Beulah Land

by Paul Springer

What is Beulah land and should we sing about it?   The word is used in Isaiah 62:4-5 (NKJV),

“You shall no longer be termed Forsaken, nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate; nut you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

The verse is in reference to the return of the Hebrew from their exile in Babylon in which the Hebrew shall no longer be called Forsaken, but Hephzibah (my delight is in her), and Jerusalem shall no longer be called Desolate, but Beulah (married). This implies that the Hebrews have turned back to the worship of God.

Most of those returning to Jerusalem (~739 BC) had never been there, but for seventy years had been in Babylon captivity.  Only a few, who were very young when they left and were now very old, would have remembered ever being there.  So, for most, they were “returning” or going to a place that they had never been, but that had been promised to them.

Christians today are also those who were once in rebellion to God and upon being reconciled through Jesus Christ and obedient to him in faith, repentance, and baptism are now, as the church, ‘married’ to Christ as his bride (Ephesians 5:25-32). But, as in the parable of the Bridegroom in Matthew 25, Christ has not returned for his bride yet, and we are to always be prepared for his coming or we will be left out of the celebration and feast.  We are to anticipate and long for his coming to take us to a “country where we have never been before” and for the church to live as the Bride of Christ throughout eternity, in heaven.

We sing songs about this and even some that use the word Beulah, such as “Beulah Land” (Stites/Sweney), “Dwelling in Beulah Land” (Miles), or “Sweet Beulah Land” (Parsons, 1979).

Are you longing to go to Beulah land?