Bible Strands
Isaiah 49:18
Lift up your eyes and look around. They all gather together; they come to you. As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “you will wear them all as jewelry and put them on like a bride.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses a desolate, personified city after promising that her builders will hasten back and her destroyers will depart.
The words — The command שְׂאִי (sĕʾî), "lift up," directs the addressee to raise her eyes, while סָבִיב (sāḇîḇ), "all around," establishes the spatial scope of the gathering exiles.
The thread — The image of the addressee wearing returning people as jewelry parallels the restoration promised to the barren woman in Isaiah 54:1 and the garment imagery of Isaiah 61:10.
Why it lands — The text asserts that God’s sworn life guarantees the reversal of ruin into abundance, requiring the reader to accept the declaration as factual before it functions as encouragement.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 54:1 “Shout for joy, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth in song and cry aloud, you who have never travailed; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD.
- Isaiah 61:10 I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom wears a priestly headdress, as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
- Isaiah 66:12 For this is what the LORD says: “I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flowing stream; you will nurse and be carried on her arm, and bounced upon her knees.
- Isaiah 54:9 “For to Me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So I have sworn that I will not be angry with you or rebuke you.
- Isaiah 43:5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east and gather you from the west.
- Isaiah 49:12 Behold, they will come from far away, from the north and from the west, and from the land of Aswan.”
- Isaiah 54:7 “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will bring you back.
- Isaiah 66:20 And they will bring all your brothers from all the nations as a gift to the LORD on horses and chariots and wagons, on mules and camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem,” says the LORD, “just as the Israelites bring an offering in a clean vessel to the house of the LORD.”
- Jeremiah 2:32 Does a maiden forget her jewelry or a bride her wedding sash? Yet My people have forgotten Me for days without number.
- Genesis 13:14 After Lot had departed, the LORD said to Abram, “Now lift up your eyes from the place where you are, and look to the north and south and east and west,