| Summary: | This article compares the personification of Zion in Isaiah 51:1–52:6 as a mother and
daughter with Tracy Chapman’s 1995 song “The Rape of the World”, where the earth
is personified as a mother. These works share the power of metaphor in prophecy,
poetry, and song to provoke political and social activism in multiple areas of injustice,
using rape imagery in different ways. Both pieces portray the negative effects of human
activity on the earth, whether by commercial activity or war. The environmental
impact of the desolation of the earth during the Babylonian exile depicted in Deutero-Isaiah
is viewed through the lens of ecological criticism. The earth itself has a voice in
both Chapman’s and Isaiah’s words.
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