Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not (Isaiah 54)

Isaiah chapter 54 doesn't have a lot of notes, but it's still quite interesting. A large portion of this chapter is addressed to barren women. The SAB has a page about What the Bible says about barren women which is not quite complete, as it doesn't include the passages about specific barren women (oh, it's on a separate page where it notes it's always women and never men, but Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah's husbands all had children with other women), all of whom I happen to have covered already. It's not a big deal, though, because all of those women were temporarily barren, as God eventually gives each of them a son (never a daughter). I might as well talk about the cultural significance of barrenness, because it's important to understand. In ancient Israel, women were primarily valued as a vessel for giving men sons so they can have an inheritance to pass on. That's unfortunately rather misogynistic, but it's also worth noting that none of the husbands of barren women divorce them; I don't know if it simply wasn't grounds for divorce (although my understanding is that divorce was pretty easy for men in that culture) or if those men just loved their wives for who they were and not just the children they could bring. Anyway, many of these verses tell barren women that they are better off than women who bare children, which is certainly a cultural reversal. Some, like the one here in Isaiah, say that even though they are barren, they will somehow be mothers. It's not clear to me what the significance of this claim is; perhaps somehow they will raise the offspring of other women. In the Luke passage, Jesus is simply prophesying that a time is coming when women with children will have a difficult time.

I already answered What is God's name? in Isaiah 42.