A Place for Joy

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.