Isaiah 35 is the bright counterpoint to chapter 34's oracle of judgment on Edom. The prophet speaks to a Judah living under Assyrian threat in the late eighth century, a people who can see the dry country closing in around them and who have begun to suspect the world will end in dust. Isaiah's answer is not denial but reversal. The same wilderness that swallows kingdoms will, when the LORD comes, sing. The chapter is set deliberately as a hinge between the book's first half and the long oracles of comfort that follow — a flash of the world's ending shape.

From the writers we read together

George MacDonald

Scottish pastor and novelist (1824-1905), mentor in print to C.S. Lewis

MacDonald preached relentlessly that God's character is not severity dressed up as love but love that is willing to look like severity for a while. The wilderness in Scripture is rarely punishment for its own sake; it is the long patience of a God who refuses to leave the dry place dry. MacDonald would say Isaiah 35 is not a different God from Isaiah 34 — it is the same God finishing his sentence. Edom's ruin and Sharon's blossom are the front and back of one work. Judgment that does not end in flowers is, for MacDonald, not the judgment of the God of Israel.

That reading reframes our own dry seasons. The desert in your life is not a verdict; it is a location. Isaiah does not promise that the wilderness will be removed but that it will rejoice — the same ground, transfigured. MacDonald's God does not skip over the hard country. He walks his people through it and then teaches it to sing. If you are in such a stretch today, the question is not whether you can manufacture the joy. The question is whether you can wait for the One whose coming the desert itself is waiting for.