Episode 34: Isaiah and the Messiah Part 1: Isaiah 40

Transcript below–and as usual, this is not edited so unless I said something dreadfully profane–just ignore any mistakes.

Isaiah and the Messiah—Part 1—Chapter 40

This week was supposed to be my kick off of the Gospel of Mark, for which I have spent months preparing, but then it occurred to me that Mark draws so heavily on Isaiah that I would have to spend way too much time going back and forth laying vital foundations and so instead I have decided to do a series called Isaiah and the Messiah focusing on Isaiah 40-56 and perhaps going to 66 but I really haven’t decided yet.

This is the section of Isaiah that is referred to by some scholars as Deutero-Isaiah because it makes such a stunning break from Isaiah 1-39 that its inclusion in the Bible was even contested by some people. However, when the texts were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls those arguments about legitimacy died away—as they should—leaving the only real question being—did the same author write Isaiah 1-39 and 40-55 because the events are separated by 150 years IF you choose to believe that the whole book is not actually writing about events before they happen and that words from God are not given before they are needed. Some look at the specific inclusion of prophecies about Cyrus in this section and believe it must have been written after the fact, but for me, it’s either we believe that God can make accurate pronouncements through His prophets before the fact or not. I am going to teach it as though it is all written by the prophet Isaiah. And I will share my reasons for doing this as we go along.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years-worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on youtube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com.

Throughout this series, I am going to be pulling from some specific books more than others: Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark by Rikki E. Watts, The Anchor Bible Second Isaiah by John L. Mckenzie, Isaiah 40-66 by Walter Bruggeman, Isaiah Old and New: Exegesis, Intertextuality, and Hermeneutics by Ben Witherington III,  Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC) by J. Alec Motyer, The New American Commentary: Isaiah 40-66 by Gary V Smith and (my personal favorite) the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT) The Book of Isaiah Chapters 40-66 by John N. Oswalt. I will have the transcript for this posted on my blog after this goes up on my podcast channel so you can get the book list there. I will, of course, use a lot of other books, but those will be the ones that I will probably use every week.

Okay, so Isaiah 1-39 is a combination of doom and gloom and condemnation for Judah and the Nations peppered with live action accounts from II Kings. There are a few rays of light, but they are only to be found in the midst of scathing condemnations for Judah’s idolatry and oppression, their failure to trust God, who I am going to break with my usual tradition and call Yahweh throughout this series just because it will be less confusing with all the various voices we are going to encounter. I only do this for clarity sake because I don’t like to use His name casually, my personal choice. So, they are being rebuked for not trusting in God, for looking to their wealth, and other nations and other gods to save them. They are repeatedly chastised for falling back on their own wisdom while rejecting the wisdom and plans and promises of Yahweh—themes we see repeated by Yeshua/Jesus in the Gospels when speaking to the leadership of first-century Israel.

That’s chapters 1-39, Yahweh is angry and the time has come for judgment against His people and His own House, the Temple, and the city where He placed His Name, Jerusalem—judgment will not be delayed. And then all of a sudden, bam, Isaiah is addressing a time one hundred and fifty years later and addressing people in exile—as opposed to people who are being threatened with and promised exile. The Prophet goes from doom and gloom and hellfire and damnation to speaking comfort and promising deliverance and salvation and an end to exile. So is this the work of two different prophets? It certainly doesn’t have to be—God isn’t one or the other—wrathful or merciful. Indeed, His wrath is all about mercy. He had no choice but to stop cutting Judah so much slack—they had almost reached the point of no return where there would be no salvaging of a remnant. They were worse than the nations—not only were they worshipping the gods of their neighbors, in the Temple even, but they were oppressing one another—keeping Hebrew slaves permanently! They all but utterly had rejected Yahweh, and He had to act before there was no spark of Abraham left to save. But He is never angry forever, His kindness usually overrides His sense of justice as we see throughout Scripture. And now He is speaking kindness to a people dispossessed and living among a completely pagan people, under their control. This is a people who have lost hope and who wonder if they are now beyond salvation and if God even can save them at this point. In ancient Near Eastern pagan thought, when a country is destroyed, it is a case of the gods of the conquerors overcoming the gods of the conquered. Was Yahweh destroyed or subjugated by the mighty gods they saw all around them in Babylon? Isaiah 40 was written in order to answer those questions that we might see as silly now, having grown up in a monotheistic world, but which were very serious and real questions to them in light of everything that had happened.

I need to point out that Isaiah contains some of the most beautiful poetry ever written, extolling the power and virtues and faithfulness and supremacy of God. And I know there are people out there who have a fit with calling it poetry, as though if it is Scripture it can’t be called poetry, but that’s like saying that we can’t call the back and forth between Yeshua and the disciples dialogue. Poetry is a form of communication that we find in Scripture, just as we find genealogies, dialogue, apocalypses, etc—it’s just a way of describing certain literary forms. Literary forms aren’t pagan, they are just descriptors.

I will be reading from the ESV, the English Standard Version, because I think it is more accurate on some of the translation here than some others and especially in where they make breaks for the various voices:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

Isaiah 40 is set up in such a way that we have four voices speaking. The first voice belongs to Yahweh, which the ESV substitutes with LORD in all caps, TLV substitutes with Adonai, which is a Hebrew word meaning “my Lord”—Adon being a generic word that we would translate into “lord” or “master” just as God is the English word for the generic word Elohim or sometimes El.

Yahweh opens up chapter 40 with a divine directive to—we can only guess—commanding that His covenant people be (1) comforted, (2) spoken tenderly to, literally it says to speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and (3) that it be proclaimed to them that there is an end to their punishment—that warfare is over, that iniquity has been removed (aka forgiveness of sins), and that they have paid for the crimes of their parents double. This is covenant language here, “my people” and even the phrase “her sins” because sin does not exist without a context and that context is their violation of Yahweh’s covenant terms with them. In the same way, iniquity is a word that does not exist in a vacuum but within a relationship. Yahweh wasn’t being spiteful or casual in judgment—He waited hundreds of years, many hundreds of years, before acting to nip Israel’s abominations in the bud. We should keep that in mind when we are impatient with others.

Now, you might say “Wait a minute, He is saying to speak to Jerusalem and not to the people.” Well, that is true, but it is a feature of Scripture oftentimes that a word becomes a symbol for something larger. Jacob (aka Israel) came to meant not only the patriarch but also all his offspring. Judah came to mean not only the patriarch but also the tribe that bore his name. So when He says to speak to the heart of Jerusalem is He commanding whoever to speak encouragement to a pile of rubble or to the people who are identified with Jerusalem, namely Judah? Obviously here He is wanting consolation and encouragement to come forth from His mouth through His messengers to His covenant people and in such a way that they are specifically told that, indeed, they are still His covenant people. As to who He is speaking to, scholars differ as to whether it is the divine (or heavenly) council of angels who sit in his presence or to His prophets or whoever, but it never specifically says. I am of the opinion that this is His divine council and if you want to read about that check out The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser. Back to the text–

A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
⁵ And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

And of course, anyone familiar with the Gospels caught how familiar verse 3 is—as it is always used to refer later to the preaching and mission of John the Baptist. Here we have our first anonymous voice, one I feel is not a prophet, and certainly not Isaiah, but a voice that Isaiah is hearing in the throne room after Yahweh has spoken His divine command to comfort and promise redemption. This voice acts upon Yahweh’s directive and makes the proclamation that God is taking action and will do whatever is necessary to save His people and that everyone will see it. What we have here is the first mention in this section of what is popularly called the New Exodus in Isaiah. Time and time again we see echoes of the Exodus account in Isaiah, where a people enslaved in a foreign land are freed and led out by Yahweh Himself through the intermediacy of a human agent. In Exodus of course this was Moses, as we will see in future chapters, God will choose King Cyrus of Persia for this role, and as Mark makes abundantly clear in his Gospel, the final worldwide Exodus out of slavery to sin and death will later be led by Yeshua at the Cross.

But here what we have is a proclamation of a royal procession. It applies to kings. In the ancient world, ways were prepared for conquering kings—the people would clear a path so that he could arrive victoriously. He would enter a city, make claims of authority, be recognized by the city leaders, he would visit a Temple and perform acts of piety, and all would be well in the world. But it all began with preparing his way, which is what the angelic messenger is commanding be done on behalf of Yahweh. When I teach the Gospel of Mark, this will become crystal clear in the ministry of Yeshua and His final week in Jerusalem. All through Isaiah 40-56, we are going to see past, present and future echoed. Exodus from Egypt, Exodus from Babylon, Exodus from sin and death at the Cross. It is all the same picture, same God at work, doing (at heart) the same thing—first through a prophet, and then through a king, and then through His One Unique Son. Each time He does it, the people are unhappy about, and oppose, the messenger and want Yahweh to do things another way.

Next section, we have at least two voices:

A voice says, “Cry!” (second voice)
And I said, “What shall I cry?”(prophet through end of seven)
All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades, (second voice again?) but the word of our God will stand forever.

At this point it would seem like one of the messengers, not pointed out as the first voice, speaks directly to Isaiah, and gives him the commissioning to speak to the people, very similar to his commission in Isaiah 6 when he complained about being a man of unclean lips among an unclean people. This time his complaint is that the people he is supposed to speak to are weak, transient, faithless, easily blown to and fro and, quickly burned up like the grass in the sweltering hamsin winds that could destroy grass in the month of May in as little as 48 hours, and people who are, based on the response in verse seven, severely in doubt of Yahweh’s ability/willingness/whatever to save them. The response to this is a statement about the authority, supremacy and eternal nature of Yahweh’s promises and word. In other words, He has spoken the proclamation, and that’s that. These people, regardless of how defeated they are, need to get a grip and trust Yahweh who has afflicted them but is now coming to save them. If they see His power to afflict, they must know that He also has the power to save.

⁹ Go on up to a high mountain, (second voice continued)
O Zion, herald of good news; (this could also read Oh herald of good news to Zion)
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news; (this could also read Oh herald of good news to Jerusalem)
lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

Again, a directive to the balking prophet—get up on a high mountain and lift your voice with strength and do not fear and say to devastated, empty Jerusalem and to a now Temple-less Mt Zion, and the abandoned cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” The voice is telling the prophet to pronounce that deliverance from exile is inevitable. They will leave Babylon, and God will make it happen. They will leave Babylon, unless they personally decide to stay—after all, Babylon is comfortable and has become their home and Jerusalem is a mess and dangerous now and promises a difficult life. But we will get to that later. Now, the second voice or the prophet begins extolling Yahweh and how He can be trusted and how everything else on earth is nothing compared to Him and His plans. But to Israel the place, God is saying that it will be desolate and empty no longer.

¹⁰ Behold, the Lord God comes with might, (prophet or continued second voice)
and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.

Here we have the first mention of the Yahweh-warrior and this is vital to understanding the Gospel of Mark. He is called LORD GOD in English and Adonai Yahweh in Hebrew. He comes with might or chazaq, which is military strength, and his arm, symbolic of a man’s strength—an extension of his might, rules for him. The arm of Yahweh will make a more striking and clarifying appearance in Isaiah chapters 50-53 in the person of the Servant through whom Yahweh acts on Israel’s behalf. “Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense is before him.” This is the language of looting and plundering, of spoils in the aftermath of battle. The reward and recompense that Yahweh takes from Babylon is people, His covenant people. The language tells us that He will do it Himself, that His people will have no part to play except in faithfully trusting in His ability which leads to waiting upon Him.

¹¹ He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

But wait, I thought Yahweh was a warrior? He is, but He is also the merciful shepherd. Shepherd is a common term in ancient Near Eastern documents in referring to kings, usually they say it about themselves as they compliment how well they care for their people (even when their performance is less than merciful—I guess everyone believes they can be crueler than they are). But here it is being proclaimed about Yahweh—in essence, “don’t worry, yes He is mighty enough to save you without help from anyone else—by his own arm—but he is also kind enough that you can trust in His goodness.” Let’s face it, most folks can only handle one or the other, or neither. He can do and epitomizes both at once, they are inseparable from His overall character—which is now going to be extolled as only Isaiah can:

¹² Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, (think about what this is saying about the enormity of Yahweh)
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? (what kind of mind is required to even be able to measure such a thing)

God is not only painted as supreme by Isaiah, but also big enough to measure the universe like a tailor measures cloth—that’s what a span means, the measure of distance for fabric between a person’s fingers and nose. That’s way more impressive to us now than it was for them then. And also able to take all the dust of the earth and put it in a measuring cup, and have the capacity to weigh mountains. We have no earthly or universal comparison to that kind of ability.

¹³ Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel?

Playing on the last verses where Yahweh is casually measuring the universe, the question is asked rhetorically, “Who can measure Him?” Obviously, no one. “Who gives Him advice?” Um. No one.

¹⁴ Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?

Who was His teacher, who relieved Him of confusion? Who taught Him what was wise when He was unwise, or schooled Him in the ways of justice when He wasn’t too clear on the concept? Who taught Him understanding when He just didn’t have a clue? Isaiah is pointing out how ridiculous it is to not trust God when He has never suffered from our common conditions of being confused, foolish, naturally unjust, and lacking in understanding. He doesn’t suffer from being ridiculous humans like we do and we ought to take great faith in that, we should trust. We shouldn’t foist our human failings on Him as though he is subject to them. Psalm 50:21 says that it is a grave sin to assume He is anything like us. Israel was always guilty of doing that—and we aren’t so different ourselves, frankly.

Now he gets personal and compares God to us. It ain’t pretty. It really shouldn’t be!

¹⁵ Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.

The nations can mean a lot of things and so we have to look at context. In the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, it means all nations including Israel. In some places, it is the word goyim, as here, and that means foreign nations. Foreign governments, foreign people—in essence, this is alluding to the fact that there isn’t a power on earth that can compare to Yahweh or stand in the way of His plans and decrees. The coastlands is a word that means, in context, “the ends of the earth.”

¹⁶ Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.

Lebanon is famous for one thing—it’s cedar forests. Cedar from Lebanon was used to make the Temple and the Palace of the kings that stood next to it on the original Temple Mount (by original, I mean that it was much smaller, only 500 cubits square and still visible on the much expanded Temple Mount). But the prophet is reminding the people that there aren’t enough cedars in Lebanon to light enough fires to burn all the burnt offerings that Yahweh deserves, nor are there enough animals in existence to honor Him with.

¹⁷ All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

Again, goyim, pagan nations—all their efforts are nothing compared to the will of Yahweh. Nothing and emptiness—ephes and tohu. But that is not to say that Yahweh doesn’t care about the people of the nations—which is a huge theme in this section of Isaiah, Yahweh’s decree that the goyim will come to Him on an equal level with His covenant people and join the covenant. Isaiah 56 is clear on that.

And next we come to the first of Isaiah’s four idol polemics, which are terribly misused out of context in order to convince people in the Messianic and Hebrew Roots movement that they are idolaters for following Yeshua/Jesus. Ever notice they only target people who try to keep the feasts and sabbaths and try to eat clean and not mainstream Christians? If they really thought that Christians were idolaters, they would make a massive attempt to save us from ourselves, but it isn’t until we start encroaching onto what some (certainly not all) Jews consider to be their exclusive territory and them the claws come out. You aren’t allowed, in some minds, to do those things and believe that Yeshua is the Messiah—even though you are allowed to believe that Rabbi Schneerson is both Messiah and God and still be considered legitimate Jews. But, as I said, here is the first idol polemic which specifically addresses the ancient Near Eastern belief that would have told the Jews that Babylon’s gods had conquered their God Yahweh and that He was powerless to reverse the situation. Polemic, of course, is the literary term for an insulting discourse. Isaiah routinely makes fun of polytheism, practiced by the nations, and henotheism, which was practiced by Israel until the end of the exile when they became monotheistic, believing only in God and His Spirit, who was portrayed in the feminine in Scripture and until medieval times.

¹⁸ To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?
¹⁹ An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.
²⁰ He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot;
he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.

So, literally, “Who is going to stop God’s decree in your favor, His promise of an end to your exile in Babylon? Something some dude made in his workshop? Really? You’re going there? A metal idol for a rich man and a wooden idol for a poor man? That’s really going to pose a threat to the God whom I have been describing?”

In short, nothing created by man can compare to the Creator or get in His way. Of course, Isaiah knew that isn’t how idolatry works—no pagan thought the idol was a god. They simply believed that they could make a receptacle for the spirit of their god and that they could perform an incantation which would allow them to physically serve their god by serving that idol. No one thought the idol was the actual god itself. Isaiah is just making a point of how ridiculous the entire situation was.

²¹ Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
²² It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

This is clear. The Israelites were given the oracles of God that straight up told them that God alone created the earth—and that the whole idea of regional gods, for example Babylon’s gods, was not compatible with what had been revealed to them in the Torah.

²³ who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

²⁴ Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

All these Babylonian rulers whom they were terrified of, ephes and tohu, emptiness and nothing. They are compared to grape seeds, just newly sprouted and so susceptible to the elements and easily destroyed and then gone as though they never existed. That’s all these world empires, including those today.

²⁵ To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.

Again,  in context, can we compare Yahweh to any of these world leaders and their “mighty” empires that are here today and gone tomorrow?

²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see:  who created these? He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power,
not one is missing.

Babylon was probably the greatest power on earth at that time in regards to astronomical observations (which is science) and astrology (which is pagan and a form of divination) and actual astral worship (worshiping the sun, moon and stars). So Isaiah is challenging them that yeah, heck yeah, the stars, sun and moon are amazing, but they are merely created things.

²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?

And now we come to the accusation against Jacob/Israel. “Why do you say that Yahweh can’t see you, that your ways are somehow hidden from Him, and that He is not interested in your welfare or willing to act on behalf of your welfare?” Again, there is this pagan idea, birthed from their hundreds of years of being steeped in henotheistic worship—meaning that they regarded Yahweh as their chief God but were also seeing other gods on the side and crediting them with various responsibilities—for example, Dagon being a grain god, and Tammuz being responsible for the harvest, and Ba’al Hadad being responsible for the rains, etc. Anyway, this idea that other gods could defeat Him and shut Him down so that he is powerless to act anymore—either that or that He just doesn’t care. That is the charge the exiles were laying against Him.

²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹ He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
³⁰ Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
³¹ but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

Right here, Isaiah states unequivocally that not only is Yahweh undefeated, but He is undefeatable. He doesn’t grow weary like His creation, his understanding is not limited, like the understanding of His creation. He, in fact, has so much power and strength that He has enough to give to His weary people who wait for Him. Waiting for Him, of course, meaning not relying on their own wisdom or devices anymore, but trusting in His ability to deliver on His promises and believing that He will do so in His time and accepting the wisdom of His plans instead of leaning on their own understanding. The people who do that, they will be sustained until God’s deliverance is revealed.