Isaiah 30:18 is arranged as a neat chiasm:

A. Therefore waits Yahweh to be gracious

B. and therefore He will be exalted with compassion

B’. for a God of judgment is Yahweh

A’. Blessed all who wait for Him.

The repetition of “wait” ( chakah ) forms an obvious inclusio around the verse. In fact, the word order at the beginning and end nearly forms a mirror image: therefore/wait/Yahweh . . . Yahweh/blessed all wait/on Him. The correspondence of waiting and waiting is striking. Yahweh waits eagerly to be gracious, and He blesses those who respond to HIs eager anticipation with an eager waiting for Him.

Equally important work is done inside the chiasm. Yahweh will be lifted up with compassion, and this is explained ( ki ) by reference to God’s character as a God of judgment ( mispat ). Why is Yahweh compassionate? Why will His compassion be exalted? Because He is a God of judgment. This link between Yahweh’s justice and His mercy becomes a crucial theme in later sections of Isaiah, where Yahweh’s righteousness is displayed in His act of saving Israel from captivity.

NT Wright’s notion of “putting to rights” helps explain this, I think. God is compassionate and merciful to His people because He is committed to putting things right, committed to getting His world back in order, committed to tidying up. So long as His people are estranged from Him, so long as they are rebellious sons, the world is not as it should be. And so He acts to restore His people out of His passion to put the world back to rights. He is compassionate because He is a God of judgment.

This line of thought undermines any covenant theology that makes God’s justice somehow more foundational than His mercy, and undermines any account of the Adamic covenant that would construe it as a covenant of strict justice.