Remembering Rahab's Dismemberment
Introduction: The Faith of an Amnesiac
We live in an age of curated forgetfulness. Our culture is desperate to sever its roots, to pretend that it sprang into existence yesterday afternoon with no history, no obligations, and no God. But a people who forget their past have no future. And what is true for a culture is doubly true for the Church. When the people of God forget what God has done, their faith grows thin, their prayers become timid, and their worship becomes anemic. They become spiritual amnesiacs, staring at their present troubles with no memory of past deliverances.
This is the situation Isaiah addresses. The people of God are in exile, or facing the threat of it. The pagan empires, with their monstrous gods and clanking armies, seem to be running the world. And in the face of this, the faithful feel small. They are tempted to believe the lie that God's arm has grown short, that He has somehow retired from the business of salvation and left the world to the bullies. Their prayer is not a cry of unbelief, but rather a cry of faith, albeit a faith that needs to be stirred up. It is a covenantal reminder, a holy prompting. They are not informing God of something He has forgotten; they are reminding themselves of what they are tempted to forget.
This prayer is a model for us. When we look at the spiritual state of our own nation, when we see the Goliaths of secularism mocking the armies of the living God, we are tempted to despair. But our faith is not built on the morning headlines; it is built on the bedrock of redemptive history. The cure for a weak faith is not to squint harder at the future, but to look back with clarity at what God has already and definitively done. This passage is a divine command to remember, and in remembering, to find strength.
The Text
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh;
Awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago.
Was it not You who chopped Rahab in pieces,
Who pierced the dragon?
Was it not You who dried up the sea,
The waters of the great deep,
Who made the depths of the sea a pathway
For the redeemed to cross over?
So the ransomed of Yahweh will return
And come with joyful shouting to Zion,
And everlasting gladness will be on their heads.
They will obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away.
(Isaiah 51:9-11 LSB)
A Covenantal Summons (v. 9)
The prayer begins with a startling imperative directed at God Himself.
"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh; Awake as in the days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not You who chopped Rahab in pieces, Who pierced the dragon?" (Isaiah 51:9)
Now, we must be theologically precise here. God does not sleep. He does not slumber (Psalm 121:4). He does not get tired or need to be roused from a nap. This is the language of covenantal poetry, what we call anthropomorphism. The plea "Awake" is for God to act publicly, to manifest the power that He has always possessed. It is a prayer for God to intervene in history in such a way that everyone can see it, just as they did before. It is less about waking God up and more about waking ourselves up to the reality of His power by appealing to His reputation.
The basis of this appeal is historical precedent. "Awake as in the days of old." Our faith is a historical faith. It is not a collection of abstract principles or nice ideas. It is grounded in the mighty acts of God in space and time. So, what specific act do they call to mind? The foundational act of redemption in the Old Testament: the Exodus.
But look at the language used. "Was it not You who chopped Rahab in pieces, Who pierced the dragon?" This is not a reference to the harlot of Jericho. Rahab, in this poetic context, is a code name for Egypt. The prophets often used this name to denote Egypt's pride, arrogance, and ultimate impotence before Yahweh (Psalm 87:4, Isaiah 30:7). The name itself means something like "pride" or "arrogance." God did not just defeat Egypt; He dismembered their national pride. He chopped it up.
And He "pierced the dragon." The Pharaoh was often depicted as a great crocodile or sea serpent, a master of the Nile. This imagery taps into ancient near eastern myths where creation begins with a warrior god defeating a chaos monster, often a sea dragon. The Babylonians had Marduk and Tiamat; the Canaanites had Baal and Yam. The Bible takes this pagan imagery, turns it on its head, and mocks it. Yahweh is the true God. The great "dragon" of Egypt, the chaos monster that held Israel in bondage, was nothing to Him. He did not engage in a bloody, cosmic struggle. He simply pierced him. It was a definitive, fatal blow. The Exodus was not just a political liberation; it was a theological smackdown. It was Yahweh demonstrating His absolute sovereignty over the most powerful nation on earth and its pathetic pantheon of creaturely gods.
The Pathway Through Chaos (v. 10)
The prophet continues to unpack the Exodus event, moving from the defeat of the enemy to the salvation of God's people.
"Was it not You who dried up the sea, The waters of the great deep, Who made the depths of the sea a pathway For the redeemed to cross over?" (Isaiah 51:10)
Here the polemic continues. The phrase "the great deep" is the Hebrew word tehom. This is the same word used in Genesis 1:2 to describe the formless, dark waters over which the Spirit of God hovered. The pagans saw the deep as a terrifying, chaotic, divine force to be appeased or battled. The Bible sees it as God's creature. In creation, God ordered the tehom. In the Exodus, God commanded the tehom. He did not just part the waters; He "dried up the sea." He is the master of the chaos. What is an impassable obstacle and a watery grave for the Egyptians, He turns into a highway of salvation for His people.
Notice the purpose of this great miracle: it was to make "a pathway for the redeemed to cross over." God's power is never abstract. It is always personal and redemptive. He flexes His omnipotent muscle for the sake of His people. He bought them, He redeemed them out of slavery, and He was not about to let a large body of water get in the way of bringing them home. This is the heart of the matter. The God who can turn a sea into a superhighway is not going to be stumped by the Babylonians. The God who dismembered the Egyptian dragon is not intimidated by the Mesopotamian gods of empire. What He did once, He can do again.
The Inevitable Conclusion (v. 11)
Because of who God is and what He has done, there is a guaranteed future for His people. Verse 11 is not a question or a plea, but a confident declaration.
"So the ransomed of Yahweh will return And come with joyful shouting to Zion, And everlasting gladness will be on their heads. They will obtain joy and gladness, And sorrow and sighing will flee away." (Isaiah 51:11)
The word "So" or "Therefore" connects this future hope directly to the historical reality of verses 9 and 10. Because God chopped up Rahab and made a road through the sea, it is therefore inevitable that His ransomed people will return. The past deliverance guarantees the future one. This was a promise that the exiles returning from Babylon would cling to, but its ultimate fulfillment is far greater.
This is a picture of the great, final homecoming. This is the eschatological hope of the Church. We, the ransomed of Yahweh, ransomed not by the blood of a lamb on a doorpost but by the blood of the Lamb of God, are returning to the true Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. And how do we return? Not with our heads hung low, but "with joyful shouting." Our final state is not one of grim duty, but of explosive, everlasting gladness. This is not a temporary happiness that depends on our circumstances; it is a crown of "everlasting gladness" placed on our heads by God Himself.
The final line is a promise of ultimate restoration: "sorrow and sighing will flee away." This is the great reversal. The groaning of creation, the sorrow of our sin, the sighing of our exile in this fallen world, will not just cease. It will "flee away." It will be banished, exiled from the presence of God and His people forever. This is the promise that John sees fulfilled in the New Jerusalem, where God "will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain" (Revelation 21:4).
The Arm of the Lord Revealed
So where is this "arm of Yahweh" today? Isaiah asks this very question two chapters later: "Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1). The answer is that the arm of the Lord is Jesus Christ.
In the cross of Jesus, God awoke as in the days of old. At Calvary, God did not just chop Rahab in pieces; He crushed the head of the ancient dragon, Satan himself (Genesis 3:15). He made a public spectacle of all the principalities and powers, triumphing over them in Christ (Colossians 2:15). The cross was the ultimate piercing of the dragon.
And in the resurrection, God did not just dry up the Red Sea; He dried up the sea of death itself. He made a pathway through the grave, the ultimate "great deep," for all His redeemed to cross over from death into everlasting life. The Exodus was the trailer; the cross and resurrection are the feature film.
Therefore, we, the ransomed of the Lord, can have absolute confidence. We will return. We will come to Zion with singing. The joy that awaits us is not just a possibility; it is a certainty, purchased by the blood of Christ. When we are tempted to look at the state of the world and pray, "Awake, O arm of the Lord," we must remember that in the resurrection of Jesus, He has already awoken. The decisive battle has been won. He is not sleeping. He is reigning. And because He lives, our sorrow and sighing are on borrowed time. They are fleeing away, and everlasting joy is running toward us.