Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
After thirty-nine chapters of warning and judgment, the tone changes: the God who has been judging now speaks comfort. That raises three questions: who must do the comforting, why a guilty city gets any comfort at all, and how God can still say "My people."
The chapters before this one have been full of sin and judgment. What follows should sound like a funeral. It does not.
We might therefore have expected that chapter 40 would begin on a mournful note, calling for misery and tears rather than comfort. But no — "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God." He says this in view of the main theme, which the remaining chapters develop. In the earlier part, Isaiah 1-35, the main theme has been the sinful state of Israel and of the surrounding nations, and God's judgments on them all... God's controversy with Israel still continues, both over their idolatry and over their rejection of their Messiah. But now the main theme is His coming, both in suffering and in glory.
Two small words carry the weight here: "my" and "your". God owns this people again, and He shows them who the God speaking to them is.
Surely to the people these words will come with unusual sweetness: "Comfort, comfort." He had known their trouble and distress then, and now He would comfort them. "My people" is what He calls them here. So He has restored them to His favour, after having to disown them for their sins. When their God speaks to them like this, He also sets before them who He is: the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who does not faint or grow weary, and whose understanding no one can search out. How different He is from all the idols people invent!
The next line tells the messengers how to speak. Older translations read "speak comfortably" there, where the ESV has "speak tenderly".
These opening verses plainly display God's disposition towards His earthly people Israel. The marginal reading of "comfortably" is "speak to the heart," and this is the correct rendering. It is a call designed to stir the affections of God's people in view of the coming of their Messiah.
A command to comfort means little unless something has changed. One commentator finds the answer further on in the book.
The twenty-seven chapters begin with, "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God." After the first thirty-nine chapters, with their many condemnations and woes, we might wonder where the comfort is. Isaiah 53 points it out in full. If we believe the report and discover the mighty "arm of the LORD" in the suffering "Servant," the comfort will flow into our hearts in abundant measure.
Commentators differ over the timing. Some tie the call to the coming of the Messiah. Others say the nation's comfort is still future, while believers today already hold it.
God's words need carriers. He speaks first to the people He will send, and He tells them what to say.
God is here found addressing those whom He would use in this blessed service. Then we read three messages that they are to speak for His people's comfort. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem" (the margin reads: to the heart of Jerusalem — He cares for our affections), "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." Here we have the first drop in the cup of comfort: the testimony from God Himself that every question between Himself and them is eternally and divinely settled. To that nation this is doubtless future; to us it is present.
The chapter goes on to describe the God who gives this comfort. It sets human weakness beside His greatness.
Chapter 40 stresses two important points in this ministry of comfort. One is the complete inability and weakness of the flesh (vv. 6-8). The other is the glory and majesty of God: a pardoning God (v. 2); a God of glory (v. 5); a God whose word lasts for ever (v. 8); a God of power (v. 16); affectionate and full of tenderness (v. 11).
- Cause — Comfort comes not because the sin was small. It comes because the warfare is ended and the iniquity is pardoned.
- Ground — Chapter 40 gives the command; chapter 53 gives the reason. The suffering Servant is where the comfort comes from.
- Ownership — "My people... your God" names a bond He once had to break. The restored relationship is itself the comfort.
- Address — "Speak to the heart" is the true rendering. God aims this message at the affections of His people.
- Commission — God sends messengers with the news, and the news is that every question between Him and His people is settled.
Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her time of suffering is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins.
Isaiah 40 opens a new section, where God turns from warning and judgment to comfort His people. Three questions follow: what "warfare" means, how Jerusalem received "double," and why her iniquity can be called pardoned.
Darby reads the opening of the chapter as a display of how God acts. The comfort comes after the discipline, not instead of it.
The first eight verses of chapter 40 show in a remarkable way the principles on which God acts. His grace flows from His own heart, once His chastisements have been fully inflicted. God would comfort His people. He speaks to the heart of Jerusalem, telling her that her warfare is accomplished.
Where the ESV has "speak tenderly," older translations read "speak to the heart" of Jerusalem. The prophet who once thundered at her enemies now aims his message at her feelings.
In his earlier messages he repeated warning and threat to the enemy, as in Isaiah 8:9-10. Now he speaks with no less force, but with deep tenderness to the people, after painful affliction and shame for their sins. His heart goes with God's message of comfort.
The word behind "warfare" points to a set term of hard service, not just a battle. Darby follows it through Job.
Job 7:1 seems to give an entrance into the force of the word: "Is there not an appointed time to man? His days also as the days of a hired worker?" So also chapter 14:14, and Isaiah 40:2 — from which I gather that its force is "an appointed time" of subjection to evil.
Pardon and the end of the suffering arrive together. Hole is careful to say what that pardon does not mean.
It is not that their iniquity is excused or made light of. Rather, its "double," or fitting punishment, has been exacted, and so it has been pardoned. The time of "warfare," or suffering, is over. The verse does not state how this "double" from the Lord's hand has been received.
"Double" is not a strict arithmetic total. Kelly points to other places where the same word appears.
That "double" was used for something indefinitely great, in good or in evil, one sees in Matthew 23, Revelation 18:6, as in Isaiah 40:2.
The reckoning is God's own, and He makes it while looking at His Son. Kelly then carries it forward to Israel's future.
Bad as Jerusalem's sins were, she had, in His reckoning of love, suffered double what her sins deserved under His government. He is not looking at the sins of Jerusalem apart from Christ, but as it were through Him. If no suffering Messiah were connected with Jerusalem, only one thing would remain: the judgment of her sins, to her everlasting shame and ruin. But God always looks at Christ on her behalf, and can therefore say, "Comfort, comfort." He disowned Israel as not His people, and that holds good through the times of the Gentiles, which have not yet ended. But He will acknowledge them once more, and for ever, under Messiah and the new covenant.
Hole separates two reckonings. One Israel bears in her own history. The other her Messiah bore in her place.
As to the government of God working in this world, they receive it to the full in heavy chastisement, as indicated in Isaiah 57, 58 and 59. As to the more serious matter of God's eternal judgment on sin, they receive it in the sufferings of their Messiah and Saviour, who suffered in their place. They once rejected Him. We see this in Isaiah 53, where they say in prophecy, "Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace," since "The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."
Kelly sets the verse beside an unpayable debt and a prison. Only one payment can cover what Israel owes.
The day is coming when the Lord will say that Jerusalem has received from His hand double for all her sins. He will apply to them the blood of Christ, which can outweigh the ten thousand talents, and more. But the unbelieving generation of Israel is cast into prison and will never come out. The remnant will come out, by the grace of God, and the Lord will make of the remnant a strong nation.
- One hand. The hand that measured out Jerusalem's suffering is the hand that ends it. The chastening is finished; then grace flows from God's own heart.
- Hand that appoints. "Warfare" means an appointed term of subjection to evil. God set the term, and it ends.
- Hand that reckons. "Double" means an amount beyond measuring. God counts it in love, weighing her sins while He looks at Christ.
- Hand that pardons. Sin is not excused. God's chastening in this world falls on the nation. His eternal judgment on sin fell on the Messiah, on whom the LORD laid the iniquity of us all.
- Hand that comforts. God aims the message at the heart. The remnant comes out of prison, because the blood of Christ outweighs the debt.