Bible Strands
Isaiah 54:7
“For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will bring you back.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks to Israel, addressing their exile as a temporary abandonment and promising their return. The speaker is the LORD; the audience is the nation personified as a forsaken wife (v. 6).
The words — רגע (rega', "an instant, a moment") sets the duration of the abandonment; רחמים (rachamim, "compassion," from the root for womb) names the quality of the return. The verse is structured on the contrast between the smallness of the leaving and the greatness of the gathering.
The thread — The same pattern—brief wrath, lasting favor, gathering of the scattered—appears in Psalms 30:5, Isaiah 26:20, and Micah 4:6.
Why it lands — It asks the reader to accept that the suffering is real and bounded, not that it was never real. The "moment" is not minimized; it is given a terminus.
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
For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.
Cross-references
- Psalms 30:5 For His anger is fleeting, but His favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may stay the night, but joy comes in the morning.
- Isaiah 26:20 Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourselves a little while until the wrath has passed.
- Micah 4:6 “On that day,” declares the LORD, “I will gather the lame; I will assemble the outcast, even those whom I have afflicted.
- 2 Peter 3:8 Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
- Deuteronomy 30:3 then He will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you from all the nations to which the LORD your God has scattered you.
- Isaiah 60:4 Lift up your eyes and look around: They all gather and come to you; your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried on the arm.
- Isaiah 66:18 “And I, knowing their deeds and thoughts, am coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see My glory.
- 2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison.
- Matthew 23:37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!
- Isaiah 56:8 Thus declares the Lord GOD, who gathers the dispersed of Israel: “I will gather to them still others besides those already gathered.”