The Book of Isaiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God addresses those who "follow after righteousness" and "seek the LORD", the faithful remnant, discouraged by how few and weak they are. His remedy is memory: "look unto the rock whence ye are hewn... look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah." Remember where you came from. When God called Abraham he was "alone", one old man with a barren wife, yet God "blessed him, and increased him" into a nation as numerous as the stars. The lesson is simple and powerful: the God who made a people out of one aged couple can certainly rebuild a ruined Zion out of a weak remnant. So the promise follows: "the LORD shall comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places." Her rubble will become a garden, "he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD", and instead of the silence of desolation there will be "joy and gladness... thanksgiving, and the voice of melody."

Gospel Focus

When your faith feels small and your circumstances ruined, God's counsel is to look back at what He has already done. Look to "the rock whence ye are hewn." For the believer, that rock is ultimately Christ, "that Rock was Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:4), and our spiritual ancestry runs through Abraham, "they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham" (Galatians 3:7). The God who brought a nation out of one dead womb (for Sarah's body was "as good as dead," Hebrews 11:12) is the God who brings life out of death still, supremely in raising Jesus. And the promise to turn "wilderness like Eden" is the gospel's own trajectory: God takes the wasteland of a sin-ruined life and makes it a garden of "joy and gladness... thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." No waste place in your life is beyond His comfort. The same power that called Abraham from nothing is at work to restore you.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God speaks tenderly, "my people... O my nation", and promises that His "law" and "judgment" will go out "for a light of the people," reaching even "the isles," the distant coastlands who "shall wait upon me." His "righteousness is near" and His "salvation is gone forth", already on its way. Then He lifts their eyes to a bracing comparison. Look at the heavens and the earth, the most solid, lasting things you know. Yet "the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment," and the people in them "shall die in like manner." Everything you can see is temporary. "But my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished." Therefore, He says, do not fear frail human opponents: "fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings." Those who mock you are themselves like a moth-eaten garment, "the moth shall eat them up... the worm shall eat them like wool." Why tremble before people who are perishing, when God's salvation lasts forever?

Gospel Focus

This is a powerful cure for the fear of man. We so often shrink before the "reproach of men" and the "revilings" of those who scorn our faith, forgetting that both they and their opinions are as fleeting as smoke. God draws the contrast at its sharpest: even the heavens and the earth will wear out and dissolve, but "my salvation shall be for ever." That eternal salvation has a name, Yeshuah, Jesus, who is Himself "the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8). Peter quotes the same truth to comfort persecuted believers, "the word of the Lord endureth for ever" (1 Peter 1:25). If your hope is nailed to the passing world, you will fear every mocker and every threat. But if your hope is anchored in the everlasting salvation of Christ, you can stand unafraid before any reviler, knowing that they wax old like a garment while your salvation runs "from generation to generation." Fix your eyes on what cannot be abolished.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Now the people (or the prophet on their behalf) cry out to God to act: "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD." It is not that God sleeps; this is the language of urgent prayer, pleading with Him to display His power now as He did "in the ancient days." They rehearse His mighty deeds: "Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?", poetic names for Egypt, "that hath dried the sea... that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?" This is the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea. Their prayer is essentially: do it again. And the answer comes back in a promise that soars: "Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion." The God of the Exodus will lead a new exodus home from exile, and the homecoming will be one of "everlasting joy," with "sorrow and mourning" fleeing away.

Gospel Focus

The "arm of the LORD" that the people plead to awake is, in the fullness of time, revealed in a Person. Isaiah asks in the very next chapter, "to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1), and then describes the suffering Servant. The saving arm of God is Jesus Christ, God's own power come to rescue us. The Red Sea deliverance was a shadow of the greater exodus He would lead, out of the bondage of sin and death, through the deep waters, and home to God. And verse 11 is nearly a direct preview of the believer's final glory: "everlasting joy shall be upon their head... and sorrow and mourning shall flee away." John hears the same promise at the end of the Bible, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying" (Revelation 21:4). The homecoming of the redeemed is certain, purchased by the ransom of Christ. One day every ransomed soul will "come with singing unto Zion," and sorrow will flee forever.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Here is the heart of the chapter, and one of the most comforting verses in Isaiah: "I, even I, am he that comforteth you." God Himself, doubling the pronoun for emphasis, is the Comforter. And on that basis He asks a searching question: "who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass?" Why do you dread mere mortals, who wither like grass, while forgetting "the LORD thy maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens"? Their fear of the "oppressor" was constant, "every day", as if his fury could destroy them at any moment. But God asks, "where is the fury of the oppressor?", it is fleeting; the tyrant himself will pass. The captive longing for release will indeed be loosed and will not die in the pit. For the God who speaks is "the LORD thy God, that divided the sea", the Exodus God, "the LORD of hosts is his name." And He has done two intimate things for His people: "I have put my words in thy mouth" and "I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand", equipping and sheltering them, so He can say to Zion, "Thou art my people."

Gospel Focus

"I, even I, am he that comforteth you." This is the God of all comfort speaking, the same God whom Paul calls "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3). Notice how God treats the fear of man as a form of forgetting Him: to dread a mortal is to have "forgotten the LORD thy maker." The cure for fear is not positive thinking but remembering who God is, the Maker of heaven, the divider of the sea, "the LORD of hosts." And how tender that He says, "I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand." That is the very shelter given to the Servant Himself (Isaiah 49:2), now extended to us; in Christ we are hidden in God's own hand, "your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). When the oppressor's fury seems ready to destroy you, remember that the oppressor "shall die" and "be made as grass," but your Maker holds you in the hollow of His hand and calls you His own people. Let the everlasting Comforter still your fear of dying men.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God now turns to Jerusalem herself, staggering like a drunk woman, "drunken, but not with wine" (verse 21), reeling under "the cup of his fury." In her judgment she had no one to help, "none to guide her among all the sons," her children fainting in the streets "as a wild bull in a net." "Desolation, and destruction, and the famine, and the sword" had come, and she cried, who will comfort me? But then the tone turns, and grace breaks in. God is "thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people", her Advocate, not only her Judge. And He makes a stunning promise: "Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling... thou shalt no more drink it again." The cup of wrath is removed from His people's hand, and its dregs are handed instead to their cruel oppressors, "them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over", those who trampled her like dirt in the street. The day of God's fury against His people is ended; the cup passes to the tormentors.

Gospel Focus

"I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling... thou shalt no more drink it again." How could a holy God simply remove the cup of His own fury? At Gethsemane the answer becomes clear. There Jesus prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matthew 26:39), and then He drank it. The cup of trembling, the cup of God's fury against sin, was taken out of our hand because the Servant took it into His own and drained it to the dregs at the cross. That is how God can righteously say to His people, "thou shalt no more drink it again", because Another drank it for us. And the God who does this is "thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people," our Advocate; "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). For those in Christ, the cup of wrath is gone forever; He drank it dry. What remains for us is the cup of blessing, "the cup of blessing which we bless" (1 Corinthians 10:16). Awake, and lift your head: your judgment has been drunk by Another, and the cup will never return to your hand.