49:14
“The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me”. I daresay that all of us have thought this at some point in our lives, and Israel certainly have felt like this. She had been exiled for many years. Jerusalem and the temple had been utterly destroyed. When we read the Bible remake a mistake if we read it purely as “theology” in an academic sense. Right doctrine is important, it affects our lives, but the Bible is also about heart as well as about mind, and it is not afraid of the emotions that we encounter. So here we have the lostness of Israel expressed. Next we will see how God responds.
49:15
This is one of the passages where God likens Himself to a mother. Those who use such verses to argue that God should be addressed as “she” are mistaken. “He” is God’s preferred pronoun! However, we were made in His image, male and female. However, this verse has not been given so that we can argue about the gender of God! It has been given to express the deep love that God has for Israel. “Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”. God’s dealings with us are more complex than we often think. God has a far deeper appreciation of us than we have of ourselves. He knows the depths of sin within our hearts, and the hurts that have affected our lives, and He has a plan for dealing with them.
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