Touched by the Sun, She Becomes a Sun

Isaiah's prophecy presents a remarkable correspondence that Maclaren renders with precision: Zion, once a mourning captive prostrate in darkness, receives the Glory of the Lord—that ancient brightness that dwelt between the cherubim in the secret place of the Most High. This is no internal illumination alone. The prophet employs a single Hebrew root for both 'shine' and 'light,' creating a deliberate echo: 'thy light' appears twice—once meaning the light that shines upon thee, once meaning the light that shines from thee. The word for 'rising' (qarah, the technical term for sunrise) applies equally to the divine glory flashing upon Zion and to the light that blazes from her transformed form. Touched by the sun, she becomes a sun, blazing in her heaven with a splendor that draws men's hearts. This is not metaphor but a solemn theological fact. The Church's missionary power depends upon holding two convictions with iron grip—not as mere intellectual assent, but as ever-present forces acting upon emotion, conscience, and will: that darkness wraps the whole earth (no darkness formed by Elohim's hand, but the smoke of human sin), and that the Church stands illuminated and illuminating. Without both truths burning in the soul simultaneously, the Church cannot do the work Elohim has set before her. The captive becomes the radiant bearer of redemption's light.