Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 54:11

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will set thy stones in fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires." — Isaiah 54:11 (ASV)

I will lay your stones with fair colours. —This is the first germ of the idealizing symbolism of the new Jerusalem. The language of Tobit 13:16-17 shows the impression which it made on the Jews of the captivity. It takes its highest form, excluding all thoughts of a literal fulfilment, in Revelation 21:19-21.

The Hebrew word for “fair colours” indicates the kohl, the black powder of antimony or manganese, used by women in the East on eyelids and eyebrows so as to enhance the brilliancy of the eyes (2 Kings 9:30; 1 Chronicles 29:2; Jeremiah 4:30). Here, apparently, it is used in the same way as the setting of the sapphires and other gems. For “windows” read pinnacles.

Sapphires ... —As with the choice of the twelve gems for the High Priest’s breastplate, it is probable that each stone, over and above its visible beauty, had a symbolical significance. Sapphire, e.g., represented the azure of the firmament, as the “sapphire throne” of the Eternal (Exodus 24:10; Ezekiel 1:26; Ezekiel 10:1), and the rubies (not “agates”) and carbuncles may, in like manner, have answered to the fiery glow of the Divine love and the Divine wrath.