The whole chapter 54 of Isaiah is titled: God recovers or finds again Jerusalem, his spouse. Without naming her so explicitly, Jerusalem is considered the spouse of God. The words addressed to her by God are reminiscent of those he pronounced with regard to his servant. Like him, Zion or Jerusalem, once humiliated will be glorified, for she is the city of the servants of the Lord.
One of the thirty-nine etchings printed after World War II (1952-56), the attentive onlooker
cannot but see in this plate a powerful symbol of the rebirth of the Jewish people. It commemorates
the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, and celebrates the covenant of life between God and
his people. This reconfirmation of God's everlasting fidelity is expressed in three symbols. Moving
progressively backwards into the history of the covenant, we first see an angel draped in a white
cloth, then Noah's rainbow, and finally the disk inscribed with the name of Yahweh. While disk
and rainbow recall earlier scenes of reconciliation ("As I swore that the waters of Noah nevermore
would flood the earth"), the monumental angel unfurling his drapery speaks for and into the
present situation: "I hid my face from you, but with kindness everlasting I will take you back in
love..." For Chagall, God after the holocaust is still God. He is not silenced. His promise stands:
"My loyalty shall never move from you."
Related scripture reading: Isaiah 54: 6-10
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