(6) For the Lord hath called thee.--The words find their explanation, perhaps their starting-point, in the history of Hosea and Gomer (Hosea 1-3). The husband has punished the faithless wife by what seemed a divorce, but his heart yearns after her, and he takes her back again.

When thou wast refused.--Some critics render Can she be rejected . . .? with the implied answer. "No, that is impossible," but the Authorised version is tenable, and gives an adequate meaning.

Verse 6. - For the Lord hath called thee; i.e. recalled thee to himself - summoned thee to return, and once more resume the office of a wife. As a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit; i.e. as one whom her husband has cast off, and whose spirit is grieved by the repudiation. No doubt a large number of the captives had the same spirit of penitence as Daniel (Daniel 9:5-19). A wife of youth. One wooed and won in youth, therefore more dearly loved, more regretfully repudiated, more joyfully restored when seen to be penitent. When thou wast refused; rather, when she has been cast off. Jehovah takes back Israel into the old relationship, as a man takes back "the wife of his youth," when she has been for a long time "cast off."

54:6-10 As God is slow to anger, so he is swift to show mercy. And how sweet the returns of mercy would be, when God should come and comfort them! He will have mercy on them. God's gathering his people takes rise from his mercy, not any merit of theirs; and it is with great mercies, with everlasting kindness. The wrath is little, the mercies great; the wrath for a moment, the kindness everlasting. We are neither to despond under afflictions, nor to despair of relief. Mountains have been shaken and removed, but the promises of God never were broken by any event. Mountains and hills also signify great men. Creature-confidences shall fail; but when our friends fail us, our God does not. All this is alike applicable to the church at large, and to each believer. God will rebuke and correct his people for sins; but he will not cast them off. Let this encourage us to give the more diligence to make our calling and election sure.For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit,.... That has lost her husband by death, is solitary upon it, is like one forsaken, and mourns for the loss of him; or is forsaken by a living husband, rejected by him, having a bill of divorce from him, and so she grieves at his unkindness to her, and the reproach cast upon her; as such an one was the church when it was first constituted, when the members of which it consisted were called out of the world by the grace of God, and formed into a church state; almost as soon as ever they were thus embodied together, Christ was taken from them by death, and they were left alone, and filled with grief and trouble: the apostles and first preachers of the Gospel were persecuted from place to place, and all of them lost their lives for the cause in which they were engaged; and the church endured grievous persecutions during the three first centuries, when she seemed to be forsaken of God, and was greatly oppressed and grieved in spirit. Some understand this of the Gentiles, and of their state and condition when called, as described in Ephesians 2:10, but rather it may be interpreted of the Jews, now cut off and forsaken; and who, when they come to be sensible of their case, will be grieved and mourn, even when they shall be called and converted in the latter day; but I think the first sense is best:

and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God; or, "and as a wife of youth (m)"; whom a man marries in his youth, and she a young woman herself, which makes it the more grievous to be despised, refused, and forsaken, or to seem to be so. The words may be rendered thus, "and", or "but, a wife of youth thou art, though thou wast despised" (n), or "refused, saith thy God"; that is, though thou hast been seemingly despised and cast off, my providential dispensations towards thee may be so interpreted by thyself and others; yet I am thy God, thy Maker, Redeemer, and Husband, and thou art as dear to me as the wife of a man's youth, for whom he has the most passionate love; and which agrees with what follows.

(m) , Sept.; sic Arab. & Targum; "et velut foeminam", Tigurine version, Castalio; "et ut uxorem", Vitringa. (n) "quamvis spreta sis", Junius & Tremellius; "fueris", Piscator.