The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me, because Jehovah hath anointed me to announce glad tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and opening of the prison to them that are bound;
Jesus read this verse aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth and said it came true that day. It names the One anointed, the Spirit resting on Him, and the people He came to reach — and He stopped reading halfway through the next verse.
The capitals in "Lord GOD" mark the divine name. Read that way, the opening line names three.
The words that were read by our Lord all show grace, without any reference to the law of Moses. There is a veiled reference to the three Persons of the Godhead. Our Bibles print GOD like this in capitals because it is really the great name, Jehovah. So the opening words mention three: the Spirit of Jehovah, the Lord Jehovah Himself, and the "Me." That "Me" is the Anointed One, or the Christ, sent to be the Proclaimer and the Minister of the grace. The tragedy was that when a voice of great grace sounded in the synagogue at Nazareth, the people neither trembled nor rejoiced. They rose up in anger to kill the One who proclaimed "the acceptable year of the Lord."
The anointing does not describe His deity. It describes the place He had taken.
He who is God had become man, and stoops to act as such among men. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor." It is the man Christ Jesus. The Spirit of the Lord was not upon Him as God, but as man, and so anointed Him to preach the gospel to the poor.
That anointing had a visible moment. At the Jordan, "the heavens were opened and the Spirit, like a dove, descended on Him... Thus the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled" (Ernst-August Bremicker).
One writer works from an older translation. There Isaiah says "the meek" and Luke says "the poor"; the ESV reads "poor" in both. He treats the difference as deliberate.
Nor are we to forget who He brings such glad tidings to. Isaiah says, "to the meek." Again, the Holy Spirit sets the truth in Luke, but not in the literal words. There we read it is "to the poor," for that is what "the meek" were in the state of things which then existed in sinful Israel. Jesus Himself was "meek," and He was also "poor."
The verse proclaims liberty to captives. That language had a history in Israel.
There may be a reference to the year of Jubilee (a picture of the millennium) when servants were set free, debts were cancelled, and family possessions were restored to their original owners. But the grace granted by the Lord brought lasting blessings for their souls.
He did not read the words as a promise still waiting.
He presents Himself in this character: "The Spirit of Jehovah is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor … to preach the acceptable year of Jehovah." Here He stops. The Lord leaves out what follows in the prophet: the deliverance of Israel by the judgment that avenges them of their enemies. Now Jesus does not announce promises, but their fulfilment in grace by His own presence.
He stopped reading in the middle of a sentence. One writer points to what has filled the gap since.
"To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn." Compare this with Luke 4:17, and you will find that the Lord shut the book in the middle of this verse. So far the Scripture was fulfilled. Those who heard Him little thought what would come in between. Before the book of wrath and vengeance is opened, this long period of more than 1800 years of grace would come first. Yes, this long period lay hidden in the middle of that verse.
So the announcement He made has not run out.
He made known the glad tidings of good things to the fallen and low, to the tax collectors and sinners, to the poor, to the meek. The common people heard Him gladly as He told of the grace and goodness of the heart of God, of forgiveness and salvation and blessing. It is still the day of salvation. The acceptable time has not yet run its course. The day of vengeance is not yet here.
- Sent — One line names three: the Spirit of Jehovah, Jehovah who anoints, and the "Me," the Anointed One He sends.
- Anointed — The Spirit came upon Him not as God but as man, and the dove at the Jordan showed it.
- Poor — The good news goes to the meek, the broken-hearted, the captive and the bound. In Israel then, the meek were simply the poor.
- Free — The liberty He proclaims echoes the Jubilee year, when slaves went free and families got their land back.
- Unfinished — He shut the book mid-verse, before "the day of vengeance." The whole age of grace hides in that pause. While it lasts, the acceptable year still stands.
to proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
The verse holds two things that Jesus kept apart: a year of favour and a day of vengeance. He read it aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth, stopped mid-sentence, and left the second half for another day.
The most discussed feature of this verse is not what it says but where the Lord stopped saying it.
Many have rightly noticed how He stopped after the first clause of verse 2. He closed the book, and then said, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." He quotes what pictures His character as it was displayed on earth at that time in ways of divine mercy. But He does not even finish the sentence, because the part that follows points to His exercise of judicial wrath. That was in no way the object of His first coming. So, though it looks strange, with divine wisdom He read no further. "The day of vengeance of our God" awaits the time of His appearing in power and glory.
The two halves are not the same size. Where the ESV has "the year of the LORD's favor," older versions read "the acceptable year of the Lord" (or "of Jehovah").
The first is a "year"; the second is "a day." The first is the long "year" of mercy and grace, still going on, in which God delights. The second is the short "day" of God's just judgment, soon to come and soon over. It is His "strange work," in which He takes no pleasure.
That short day has work to do before blessing can come in.
The acceptable year of the Lord runs from the day the Lord read these words until the day God pours out His judgments on the world. God presents His grace in "the acceptable year." That year has now lasted almost two thousand years — such is God's patience. But God's vengeance is only a day. It must clear the world of wickedness before God brings in divine blessing.
Isaiah wrote the year and the day as one continuous mission. Only the Lord's own reading showed that a gap lies between them.
The prophecy declared that His mission was twofold: "to proclaim the acceptable year of Jehovah and the day of vengeance of our God." In the prophecy the proclamation of the "acceptable year" and the grim "day" are joined as a single service of Christ. But the Lord, by His own lips, showed that the fulfilment of the second half of the clause has been put off, and that a wide stretch of time separates the "acceptable year" from the "day of vengeance," even though the announcement of both events appears in Isaiah's prophecy as a single phrase, only half of which was fulfilled at the First Advent of Christ.
Prophecy elsewhere does the same. One writer notes that in Malachi 3:1 "the two comings are predicted, though not clearly distinguished: a feature we also see in Isaiah 61:2" (F. B. Hole).
For Isaiah's first readers the phrase recalled a fixed year in Israel's calendar.
God will carry out this vengeance in a coming day, to deliver Israel. But when our Lord spoke there was the fullest grace for His hearers: it was the acceptable year of Jehovah. There may be a reference to the year of Jubilee. In that year servants went free, debts fell away, and family property returned to its original owners. But the grace the Lord showed brought lasting blessings for their souls.
Nazareth turned the message down. Their refusal did not close the offer; it opened it to the Gentiles, the nations outside Israel.
Israel rejected their Messiah and the message of grace He brought. That only opened the way to preach God's acceptable year to the Gentiles. So the apostle Paul could write to the saints at Ephesus that Christ "came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near."
The verse ends by naming who this mission is for: all who mourn. One writer asks what those mourners would have without Christ.
It is clear, then, that no one could sympathise with the deepest and sharpest sorrows of the human heart. No one could cheer, if Christ had not been sent "to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion — to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit."
- The pause — at Nazareth the Lord stopped reading mid-sentence. That pause marks the gap between His two comings, hidden inside one phrase.
- The year — the first half is a year of favour. It began with Christ's ministry and has run on for almost two thousand years.
- The jubilee — behind that year stands Israel's year of release. Servants went free, debts fell away, and lost property came back to its owner.
- The comfort — inside this year Christ comforts all who mourn, reaching a sorrow no one else could reach.
- The day — the second half is one day. God takes no pleasure in it, yet it clears the world before blessing comes in.
to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, that beauty should be given unto them instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness that they might be called terebinths of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah, that he may be glorified.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.