God's Motherhood: Divine Comfort in Exile and Return

Isaiah 63:13 employs the figure of motherhood to express God's tender care: "As one whom his mother comforteth." The prophet Isaiah reawakens this image—children suckled, cradled in their mother's lap—but extends it to the wounded adult returning home with exhaustion and sorrow seeking maternal solace. The exiles' return to Jerusalem embodies this metaphor. Israel, escaped from captivity and bearing sad remembrances, finds those echoes vanish completely in the mother-arms of Divine love in Jerusalem—the beloved home that occupied their thoughts even in foreign soil.…