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.