There is no mistaking who the husband is. He is plainly identified as the Lord of Hosts, the Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth. Zion, the New Jerusalem, is the bride (Isaiah 61:10; Revelation 21:2).
“For Thy Maker Thy Husband, the Lord of Hosts Is His Name”
In many cultures, when a woman marries a man she takes his name and is then legally his heir and represents his name as long as she is married to him. So it is in the relationship between God and his bride, his people. Israel, the wayward and estranged wife, had not borne for years; she is invited to return and resume her proper relationship with the Lord.
“In Isaiah 54:1–3 the Lord addresses his barren bride Israel: ‘Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear.’ Marriage as a metaphor for the covenant—the Lord being the groom and Israel the bride—occurs frequently in the Old Testament (e.g., Hosea 1–3; Jer. 2–3; Ezek. 23). Israel, as the unfaithful spouse, is guilty of adultery and is a harlot. Certainly these are grounds for divorce, and the penalty for adultery is death. The Lord punished Israel with death, destruction, and scattering by the Assyrians in 721 B.C., by the Babylonians in 587 B.C., and by the Romans in a.d. 70. Many suffered the penalty of death, but the Lord in his mercy spared Israel’s posterity and scattered them throughout the earth. In Isaiah’s metaphor, there was no divorce (‘where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement’; Isa. 50:1) but a separation. The Lord explained, ‘For thy Maker is thine husband … for a small moment have I forsaken thee … in a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee’ (Isa. 54:5–8). The Lord in his love and mercy, as dramatized by Hosea when he forgave his unfaithful wife (Hosea 1–3), will take back his bride, and her barrenness will be replaced with productivity as the Lord begins to gather their posterity (Isa. 54:7).”68
“Children of the desolate” were apostate Israel, those out of the Church, and “children of the married wife” meant members of the Church. The suggestion is that more are born out of the covenant than those born in it.
The scattering and gathering of Israel is not merely a process of moving people about (or moving “trees”; Jacob 5) but of bringing people to Christ, of establishing Zion. There is such a thing as divine positioning. The Lord puts people where he needs them, to help facilitate the “at-one-ment,” the gathering in and becoming one with him.