship with the bride), but the intended idea is that the desolate land, personified as a woman, will be plowed and cultivated by its sons, as a young man is intimate with a virgin and makes her fruitful.

6. watchmen. Some take this to be a figure for the prophet and his disciples, but they may well be literal watchmen.

9. those who gather it shall drink it / in My holy courts. The point of this verse and the preceding one is not only that the people will no longer have the fruit of their agricultural labors stripped from them by invaders, but also that they will bring their grain and wine to celebrate God in His Temple. This is a sentiment very much in keeping with many of the Psalms.

10. Build up, build up the highway. This, like several other lines in the poetry of this prophet, is a pointed variation on the language of Second Isaiah (especially 40:3–4).

11. Say to Zion’s Daughter. These are the words grandly confirming the restoration of Zion that God is about to proclaim throughout the earth.

His recompense . . . / His wages. That is to say, God carries with Him the recompense He will now give to Israel.

12. And they shall call them “Holy People.” In the fervor of this vision, all the nations of the earth are caught up in this movement of assigning new names to the people of Israel because they see and attest to its splendid transformation.