Catholic Commentary
The Return of the Ransomed to Zion
10Then Yahweh’s ransomed ones will return, and come with singing to Zion; and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
Isaiah 35:10 describes the eschatological return of God's ransomed people to Zion in joyful procession, celebrating their liberation through the payment of a costly ransom price. The passage promises that eternal joy will replace sorrow and sighing in the redeemed community's arrival at the divine dwelling place.
The ransomed of God do not hope for liberation—they are already freed at infinite cost, crowned now with the joy that sorrow cannot touch.
"Sorrow and sighing will flee away": The Hebrew yagon va-anahah — grief and groaning — are personified as fleeing in terror before the advancing procession of the redeemed. The reversal is total and cosmic. This is the language of new creation, where the conditions of fallen existence are abolished by an act of divine power. This same phrase reappears verbatim in Isaiah 51:11, confirming it as a conscious refrain marking the ultimate eschatological horizon of all Isaianic hope.
The typological senses: Catholic exegesis, following the fourfold sense of Scripture (CCC 115–119), reads this verse on multiple levels simultaneously. Literally, it addresses the return from Babylonian exile. Allegorically, it prefigures the redemption of humanity by Christ, the price of whose blood is the padah paid for all the ransomed. Morally, it calls the soul to turn from exile in sin toward the Zion of God's presence. Anagogically, it describes the final procession of the saints into the eternal Jerusalem, where God himself "will wipe every tear from their eyes" (Rev 21:4).
Catholic tradition has consistently read Isaiah 35:10 as a prophetic icon of the Paschal Mystery and its ultimate consummation. The key word peduyei — "ransomed" — provides one of the Old Testament's clearest anticipations of the theology of redemption as satisfaction: that liberation from captivity requires a price. St. Peter explicitly draws on this tradition: "You were ransomed (elutrōthēte) from your futile ways inherited from your ancestors… with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish" (1 Pet 1:18–19). The Catechism teaches that Christ's redemption is the "new and definitive Exodus" (CCC 1221), and the imagery of Isaiah 35 stands behind this formulation — the same desert made fruitful, the same ransomed people in processional return.
St. Jerome, commenting on this passage in his Commentariorum in Isaiam, saw in the "everlasting joy" a direct reference to the beatific vision — the unending gladness of the saints who behold God face to face. St. Bernard of Clairvaux drew upon this text in his sermons on the Song of Songs to describe the soul's movement from the exile of sin toward the bridal chamber of divine union. The "sorrow and sighing" that flee away he interpreted as the threefold concupiscence — the disordered desires of fallen nature — which are definitively vanquished by grace in glory.
The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§ 2) speaks of the Church as the People of God "gathered from the whole world" and journeying toward the heavenly Jerusalem — an image drawn directly from this Isaianic processional tradition. The Church on earth is the peduyei YHWH already in motion, not yet arrived, but crowned with the foretaste of joy that the Holy Spirit imparts as an earnest of glory (Eph 1:14). Pope Benedict XVI in Spe Salvi (§ 3) invokes the Isaianic vision of homecoming to illustrate that Christian hope is not merely subjective optimism but is grounded in the objective event of redemption — the ransom has been paid.
Isaiah 35:10 speaks with urgent clarity to Catholics navigating a culture saturated in anxiety, grief, and purposelessness. The verse insists that those who belong to the Lord are already the ransomed — not aspirants hoping to be freed, but people whose liberation has been secured at a definitive cost. This is not a warrant for complacency but a foundation for courageous joy. The pilgrim processional image challenges today's Catholic to ask: Am I actually moving toward Zion, or am I camped in the wilderness? Concretely, this means examining whether one's prayer life, sacramental practice, and moral choices are oriented toward God as their true destination — or whether exile has become comfortable. The "everlasting joy" set as a crown upon the heads of the ransomed is not deferred entirely until death; it is accessible now in the liturgy, which is the earthly participation in the heavenly procession. The Catholic who enters the Mass with this verse in mind discovers that the liturgical assembly is that processional return — the ransomed gathering around the altar of Zion. The grief and sighing that mark daily life are real, but they are on notice: they will flee.
Commentary
Isaiah 35:10 — "Then Yahweh's ransomed ones will return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."
Isaiah 35 stands as a luminous counterpart to the desert devastation described in chapter 34. Where chapter 34 portrays divine judgment upon the nations (particularly Edom), chapter 35 unfolds a vision of miraculous transformation: the wilderness blooms, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap, and the mute sing (vv. 5–6). Verse 10 is the doxological climax — the destination toward which the entire chapter has been moving.
"The ransomed ones of the LORD" (פְּדוּיֵי יְהוָה, peduyei YHWH): The Hebrew root padah carries the precise legal and commercial connotation of a ransom price paid to liberate a slave or captive. This is not merely a release but a costly liberation. The term would have resonated immediately with Israel's foundational memory of the Exodus (cf. Deut 7:8, "the LORD redeemed you from the house of slavery"), and in the 8th-century context of Isaiah's ministry, it also anticipates the future deliverance from Assyrian and Babylonian captivity. The word is deliberately chosen over the more common go'el (kinsman-redeemer) to emphasize that a price has been paid — a detail of immense Christological weight in Catholic interpretation.
"Will return" (yashuvun): The verb carries a double valence. At the historical level, it describes the physical return of exiles to the land. But shuv in prophetic literature also carries the sense of spiritual turning back, of conversion and repentance. The return to Zion is therefore simultaneously geographic, moral, and mystical. The destination is not merely Jerusalem-the-city but Jerusalem as the locus of the divine presence.
"And come to Zion with singing": The processional imagery is striking. This is not a weary trudge of refugees but a liturgical procession, echoing the festal pilgrimage psalms (Pss 84, 122). Zion throughout Isaiah is the mountain of the LORD's house (cf. Isa 2:2–3), the seat of divine sovereignty and the gathering point of all nations. The singing (rinnah) is the cry of exultant praise — the same word used in the Psalms for the shouts of joy in temple worship.
"Everlasting joy upon their heads" (simchat olam): The image is of garlands or crowns of rejoicing worn in festal processions, but the adjective — everlasting, eternal — transforms a temporal image into an eschatological one. This joy does not belong to any single historical moment of liberation; it belongs to the age to come.