35:1
With our chapter divisions we read this as a separate section from chapter 34, but maybe things follow on. After God has judged a land, it will have become a spiritual desert through the unrighteous rule, then it may well become an actual desert as a result of God’s judgement. The judgement is hard, but then the land rejoices, for fruitfulness follows, but the judgement of God upon sin is a necessary prerequisite.
35:2
The land will burst into bloom. There will be great rejoicing, and the land, which was now in a pretty bad state, and was about to become in a much worse state, would be endowed with glory and splendour. They would see the glory of the Lord and the splendour of their God. Thus far there is no real indication of how all this could happen (though Isaiah 6 contains some strong hints). What there has been is an honest description of the current spiritual state of the nation (dire!) and of a massive deterioration in the state of the land, along with promises of what the future state would be, and not just for Israel, but involving other nations as well. It is from chapter 40 onwards that we get so much more insight into how this transformation could possibly take place.
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