Isaiah 62:6,7

Jehovah hears perpetually the voice of importunate intercession ascending for the ruined walls of Jerusalem. This is the thought poetically expressed in the two verses, but the details of the conception present several difficult questions. In the first place, Who are meant by the watchmen, or rather watchers? [The word differs from that used in Isaiah 56:10; Isaiah 52:8 ("lookers out") and means literally "keepers" or "guards" (Song of Solomon 3:3; Song of Solomon 5:7; Psalms 127:1)]. (a) Some hold that it is here a name for the company of prophets, but this view has really little in its favour. The function ascribed to the watchers is not strictly prophetic, and the word is nowhere else used of a prophet except in ch. Isaiah 21:11 f., where there is obviously a comparisonof the prophet to a city watchman. (b) Another, but less probable, opinion is that pious Israelites are meant. (c) The best interpretation seems to be that of the Jewish exegetes, that the "watchers" are angelic beings, forming the invisible guard of the city. The representation, therefore, is purely ideal, and this fact has to be borne in mind in considering the second question, Who is the speaker in the first half of Isaiah 62:6? The prophet could not strictly be said to appoint either angelic or prophetic watchers; hence the prevalent opinion is that Jehovah is the speaker. On the other hand it seems to some unnatural that Jehovah should appoint those who are to remind Himself of His own promises, and it is certainly the prophet who speaks in the latter part of the verse. It might be held that the language is not too bold for the prophet to use of himself in describing a scene which belongs to the region of the spiritual imagination, just as other prophets do things in vision which exceed human authority (cf. Zechariah 11:7 ff.). Cheyne alone regards the three passages Isaiah 61:1 ff., Isaiah 62:1 ff., and Isaiah 62:6 f., as soliloquies of the ideal Servant of Jehovah, or rather of that ideal as reflected in the mind of a later disciple of the second Isaiah.