Albert Barnes Commentary Isaiah 54:6

"For Jehovah hath called thee as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even a wife of youth, when she is cast off, saith thy God." — Isaiah 54:6 (ASV)

For the Lord has called you - This is designed to confirm and illustrate the sentiment in the previous verse. God there says that he would be a husband to his people. Here he says that he had, for a time, apparently forsaken them, much like a husband who had forsaken his wife. Although they were cast down and dejected like a woman who had thus been forsaken, he would now restore them to favor.

Has called you - That is, will have called you to himself - referring to the future times when prosperity would be restored to them.

As a woman forsaken - Forsaken by her husband on account of her offence.

And grieved in spirit - Because she was thus forsaken.

And a wife of youth - The Septuagint renders this very strangely: ‘The Lord hath not called thee as a wife forsaken and disconsolate; nor as a wife that hath been hated from her youth;’ showing conclusively that the translator here did not understand the meaning of the passage, and vainly endeavored to supply a signification by the insertion of these negatives, and by endeavoring to make a meaning. The idea is that of a wife wedded in youth; a wife toward whom there was early and tender love, though she was afterward rejected. God had loved the Hebrew people as his people in the early days of their history.

Yet for their idolatry he had seen occasion afterward to cast them off, and to doom them to a long and painful exile. But he would yet love them with all the former ardor of affection, and would greatly increase and prosper them.

When you were refused - Or, that has been rejected. Lowth, ‘But afterward rejected.’ It may be rendered, ‘Although (כי kı̂y has often the sense of although) you were rejected,’ or ‘although she was rejected.’ The idea is that she had been married in youth, but had been afterward put away.