Enlarge Thy Tent — Isaiah 54–55
The Servant of Isaiah 53 is promised that He will see His seed. Chapter 54 shows who they are: the children of a barren woman, gathered after a small moment and kept by a kindness the mountains cannot outlast. Chapter 55 opens the door to anyone who is thirsty, and sets no price.
“He Shall See His Seed” — Why 54 Follows 53
Read chapter 54 as if chapter 53 had just ended, because it has. The Servant is “cut off out of the land of the living,” and yet “he shall see his seed” (Isaiah 53:8–10). Three verses later: “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear … for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife” (54:1). Who are the children? The seed. The same Hebrew word, zeraʿ, returns in verse 3: “thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles.”
Then the travail. In the next verse He “shall see of the travail of his soul”; she “didst not travail with child.” The Hebrew words differ — ʿamal, anguish, for Him; chul, birth pains, for her — but the thought crosses the chapter break intact. She has children she did not labour for. Why? Because Someone else laboured. That is grace, told as a birth.
The risen Lord read it the same way. He quoted Isaiah 52:13–15 (3 Nephi 20:43–45), spoke of the covenant, and then: “And then shall that which is written come to pass: Sing, O barren …” (3 Nephi 22:1). From 52:15 straight to 54:1. Why not recite chapter 53? The text does not say. But the Servant it describes was standing in front of them, and they had felt “the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet” (3 Nephi 11:15).
And most readers miss what He had called Himself as He invited them forward: “the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth” (3 Nephi 11:14). That is Isaiah 54:5 — “The God of the whole earth shall he be called.” He introduced Himself with a title from the chapter He would recite.
When He finished it, He said: “Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1). The line every Latter-day Saint knows about Isaiah was spoken about THIS chapter.
A Barren Wife, a Maker for a Husband, and a Bigger Tent
“For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel” (54:5). The covenant is a marriage, and Israel is the wife who was childless, then widowed, then “refused” in the next verse. Her Husband carries four titles — Maker, LORD of hosts, Redeemer, Holy One of Israel — and they name one Person. And the Redeemer who takes her back is the Servant who was bruised for her one chapter earlier.
Paul quotes verse 1 of “Jerusalem which is above … the mother of us all,” and adds, “Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise” (Galatians 4:26–28). He heard Sarah in it, the barren wife who bore by promise.
What does a barren woman do when children are promised? She makes room. “Enlarge the place of thy tent … spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left” (54:2–3). How the Church’s word stake came out of this tent is told in The Mountain of the Lord’s House.
Go one step further. Lengthen the cords AND strengthen the stakes, because a tent that spreads without driving its stakes deeper comes down in the first wind. Growth and depth are commanded in one breath, and the Lord kept the pairing in 1832 and joined it to Isaiah 52:1: “her borders must be enlarged; her stakes must be strengthened; … Zion must arise and put on her beautiful garments” (D&C 82:14).
“For a Small Moment” — A Flood of Wrath and Noah’s Oath
Isaiah 54:7–8 — antithetic parallelism
For a small moment have I forsaken thee;
but with great mercies will I gather thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment;
but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee.
The repeated words show it: small against great, a moment against everlasting. The forsaking is measured; the mercy is not.
The word “little” hides something. It is shetseph, found only here, and Strong’s derives it from shataph, to overflow, chosen to chime with qetseph, wrath — a surge, a flash flood. And what follows in the very next verse? “For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee” (54:9). The wrath came like a flood, and God has already sworn off floods.
In March 1839 Joseph Smith had been months in the jail at Liberty, Missouri. He wrote, “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” — a man asking where the hidden face had gone. What did the Lord answer? Isaiah 54:7. “My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high” (D&C 121:1–8).
Then: “Thou art not yet as Job” (121:10). Nobody speaks to a man suffering in a jail, begging for relief, and quotes him a fable. It did not feel small to Joseph, and it does not feel small to anyone inside it. But this life, this small moment in time, is a point on the line that is eternity, and the God of verse 8 measures it against “everlasting kindness.”
Mountains Depart; Kindness Does Not
Isaiah 54:10 — antithetic parallelism
For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed;
but my kindness shall not depart from thee,
neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed.
The same two verbs in Hebrew (mush, mot). The hills around Jerusalem were the most permanent thing Judah could see, and they go first.
“Kindness” here and in verse 8 is chesed, loyal covenant love. Follow the word into the next chapter: “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David” (55:3). “Mercies” is the same word in the plural. The kindness sworn in chapter 54 becomes the everlasting covenant of chapter 55. What made those mercies sure? Paul answers at Antioch in Pisidia: God “raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption,” and so gives “the sure mercies of David” (Acts 13:34). The kindness that cannot be removed rests on a Man who cannot die again.
President Russell M. Nelson turned the verse toward anyone who has wandered: “If you feel you have strayed off the covenant path too far or too long and have no way to return, that simply is not true” (April 2022).
Sapphires for the Storm-Tossed, and Children Taught of the LORD
Who is promised the jeweled city? “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires” (54:11–12). Not the comfortable, but the storm-tossed.
Then: “all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children.” Jesus quoted it in the synagogue at Capernaum — “And they shall be all taught of God” (John 6:45). In 1831 the Lord charged parents with “children in Zion, or in any of her stakes” to teach them the gospel and “to pray” (D&C 68:25–28). The tent and the children appear in one verse; the stakes are enlarged so the children can be taught inside them.
The chapter closes with a promise the Lord later gave Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon almost word for word (D&C 71:9): “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper … This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me” (54:17). Weapons will be made (verse 16 says God created the smith), but they will not prosper, and the righteousness that shields the servants is His.
“Without Money and Without Price”
“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?” (Isaiah 55:1–2). How do you buy without money? You come. The price was paid in chapter 53, and chapter 55 is the market call. Jacob quoted it and applied it: “do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy” (2 Nephi 9:50–51). Nephi heard it go out to everyone: “Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price” (2 Nephi 26:25).
A Protestant reader will recognise the free gift here, and should. But look at the verbs: come, buy, eat, hearken, incline your ear. “Hear, and your soul shall live.” The gift costs nothing. The coming is still required.
Read John 6 with these chapters open. “He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35) answers “that which is not bread,” verse 45 quotes Isaiah 54:13, and verse 38 — “I came down from heaven” — is waiting for the rain of Isaiah 55:10.
Higher Thoughts, and Rain That Does Not Go Back Empty
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts” is usually quoted to end a conversation. God is mysterious; stop asking. But what comes right before it? A call to repent, and the repeated words tie the two together:
Isaiah 55:7–9 — the structure
A Let the wicked forsake his way,
B and the unrighteous man his thoughts:
X for he will abundantly pardon.
B′ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
A′ neither are your ways my ways.
Our arrangement from the KJV word order; test it. The turn falls on the pardon.
So which thoughts are higher? Thoughts of pardon: we would not forgive that much, and He will, abundantly. Verse 9 then turns the pair once more, ways before thoughts.
These verses open a window on the mind of Christ, the one who could say, “I am more intelligent than they all” (Abraham 3:19). And higher thoughts do not stay up there. “For as the rain cometh down … So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void” (55:10–11). The Word comes down like rain and goes back only when the work is done.
Now the link almost everyone passes over. Isaiah 53:10: “the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.” Isaiah 55:11: “that which I please, and it shall prosper.” The Hebrew pair is the same both times, chaphets and tsalach, and the Servant of chapter 53 and the rain-word of chapter 55 do one work: the word sent down does not return empty, because the Servant saw His seed.
So the chapter ends in joy, the trees clapping their hands and the fir tree coming up “instead of the thorn” (55:12–13) — Eden’s curse answered.
Key References
- 3 Nephi 22 — the risen Lord’s Isaiah 54; set it beside Isaiah 54 verse by verse.
- D&C 121:1–10 — “a small moment” in Liberty Jail.
The Barren, the Forsaken, and the Thirsty
Look at who these chapters are addressed to. A woman who could not have children; a wife sent away in her youth; a city tossed with tempest; a man with no money and a thirst he cannot buy his way out of. None of them bring anything to the table, and every one of them is invited to it.
Which one are you today? The barren one, labouring for years with nothing to show? The forsaken one, in your own Liberty Jail, asking where His face went? The thirsty one, spending your wages on what does not satisfy? Each is answered by the same Person, who has already paid. “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” (55:6). Great are the words of Isaiah.
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