(Wikimedia Commons; clcik to enlarge)
The first verse of today’s reading, 2 Nephi 14 (= Isaiah 4) seems as if it should really have been numbered with the previous chapter.
But the rest of 2 Nephi 14/Isaiah 4 is a refreshing contrast to the preceding chapter, for, whereas the verses immediately before it had condemned the daughters of Jerusalem, this chapter describes their eventual redemption (after a purging and a purification).
One wonders whether Isaiah is talking literally about female residents of the city, or whether he’s personifying Jerusalem as a mother and then representing all of the city’s inhabitants as her metaphorical “daughters.” In Mesopotamian city laments — which I discussed in print some years ago in relation to Moses 7 — the city being discussed was personified/represented as a goddess who, when her city fell under condemnation or was destroyed, would lament loudly and poetically.
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