The Free Man's New Name

In September 1838, a twenty-year-old man stepped off a train in New York City wearing a borrowed sailor's uniform and carrying forged papers. Frederick Bailey had escaped slavery in Baltimore. For twenty years, he had been called property. Called chattel. Called boy. His name belonged to the man who owned him.

When Frederick reached the safety of New Bedford, Massachusetts, his host Nathan Johnson was reading Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake. Johnson suggested the young fugitive take the name of the poem's hero. Frederick agreed. Bailey the slave became Douglass the free man — and with that new name came a new identity that would shake a nation.

God makes a similar promise in Isaiah 62. He looks at His people — broken, exiled, wearing the names that shame and captivity had given them — and He refuses to stay silent. "You will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow." No longer Deserted. No longer Desolate. Now Hephzibah — "My Delight Is in Her." Now Beulah — "Married."

Frederick Douglass discovered that freedom meant more than escaping chains. It meant receiving a name that told the truth about who he really was. In the same way, God does not merely rescue His people from exile. He renames them. He claims them. And as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, the Almighty rejoices over every soul He calls His own.