Isaiah 61:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

To appoint; supply it, viz. comfort or joy; or else it may refer to those accusative cases following, beauty, oil, garments. In Zion; put by a metonymy for the Jews; q.d. among the Jews; and they for the church of God, or, according to the Hebrew, for Zion. Beauty for ashes: by ashes understand whatever is most proper for days of mourning, as sackcloth sprinkled with ashes; and these ashes, which were sprinkled on their heads, mixing themselves with their tears, would render them of a woeful aspect, which was wont to be the habit of mourners; as by beauty whatever may be beautiful or become times of rejoicing. The oil of joy for mourning: the sense is the same with the former; he calls it oil of joy, in allusion to those anointings they were wont to use in times of joy, Psa 104 15: and also the same with what follows, viz. gladness for heaviness; gladness brings forth praise to God: and it is called a garment in allusion to their festival ornaments, for they had garments appropriated to their conditions, some suitable to times of rejoicing, and some to times of mourning; or else an allusion to comely garments; and the spirit of heaviness, because heaviness doth oppress and debase the spirits. It is all but an elegant description of the same thing by a threefold antithesis. That they might be called; that is, that they may be so, as it is usually expressed, Isaiah 58:12, Isaiah 60:18; they shall be acknowledged so, Isaiah 61:9. Trees of righteousness: he ascribes righteousness to trees, understanding thereby persons by a metaphor, by which he means that they shall be firm, solid, and well-rooted, being by faith ingrafted into Christ, and bringing forth fruit suitable to the soil wherein they are planted, that had been as dry trees; see on Isaiah 56:3; viz. the church, the vineyard of God, and the hand by which they are planted, as in the next words. The planting of the Lord; planted by the holy Lord, who being himself holy and righteous, would plant none but such; which notes also their soundness and stability, an allusion to that passage in Moses's song, Exodus 15:17. That he might be glorified, either in that glory which he should confer upon them, or that glory he may expect and receive from them, that so it may be evident whose handiwork it was. See Isa 60 21.