-- And I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain; nevertheless my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work with my God.
In Isaiah 49 a Servant speaks about His own work, and by verse 4 He says it has all come to nothing. That raises two questions: who is speaking, and how can a mission from God end in emptiness?
Who is speaking here? The nation that carried the servant's name had proved unfaithful.
Isaiah 49 presses the heavier and more serious charge. The prophet shows us the deep guilt of the returned remnant, who rejected their own true Messiah. Both Testaments share the same principle: the faithful One takes the place of the unfaithful "servant." Messiah the True Vine replaces Israel the empty vine. Messiah takes up Israel's place as Jehovah's servant, the One in whom God will be glorified. But because His people reject Him, He speaks the words of verse 4.
His labour was real and His strength really was spent. Anyone watching the end of His path would have called it failure.
How often in this fallen world have the servants of God had to taste the bitterness of defeat and apparent failure. It seems to have been the rule rather than the exception. Our Lord Himself is the supreme example. He came, as the Apostle Paul states, "A Minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers" (Rom. 15:8). But "the circumcision" rejected Him, and from that standpoint His mission ended in failure.
The ESV puts Paul's words this way: "Christ became a servant to the circumcised" — that is, a servant to the Jewish people.
One writer sums it up: "At the end of His path what was there to show for all His labours? He was left alone, betrayed by one of His disciples, denied by another, abandoned by everyone, and crucified as a criminal" (An Outline of Sound Words).
The second half of the verse is not resignation.
But to all this the perfect Servant answered, "Yet surely My judgment is with the Lord, and My work with My God." In Isaiah 53 we read, "He was taken from prison and from judgment." Acts 8 gives this as, "In His humiliation His judgment was taken away." In condemning Him, men broke every principle of right judgment. But He was content to keep silence before His judges and to move His judgment to the highest Court in the universe. He knew that His vindication in the presence of Jehovah was sure.
These lines follow an older translation. The ESV reads, "yet surely my right is with the LORD, and my recompense with my God."
A servant can care about results without living on them.
The Lord's food as a Servant was to do the work given Him, whatever the results might be. Was He unmoved by results? Far from it. What true servant should be? Compare these words of the Lord in Isaiah with His words in John. He was not indifferent to the results of His ministry in Israel. Yet the success of His labours was not what fed His soul.
The rejection did not shrink the mission; it opened it out.
Christ was set before the people, and they utterly rejected Him. That proved that unbelieving Israel would not be gathered. God foreknew the failure of Messiah's mission, and Isaiah 49:4 and the verses that follow acknowledge it fully. But Jehovah's answer opens up His counsels and purposes. They are being fully carried out in this acceptable time, as He calls out people from among Jews and Gentiles into the church. This remarkable prophecy shows us the exact order of events recorded in the New Testament. First, Christ's mission to Israel fails for a time. Then a suffering and rejected Messiah is received and glorified in heaven, and made God's salvation to the ends of the earth.
The comfort of this verse reaches anyone whose service looks wrecked.
Every servant of the Lord who is in earnest knows well the discouragement of the apparent wreck of what he is doing. The lowly and the humble are especially prone to this discouragement, but the proud and self-satisfied know nothing of it. Yet God does not want us to be discouraged, even though all appears to be in vain... Ours to do His bidding, His to give success or failure, but even the failure is no failure; it is part of the ways of God to bring about His purpose.
- Servant — The nation failed in the servant's place. Messiah takes it and speaks here as the faithful One.
- Spent — His labour and strength ended in visible defeat: alone, betrayed, denied, crucified.
- Surrendered — He does not defend Himself. He moves His case to God's court, where His vindication is sure.
- Sustained — He felt the empty result, yet the success of His work was never what fed His soul.
- Spread — The apparent failure is the turning point. Rejected in Israel, He becomes God's salvation to the ends of the earth. So no faithful worker's labour is finally wasted.
And now, saith Jehovah, that formed me from the womb to be his servant, that I should bring Jacob again to him; (though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorified in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God shall be my strength;)
Isaiah 49 opens with a Servant who speaks in the first person. God set Him apart before birth and sent Him to gather Jacob. Verse 5 is the turning point. His mission to Israel seems to fail, yet God honours Him and becomes His strength.
Earlier in the chapter God calls His servant "Israel." Commentators say the key is the shift from the nation to one Person.
The chapter opens with a call to the islands to listen... "And He said to me, You are my servant Israel, in whom I will glorify myself" (vv. 1-3). Such was the purpose of God about Israel; but, Israel failing, Christ becomes the true Israel. It is the transition from the people to the Messiah in whom alone it could be.
The same writer adds that this first failure is not the end of God's purpose. It leads to something larger.
Christ substitutes Himself for Israel. They had held the name and the responsibility of the servant; Christ becomes the true and righteous servant of God, when the other proved false... God's purposes seem to fail at first because of man's wickedness. That failure only settles them more firmly, and gives them a more glorious form and display in the end.
The Servant's confidence rests on who formed Him, and on where His strength comes from.
He knew that He had been formed from the womb to be the LORD's servant. God was His strength for His service. And even if Israel was not gathered, yet He Himself should be glorious in the eyes of the LORD.
The ESV reads "that Israel might be gathered to him." Older versions read "though Israel be not gathered." The old manuscripts and translations are split.
Isaiah 49:5 — the text of the Authorised Version gives one reading, "be not gathered"; the margin has the other, "gathered to him." The Vulgate here supports the Authorised Version. Some manuscripts, with the Septuagint, the Targum, and Aquila, read as the margin, without the negative.
The writers here follow the older reading. They tie it to what happened when Christ came.
Christ was presented to the people, and they utterly rejected Him. That proved that unbelieving Israel would not be gathered — "How often would I have gathered your children together… and you would not!" (Matt. 23:37). God foreknew the failure of Messiah's mission... This remarkable prophecy shows us the exact order of events recorded in the New Testament. First comes the temporary failure of Christ's mission to Israel. Then a suffering and rejected Messiah is received and glorified in heaven, and made to be God's salvation to the ends of the earth.
God's verdict on the Servant is the opposite of man's.
God completely cancels man's thought and judgment. The humbled Man — the discredited Prophet of Nazareth — walked His way to Calvary among the jeering crowd, abandoned by His disciples and mocked by men. Yet He was glorious in the eyes of the LORD. He was about to lay the foundation for the structure of glory yet to come.
God has not kept that honour hidden.
Yet the Servant glorified God, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name. The heavens have been opened, so that by faith we may look up and see Jesus crowned with glory.
God's reply widens the Servant's work far beyond Israel.
At His first coming, the mission of the Lord seemed to fail. The tribes of Jacob were not restored, and the preserved of Israel were not brought back to blessing. Yet He knew that, even if His work looked like failure, He was "glorious in the eyes of the Lord." He had completed the work God gave Him to do. Israel will indeed be gathered again when the Lord comes back. Meanwhile there is a still greater work, for God says to Him, "I will also give You for a light to the Gentiles, that You may be My salvation to the end of the earth."
- Formed — God shaped the Servant from the womb for one task: to bring Jacob back to Him. Israel had held that title and failed. Christ takes the place and fills it.
- Refused — His own people turned Him away. Kelly finds the whole order of events here: a rejected Messiah, glorified in heaven, then salvation to the ends of the earth.
- Honoured — God cancels man's judgment on Him. The discredited Prophet walking to Calvary was, at that very moment, glorious in the eyes of the LORD.
- Strengthened — He does not draw on results for confidence, but on God: "my God has become my strength."
- Widened — The refusal did not shrink His mission. It enlarged it. God gives Him as a light to the Gentiles, His salvation to the end of the earth.
-- and he saith, It is a small thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I have even given thee for a light of the nations, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.
God speaks these words to His Servant. The Servant has just said His work seemed to come to nothing, and God's answer is not a smaller mission but a far larger one — which raises the question of who this Servant is, and what becomes of Israel once the nations come into view.
Israel had held the place of God's servant and had failed in it. Here the One speaking is the Messiah, standing where Israel stood.
"And I said (says Christ), I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing." Christ substitutes Himself for Israel. They had been the servant in name and in responsibility. Christ becomes the true and righteous servant of God, when the other proved false.
The same writer finds this exchange all through the Bible, Old and New.
It is a striking instance of a principle common to the New Testament as well as the Old, the replacement of the faithless "servant" by the faithful One, of Israel the empty vine by Messiah the True Vine.
The phrase does not make Israel's restoration small in itself. God measures it against something wider.
God proclaims Him here as Israel's Restorer. Important as that is, God says it is a small thing in comparison. This one nation is not the only one that will come directly under Him. All the nations shall have Him as their Light. So, right to the ends of the earth, our Lord Jesus Christ shall be God's Salvation.
The mission grows at the very point where Israel refuses Him.
Israel rejected the Messiah. Yet He would not only be "glorious in the eyes of the Lord"; He would also secure blessing for a far greater company than Israel, and His God would be His strength in reaching this great end.
The direction of the mission changes. The light now goes out to the Gentiles — the nations outside Israel — and writers say this turn shapes the present day.
The original thought was to gather Israel, but Israel would not be gathered. Then, says God, That is too small a thing; I will save the nations also. But Christ is first given as a light to the Gentiles. It is going out rather than gathering in. At any rate, that is the turn the passage takes now, under the gospel. While Israel is not yet gathered, Christ becomes a light to the Gentiles.
The second half of the verse does not cancel the first. Writers keep both, and set them in order.
God's Servant came to do a work for Israel, and God would carry it out in His own good time. Israel would be regathered for the millennial day, the tribes of Jacob raised up, and the preserved of Israel restored. But something would also be done among the Gentiles, both in the day in which we live and in the millennium.
The two titles God gives here — light, and salvation — are the very words an old man used when the infant Jesus was brought into the temple in Jerusalem.
Here we see Him as The Servant; the Light, and the Salvation of God. What a wonderful Saviour! Mary took Him to the temple. There a man named Simeon, one of the faithful few left in Israel and "a servant" of the Lord's, rejoiced to see in Him God's "Salvation" and "the glory of His people Israel." He also saw in Him "a Light for revelation of the Gentiles," that they, brought out of their darkness and ignorance, might be revealed in God's marvellous light.
When the Jews would not hear him, Paul quoted this verse and called it a command. God spoke the words to Christ, yet Paul takes them as spoken to himself.
What had this to do with Paul and Barnabas? Everything. Without question the prophet has Christ in view, and some might want to limit the words to Christ alone. The Holy Spirit does not, and so He extends their reach to Paul and Barnabas… Christian faith takes for itself what God said to Him.
Why did Paul see it when others did not? One writer gives a simple reason.
The Jews would not listen to Paul and Barnabas, so they think of the word of the Lord… I doubt anyone else would have seen that but Paul. The reason was simply this: his heart was with the Lord.
- Servant — Israel failed in the role. Christ steps into it as the true and righteous Servant, the True Vine in place of the empty vine.
- Small — Raising up Jacob is called a small thing, not because it is minor. God answers rejection by widening the work, not shrinking it.
- Light — God gives the rejected One as light to the nations. Simeon used that very title over Him in the temple.
- Salvation — The reach runs "to the end of the earth." The mission turns from gathering Israel in to going out, and that is the work of today.
- Command — Paul read a prophecy about Christ as an order for himself and turned to the Gentiles. What God says of Christ, faith takes for those who belong to Him.
Thus saith Jehovah, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to the servant of rulers Kings shall see and arise, princes, and they shall worship, because of Jehovah who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Thus saith Jehovah In a time of acceptance have I answered thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee; and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the land, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages;
Isaiah 49 sets before us a Servant whom His own nation rejects. Verse 8 is Jehovah's reply to Him: acceptance, help, and a covenant that reaches far beyond the nation that refused Him.
The "you" of this verse is not the prophet and not the nation. It is the Servant whom men despise. The promise given to Him assumes a scene of total ruin.
It is clear that Christ is now viewed here as a rejected person, the cross being the great expression of that rejection. It is evident that this supposes all to be in ruin, but that the Lord Jesus is the destined repairer of the breaches.
Before there could be an acceptable time, there was an hour when the answer did not come.
There was a moment when He was not only despised and rejected by men, but forsaken by God. In that moment He could not say, "As for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord, in an acceptable time" (Psalm 69:13). His words were, "I cry, but you do not hear." He had to pass through this moment of unspeakable sorrow, and He passed through it in atonement for our sins... He who was crucified in weakness was raised by the power of God. So Jehovah can now say to Him in resurrection, "In an acceptable time have I heard you, and in a day of salvation have I helped you."
Older translations read "heard" where the ESV has "answered," and the writers quoted here follow them. Both words point to one event, and that event starts a whole era.
The humbled Servant whom men would not hear has been heard by Him, helped and lifted up... The significance of this may have been lost on Old Testament readers, but the Apostle Paul seized upon it in 2 Corinthians 6:2. The rejection of the Messiah, foretold in verse 7, would result in His death. He would be "heard" and "helped" by resurrection from the dead, and this was to inaugurate the "acceptable time" and the "day of salvation."
Paul takes up the first half of this verse in 2 Corinthians 6:2 and adds one word: now. That word marks off the time we are living in.
The words of the eighth verse are quoted here: "I have heard you in a time accepted and in the day of salvation I have helped you." They are addressed to Christ, whom Israel rejected. God raised Him from the dead, and though Israel is not gathered, He becomes the power of salvation for the Gentiles. This is the meaning of "behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." "Now" means this present age, when God offers salvation to the Gentiles.
Old Testament readers could not have guessed how far these words would reach.
Old Testament saints read of Messiah being heard in an accepted time and helped in a day of salvation. Who among them could have known that there would be a people accepted in His acceptance, saved in His own salvation out of death and judgment, and able to say that by His resurrection they were risen with Him? Jehovah said "I have heard you in a time of acceptance" to Christ personally. The Spirit of God has made known to us that we, through grace, are now included in that "you."
One writer notes how rarely Scripture gives Christ the title used here.
Only once more is our Lord Jesus Christ called the Covenant. It is here, in Isaiah 49:8. Only through Him can this be brought about.
That title also settles the ground of Israel's blessing.
The once-rejected Messiah is to be "a covenant of the people," for they will not enter into blessing on the basis of the covenant of law. He, and He only, will bring to pass the blessing on earth so glowingly described in these verses.
The closing clauses look past our own time to a coming age, when a restored nation lives in a restored land.
The day will come when the nation of Israel will be restored and brought into millennial blessing. Jehovah was glorified by His Servant Jesus. He accepted His work, heard His cry, helped Him, and preserved Him. Through Him, and all that He has done, Jehovah will fulfil His promises to His earthly people. He will establish the land, and at last the nation will inherit the land that for so long has been desolate.
- Cry — There was an hour when the Servant cried and no answer came. That hour was the atonement, and He passed through it first.
- Answer — "Heard" and "helped" are resurrection words. God's answer to the rejected Christ was to raise Him.
- Now — His resurrection opened the accepted time we live in. Salvation now goes out to the nations, while Israel is not yet gathered.
- Accepted — Jehovah spoke those words to Christ personally. They now cover a people accepted in His acceptance, saved in His salvation, risen with Him.
- Covenant — Christ Himself is called the Covenant. Through Him God establishes the desolate land, and the nation at last inherits it.
saying to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pasture shall be on all bare hills.
This verse is one line in a longer message God speaks to His Servant, and it is a command of release. Two questions decide how we read it — who are these prisoners, and when does the word go out?
The command is not the prophet's own. God gives it to His Servant, and the setting is a scene of total ruin. (The writers quote older translations, which read "Go forth" and "Show yourselves" where the ESV has "Come out" and "Appear".)
"I will preserve you and give you for a covenant of the people (that is, of Israel) … saying to the prisoners, Go forth" (vv. 8-9). This assumes everything is in ruin, but that the Lord Jesus is the appointed repairer of the breaches.
Some read this release of prisoners as a rescue of the dead from hell. One writer rejects that, and points to the verse's own setting: the earth and its ruined lands.
This is Jehovah's prophetic word to the Messiah, and it applies expressly to the earth and not to hell at all: "I will also give you for a light to the Gentiles, … to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages; that you may say to the prisoners, Go forth." Familiar passages use similar language, and nobody would dream of carrying it further. Anyone who applies this to hell must assume it. Will they say why?
If the prisoners are Israel, no human effort can arrange their freedom. The One who speaks sets the time.
Men may try to restore the land to the Jew, and bring the Jews back to the land. But their efforts, even if they seem successful for a time, will only bring the Jew back for the judgment of the great tribulation. To come back for blessing they must wait until Christ gives the word. In His time He will say to the prisoners, "Go forth". And to those in darkness, "Show yourselves". Today the Jew may be a captive, often hiding from the pitiless persecution of ruthless enemies. But when Christ says "Go forth" and "Show yourselves" no power will withstand His words.
This verse names prison and darkness. The next verse adds hunger and thirst. Each meets its exact opposite.
Prisons, and darkness, and hunger, and thirst, will yield up their captives and their victims at the gracious command of our Lord Jesus Christ; so that they may enjoy liberty, and light, and plenty. He will Himself guide them (vv. 9-10).
The second half of the verse turns from prison to pasture. It also settles where the freed come from.
"They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be on all bare heights… Behold, these shall come from afar; and behold, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim" (vv. 9-12). This predicts the return of Israel from all parts of the earth. But it is a return after they were scattered there. So they come not only from the north and south, but even from the land of Sinim — that is, from China. From there they emerge at last and gather in Palestine.
These captives have a name elsewhere in Scripture, and a scene in heaven matches their relief.
In verses 8-10 God gives Him as a covenant to the people, that is, Israel. He comes to bring in the blessing on earth, to set free captive Israel — "Prisoners of hope," Zechariah 9:11-12 — and to open the prison doors to those who are bound. So the true Shepherd of Israel feeds His now gathered flock, which would hunger and thirst no more. How similar is the language of Revelation 7:16-17, which the elder in heaven uses about those who had come out of the great tribulation.
- Ruin — the verse assumes everything lies in ruin: wasted lands, prisoners, people in the dark.
- Repairer — God gives His Servant as a covenant, and He is the appointed repairer of the breaches.
- Release — these prisoners are captives on the earth, not souls after death. His word ends both prison and darkness.
- Reach — release runs from every direction, from the north, the west, and lands as far off as China.
- Rest — the freed become a flock, fed along the ways and on bare heights, never hungry or thirsty again.