February 22, 2026 Isaiah 35: “The Joyful Song of Vengeance”

Isaiah chapter 35 marks a major turning point. It closes the sequence beginning in chapter 13—a stark contrast to the harshness that preceded it—with a song overflowing with joyful exultation, leading into the next section starting with chapter 36.
This chapter is also called “the most beautiful confession of faith in the Old Testament”.
The Bible is a book that confronts us with the stern words of the Holy Lord, yet it also overflows with blessings that surpass them—promising flowers blooming in the wilderness and desert, beautiful streams flowing, comforting and strengthening us.

1 The wilderness and the desert shall be glad; the wilderness shall rejoice and blossom as the crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. 2 The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God.

The desolate scenes of “wilderness and desert… wasteland” are the reality where Isaiah’s words of God’s stern judgment have come to pass.
The Lord severely condemns sin, injustice, and pride in the world of that time and in us today, striking down human vanity.
He says that wilderness and desert will rejoice, leap for joy, and blossom.
It mentions saffron.
I thought of saffron rice—yellow rice—and imagined this too as a landscape covered in yellow flowers.
Many English Bibles use “crocus”.
These are spring-blooming flowers in purple, white, and yellow.
Saffron is a type of crocus, a purple flower that blooms in autumn.
The spice made from its yellow stigmas is said to be the world’s most expensive spice, yielding just 1 gram from about 150 flowers.
It is a flower resilient to cold, possessing vigorous vitality.
The wasteland will be covered with purple saffron flowers.
Overlapping this is Lebanon, renowned for its majestic towering cedar trees.
Carmel offers breathtaking views overlooking the Mediterranean, while its foothills in Sharon are a beautiful green scenic area.
While saffron might grow in the desert, cedar trees absolutely cannot.
Yet here, saffron in the desert, forests of Lebanon cedars, the spectacular views from Carmel, and the expansive green of Sharon all overlap.
Such profound transformation can only be depicted through such vivid imagery.

When standing before a breathtaking view, or encountering a beautiful painting (or music, or story), have you not felt not just moved, but brought to tears, almost painfully so?
Perhaps what is too beautiful stirs within us the ugly things, the tears and wounds, the things we have lost.
Right now, it may be impossible to think of it any other way.
Yet Isaiah declares:

3 Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the unsteady knees. Say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear! Your God will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. He will come and save you.”

This connects to the “Be strong.
Do not fear” spoken to those with weakened hands, faltering knees, and troubled hearts.
There is news to strengthen the weakened heart. It is the news that your God is coming.
God is coming.
And He comes as “your God”, it means “our God.”
And since He comes as our God, it can also be said that “vengeance,” “God’s reward,” is coming—that He comes to save you.
The word ‘vengeance’ might make you flinch, but saving you is precisely “God’s vengeance,”
His reward.
This word “vengeance” doesn’t mean “retaliation,” but rather “restoring balance to a broken relationship, reestablishing righteous rule”.
God restores what was broken in our hearts and lives, restoring the way of life God originally intended for us—repairing what was broken, calming our troubled hearts so we need not fear.
This is the kind of “revenge” God takes—and the coming of this God, our God, is salvation.

This is a profound transformation.
Therefore, verses 5 and 6 carry multiple layers of meaning.
They can be read as referring to the actual healing of visual and auditory impairments, or the healing of all sicknesses.
Indeed, when Jesus came, He healed many sick people.
Yet Jesus also pointed out, “Because you think you see, you do not see”.
Paul’s letters also pray, “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened…”.
Isaiah speaks of the stubbornness of the heart’s ears and eyes.
It’s not just about physical eyes or ears versus spiritual ones; rather, the body is healed, and the glory, grace, and will of God become visible.
It’s not just knee pain disappearing, but walking in God’s ways, running and dancing.
Opening our mouths to sing with joy—that’s the kind of holistic healing.
What the Lord brings is more than mere healing or treatment;
it’s everything being made new, a restoration where we are filled from the heart, from the tips of our toes to the ends of our hair, every wrinkle, by the Lord’s love.
It’s exactly as it says: we sing from the heart and leap for joy. It is because:

… For waters will break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. 7 The parched ground will become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; the haunt of jackals will become a marsh with reeds and papyrus.

This image of water and rivers flowing through the wilderness, bringing abundant moisture, is an expression repeated throughout Isaiah chapters 40–55.
The words describing water springing forth in that parched land, transforming it into thickets of reeds and papyrus, are powerful words that surely awakened hope.
Water gushing forth in the wilderness, places that were only dens for beasts becoming like watersides—seeing this, the scales fall from our eyes, we leap up, and sing with joy.
This is none other than us—me, you—singing and dancing. Can you imagine such a scene?

And finally, in verses 8–10, the “highway” appears.
The “holy way” runs through it.

The unclean shall not pass through it.
This is for those who walk that way.
The foolish shall not wander there.
9 There shall be no lion there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up there;
nothing shall be found there.
Only the redeemed shall walk there.

Unthreatened by defiled ones, fools, beasts, or any hindrance, the redeemed return along this highway. And

10 Those redeemed by the Lord return.
They enter Zion singing joyfully, crowned with everlasting joy.
Delight and gladness follow them; sorrow and sighing flee away.

This song is repeated verbatim in chapter 51, verse 11. It is a song of hope drawn from Isaiah, the essence of the goal. And it is a song quoted in the Bible’s final book, Revelation, in chapters 7 and 21.

This “redeemed” means bought back at a price.
The Lord pays the price for His people, claiming us as His own.
Therefore, this is entirely passive.
It depends not at all on our own strength or worthiness, but solely on the Lord’s grace and His own sacrifice.
We are made redeemed and return through that highway.
To begin with, the people of Isaiah’s time were “unclean…fools.”
Though they outwardly fulfilled the duties of worship, their hearts were defiled by sin, and they were fools who wasted their precious minds on narrow-minded thoughts.
It is impossible for them to cleanse themselves or manage things wisely on their own.
But precisely because of this, the Lord redeems them. Here, there is absolutely no condition of nation, ethnicity, status, or anything else.
No matter how much I’m called unclean or how utterly foolish I feel about myself, the Lord redeems even my hopelessly inadequate parts.
I too am counted among the “redeemed,” singing with joy as I walk home along the highway.
I need not fear those who threaten or hinder this!

The saffron mentioned in verse 1 has sometimes been translated as “rose.”
We often hope the desert will turn into roses, that our lives will become rosy.
But it is saffron, not “roses”.
In Iran, the world’s top producer, saffron fields stretch across seemingly dry ground, covered in endless purple saffron.
It’s not a barren land transformed into a paradise flower garden, but rather a landscape where the wasteland blooms with countless small flowers, each holding a tiny treasure.
Thomas Keating once said:

“We are invited to invite God to reveal Himself as God within our very humanity—within our weakness, within our addictions, within our sin.”

Our powerlessness, our very problems, are the very space where God redeems and saves us.
Those redeemed by the Lord are granted this grace.
In the wilderness of our weakness, in the barren desert, in the darkness of sin, the Lord comes to us and shows us His work, making the desert bloom with saffron.
He gives us eyes to see that grace.
That is why even now, on our daily journey, it is precisely when we are disappointed, when we feel like giving up, when we are utterly helpless, that we pray, “Lord, come here.
Reveal Yourself as our God.”

Prayer:

“Our God, our Redeemer, You cause flowers to bloom in the wilderness, shine light in the darkness, and make us sing songs of life with joy.
Though we cannot see it now, Your grace is present.
Above all, through Your Son Jesus Christ, You have redeemed us, made us Your own, and fulfilled God’s vengeance.
When our hearts are troubled by sin, when our spirits are desolate by the difficulties of life together, let us look to the Lord who comes to us there.
Guard our journey on earth, and let us await the future fulfillment by singing today’s song.”

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)