Ellen Davis on Jerusalem as God's tattoo

Zion says, “YHWH has abandoned me, and my Lord has
forgotten me.”
Does a woman forget her suckling from her own womb, the child of her body?
Even these might forget, but I, I will not forget you.
Look, I have engraved you on my palms; your walls are before me always (Isa 49:14–16).

God, too, bears the burden of Jerusalem, or rather God wears Zion like a tattoo — a scar deliberately, painfully, and indelibly inscribed; however the bearer might come to regret the image, it is there forever. Jerusalem is ineluctably part of God’s person, even God’s body, imaginatively speaking.

Ellen F. Davis, "Singing for the Peace of Jerusalem: Songs of Zion in the Twenty-First Century." In The Bible and Spirituality, edited by Andrew Lincoln, Gordon McConville, and Lloyd Pietersen. Eugene, OR: Cascade, forthcoming 2013. Quote from pp. 82–83