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.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert a highway for our God!
Isaiah's book turns here from warning to comfort. The first sound in that comfort is one voice in empty country, telling a nation to clear a road for its God. Two questions follow. Who is the traveller? And why does the herald stand in a desert instead of the capital?
The verse never names the speaker. It names only a sound. When men pressed John the Baptist to say who he was, that sound was his whole answer.
They were determined to have an answer, and he gives them one. They would compel him to speak of himself, and he does so. But look at his answer! Who or what was he? Nobody. He was only "a voice." This is morally lovely. The self-emptiness of this most honoured servant is beautiful… Here was a man of real power and dignity, one of Christ's most outstanding servants, in the very highest position. His preaching had stirred the hearts of thousands. Angels had announced his birth. Prophets had foretold his ministry. He was the herald of the kingdom, the friend of the King. Yet when this remarkable man was forced to speak of himself, all he would say was, "I am a voice." Not even a man, but only a voice.
Another writer traces that emptiness back to its cause, and then to the words themselves.
What makes him morally great is that he is less than nothing in his own eyes. This is not because he tries to hide himself, but because for him Christ fills heaven, earth, eternity, and his own heart… He might have said, "I am the mouthpiece of God"; but no, an instrument might even think itself something. "I am the voice of one crying" — that, so to speak, takes away his personality. "Crying in the wilderness" — a voice that wakes an echo, worth nothing in the hearing of men.
The New Testament reads the line as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." That desert is not just where John lived. It describes the state of the people, and it changes what he could preach.
This is why John the Baptist does not appeal to the people as a whole, like the prophets who came before him. He says, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness." Israel was a wilderness for God. From now on his appeal rests on their ruin beyond repair. The older prophets always assumed the nation could still return to Jehovah… Like them, John the Baptist had preached repentance, but a repentance founded on ruin without remedy.
The road is prepared for "the LORD" — Jehovah, God's own name in the Old Testament. The New Testament applies two prophecies about that road to Jesus.
Jehovah's word to Malachi is, "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me." The Spirit applies these words to Christ… Jesus of the New Testament is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. The second quotation from Isaiah speaks of preparing the way of the LORD. So again it is Jehovah whose way is prepared — for Jesus is Jehovah.
The same reasoning is used elsewhere as direct evidence for the deity of Christ, alongside passages such as Micah 5:2 and Zechariah 13:7:
All Scripture confirms the truth that Jesus is Jehovah. John the Baptist was "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord" — that is, Jehovah (Isa. 40).
The road-building language is moral, not literal. Straightening the path means dealing honestly with what is crooked.
Repentance was certainly a first necessity in this preparation. It meant facing honestly the sin that had dishonoured God. The Lord's paths had to be made straight. He would allow no twisting deceit in men's minds. They could not come to Him while they were dishonest.
John's ministry fulfilled the verse. But the road was never finished, because Israel refused the message.
It was not the person nor the work of Israel's hope in power. For Israel as a whole was blind and deaf; the testimony was interrupted, the Messiah refused. So there was only a partial application… The way of Jehovah was not yet prepared. There was no straight highway in the desert for God. God put man on his own responsibility, and man heard the cry only to sin the more. But in time God will make it all good in grace by His own power.
The Gospel writers do not all quote this passage to the same length.
Only the Spirit of God in Luke takes care to give it the fullest breadth… We do not have this anywhere else. In Matthew, Mark, and John the quotation stops short of it. But Luke, though he begins with the Jew, does not end with him; he clearly goes out to all the nations. So the Spirit adds expressions here that give largeness and breadth.
- Voice — The herald keeps no name of his own. Asked who he was, he said only, "I am a voice."
- Wilderness — The desert pictures the nation's state, so the call is repentance that owns ruin beyond repair.
- The LORD — The road is prepared for Jehovah, and the New Testament gives that name to Jesus.
- Straight — The preparing is moral: face sin honestly, with nothing crooked left in the way you come to God.
- Glory — The herald came and was refused, so the highway still waits. God will yet make it good by His own power, and His reach goes out to all the nations.
Every valley shall be raised up, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places a plain.
Isaiah 40 opens with comfort for Jerusalem, and this verse pictures the road-work that comes before the LORD arrives — valleys raised, heights flattened, rough ground made smooth. So is this a landscape or a picture of people, and did John the Baptist finish it, or is it still ahead?
The levelling prepares for a Person, not just for a message. One writer sets the verse inside Jehovah's own announcement that He has come to comfort His people:
In this chapter Jehovah steps in and announces that He has come to comfort His people... Verse 3 opens the warning that prepares the way, but it is about Jehovah showing Himself... The Eternal presents Himself to His people, and this is how the remnant becomes known.
The uneven ground stands for the way human society works now. Each clause of the verse answers a specific wrong. Older translations read the third clause as "the crooked shall be made straight," and writers often quote it that way:
The world as we see it today is only a barren wilderness. Nothing in it satisfies the heart of God or meets the need of man. In it the lowly are oppressed, the proud are lifted up, and unrighteousness prevails... When the glory of the LORD is revealed, He will deliver His downtrodden people, for He will lift up those of humble position — "every valley shall be lifted up." He will humble all the pride of man — He will bring down the mighty from their thrones — "every mountain and hill be made low." He will rebuke unrighteousness, for "the uneven ground shall become level." And He will end the time of suffering, for He will feed the hungry with good things, and so make "the rough places a plain."
Another writer reads the same figures and adds what the rough ways stand for:
The crooked (perverted principles commonly accepted) would be made straight, and rough ways (the paths in which sin has caused trouble and sorrow) would be made smooth, for sin would be judged.
John the Baptist started this levelling with words. Three groups came to him with the same question. His three answers match the three clauses of Isaiah's road-work:
The people asked him, "What shall we do then?" He answered, "Whoever has two coats must share with him who has none, and whoever has food must do the same." So the mountain and the hill were made low and the valley lifted up. Next, tax collectors came and asked the same question. He said, "Collect no more than you are authorised to." Here we see how the crooked were to be made straight. Then the soldiers asked too, and he said, "Do not use violence or false accusation against anyone, and be content with your wages." So we see the rough places made smooth.
But the work stopped short. One writer explains why, and why nothing is finally lost:
John's testimony was a call to repentance, because the Messiah was coming... But Israel as a whole was blind and deaf. The testimony was interrupted and the Messiah refused. So there was only a partial application. The people's unbelief cut off the thread of God's ways, while His purposes stand unbreakable... God left man under his own responsibility, and man heard the cry only to sin the more. But in time God will make it all good in grace by His own power.
The flattening comes first, then the glory. One writer gives the reason:
The everlasting kingdom of Christ can only be established when all evil has been judged. To set up this kingdom, unrighteousness must disappear. Everything that lifts itself up against the Ruler of the whole earth must be cast down and brought low. The way of the Lord can only be prepared by bringing low every high mountain. Then the whole world will know the glory of the Lord and be filled with it.
If hills are going to be flattened, the safe place to stand is low. One writer draws the lesson from Christ's own path:
These were words of encouragement to everyone to take a low place now. Those who exalt themselves now will be brought low in the day of judgement. The Bible is full of this sentiment. The Lord Jesus "humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name" (Philippians 2:8,9). Paul says to us all: "Have this mind among yourselves." The lesson from the valley is humility.
- Level. The road-work is moral, not physical. Proud heights come down. The oppressed are lifted. Crooked dealing is straightened, and hard roads are made smooth.
- Low. The valley is the safe place. God raises those who take the low place now. Those who lift themselves up are the hills marked for flattening.
- Voice. John the Baptist began the levelling with plain instructions. Share your coat. Stop overcharging. Stop bullying. He gave one answer for each clause of the verse.
- Delayed. The nation refused God's messenger and the Messiah too. So the levelling was only partly applied. God's purpose was not cancelled, only postponed.
- Glory. The flattening exists for an arrival. Every rival height must fall before the glory of the LORD is revealed and the whole world is filled with it.
And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see [it] together for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken.
Isaiah 40 opens with God comforting Jerusalem. A voice calls for a road through the desert, and verse 5 says what that road leads to. Two questions follow: when is this glory revealed, and how far does "all flesh" reach?
John the Baptist was the voice in the wilderness. But verse 5 looks past him. One writer separates the two comings:
The reference to John is plain. Yet verse 5 carries us on to what Christ will fulfil at His second coming. The glory of the Lord was indeed revealed at His first coming. It proved to be "glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John 1:14). But the same verse says, "we have seen his glory." The context shows that most of the people did not see it. The disciples were the exception to the rule. Not until His second coming will "all flesh" see it. Revelation 1:7 declares how public that coming will be. So the prophecy here, as often in the Old Testament, has both comings in view... A single star shines in our night sky, but through a telescope it proves to be two. In the clearer light of the New Testament, this promised coming of Jehovah in the person of the Messiah proves to be two comings.
(Hole quoted an older translation here: "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.")
This promise is for the earth, and for people still alive on it. It cannot mean the final judgment of the dead:
Every difficulty — depths, heights, rough or crooked — must disappear, for God still means to make this earth the scene of His glory. It is a most blessed prospect. The sin, misery, and weakness of man, the groaning of all creation around, the schemes and power and presence of Satan must all vanish. They do not give place to the grace of God revealed in Christ, which has already shone (we know) in the despised man from Nazareth. They give place to the revealed glory of Jehovah, when all flesh shall see it together. It cannot refer to the day when the dead are judged. Then it will not be "all flesh," nor any flesh at all, but the dead raised before the great white throne. Here it is a question of man living in his natural body on the earth.
This glory does more than shine. It overturns the way things now stand:
When the glory of the LORD is revealed, He will deliver His down-trodden people, for He will lift up the lowly. He will humble all the pride of man. He will rebuke unrighteousness, and He will bring the time of suffering to an end... The pride and unrighteousness of man are not going to triumph for ever. The godly will not always be a downtrodden and suffering people. Humility ends in exaltation, and suffering leads to glory.
Luke quotes more of this passage than Matthew does. The extra line is about reach:
In Luke you will find the prophecy carried further... "and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." The range of Luke is wider... His task was to show the grace of God that brings salvation, and that has appeared to all men. So the Holy Spirit leads him to fasten on the words that show how wide God's goodness to man reaches.
Commentators differ on the source of that closing line. One traces it not to verse 5 but further on in Isaiah:
Luke connects the testimony with the moral preparation for the way of the Lord, which Isaiah had foretold as the object of John's mission, adding, as suited to the character of the Gospel, from a later passage in the prophet (Isa. 52:10), "All flesh shall see the salvation of God."
The verse does not end with the glory but with the speaker. That closing clause is where the certainty rests:
But how do we know this? What guarantee do we have that it will come to pass? "The mouth of the LORD has spoken." We rest in the unchangeable word of God. Here is our comfort and hope. "The word of our God will stand forever." Not the smallest part of His word will fail. God will be faithful to His spoken word, and we who believe wait patiently for it to be fulfilled. "Comfort, comfort my people, says your God." How do we do that? By turning them again to the word of God, which is completely reliable.
The verses just after this one call all flesh grass. One writer draws a principle from that order:
Before God begins, He must cause it to be understood that all flesh is as grass.
- Levelled. The glory does not come into the world as it stands. First He brings pride down, lifts the lowly, and rebukes wrongdoing.
- Withered. Before God begins, He makes one thing clear: all flesh is grass. Nothing in man survives to share the credit.
- Revealed. The glory was there at Christ's first coming, but only the disciples saw it. The public showing waits for His return.
- Seen. "All flesh" means people alive on earth, not the dead before the great white throne. Luke widens the same words: salvation reaches everyone.
- Spoken. The mouth of the LORD has said it. That is the guarantee, and the comfort we pass on to others.