CHAPTER 40

(712 B.C.)

THE LORD, THE MESSIAH, TO COME

¹Comfort you, comfort you My People, says your God. (In this First Verse, Judahs faithful God hastens, beforehand, to assure the exiles [when they are later banished to Babylon], prophetically, that He will not forget nor lose sight of them.

The Assyrian struggle is over. The Prophet has accepted into the depths of his spirit Gods announcement that the true spoiler, the rod of His Anger, and the staff of His Indignation, is no more Assyria, but rather Babylon. The Prophet has accepted the sentence that his people, because of their sin [in fact continued sin] and refusal to repent, are to go into captivity.)

²Speak y ou comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she has received of the LORDs hand double for all her sins. (This Passage leaps ahead until after the captivity, which will be many years in the future.

The phrase, double for her sins, actually refers to the practice of possessing the double.

If a Jew went bankrupt, he was to list all of his indebtedness on a skin and nail it in a conspicuous place, where it could be seen by all. At times, a benefactor would stand good for the entirety of the debt, take down the skin, double it over [hence, the double], and write his name on the front, meaning that he would pay all indebtedness.

When Jesus died on the Cross, He took the penalty for all of our sins upon Himself, and then doubled over the account, meaning the sins can no longer be seen, because they are gone, and wrote His Name on the front, meaning that He has paid the price. So, we can also say, even though Gentiles, that through Christ and what He did at the Cross, that we possess the double.)

³The voice of him who cries in the wilderness, Prepare you the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (The voice of this Verse was partially fulfilled in John the Baptist, but will be totally fulfilled in the coming ministry of Elijah [Mal. 4:5-6]. His ministry will immediately precede Christs apparition in Glory. Morally, John the Baptist was Elijah to his generation, and introduced the Redemption Glory of the Messiah, exhibited at Calvary, and perfected in His First Advent.

The wilderness and desert represent the world. As well, it represented Israel that had lost her way; therefore, the Promise is for the Restoration of that nation, which will yet take place.)

⁴Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain (when Christ comes the Second Time, every valley in the world, filled with its hurting and weeping, will at that time be exalted. The mountain and hill represent the oppressors of the world. They will be brought down from their exalted position, and shall be made low. Only Christ can make the crooked straight, and the rough places plain, and that He shall do!):

⁵And the Glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it. (The Glory of the Lord is Jesus Christ. At the Second Coming, all flesh shall see it together.)

⁶The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field (the voice in this Passage is that of the Holy Spirit. He instructs the Prophet what to proclaim. The message is, and will ever be, a humbling one; but its acceptance by man is a fundamental of Salvation):

⁷The grass withers, the flower fades: because the Spirit of the LORD blows upon it: surely the people is grass. (Man, as symbolized here by the word grass, has no moral worth. To prove that, the Spirit of the LORD blows upon it, exposing all deadly flaws.)

⁸The grass withers, the flower fades: but the Word of our God shall stand forever. (The Love and Truth which tell man of his moral ruin reveal to him, at the same time, an ever-living Saviour Whose Word is infallible and eternal.)

⁹O Zion, that brings good tidings, get you up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! (Isaiah is saying that the Preacher is to point Israel to Jesus of Nazareth and cry, Behold your God!)

¹⁰Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and His arm shall rule for Him: behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him. (His title as Adonai-Jehovah expresses His claim as King of all the Earth. The phrase, His arm shall rule for Him, means that Christ will not need to lean on anothers arm for governmental powers. Moreover, when He comes, He will reward His People and recompense His enemies.)

¹¹He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those who are with young. (The Perfection of His Love as a Shepherd is set out in this Verse with exquisite beauty.)

GODS MIGHTY POWER AND MAJESTY

¹²Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out Heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the Earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? (Verses 12 through 31 concern the Might and the Greatness of God contrasted with the weakness of man and the futility of idols.)

¹³Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being His counselor has taught Him? (This was quoted by Paul in Rom. 11:34 and referred to in I Cor. 2:16. In this Passage, Isaiah seems to shift from God the Father to God the Holy Spirit. The direction mentioned was ordered by the Spirit of the LORD. But who, Isaiah asks, directed [or regulated] the Spirit Himself? The answer is instant and obvious no one making Him indivisible with God the Father.)

¹⁴With whom took He counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of Judgment, and taught Him Knowledge, and showed to Him the Way of Understanding? (God instructs, because He knows all; therefore, none can instruct Him. Likewise, He teaches, and does not need to be taught, because He knows all.)

¹⁵Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, He takes up the isles as a very little thing. (As God weighs mountains and hills in His balance, so He can take up in His Own Hands lands or countries, with all their inhabitants, and do with them as seems to Him good. They are of no burden to Him.)

¹⁶And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a Burnt Offering. (In this Passage, God is in effect saying that if all the beasts in Lebanon were offered as Sacrifice and all the great forests of this country, which were noted for their great Firs and Cedars, were used for wood for the fires of the Sacrifices, such would not be sufficient. But Christ was sufficient!)

¹⁷All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity. (In Verse 15, individual nations had been declared to be of no account; now the same is said of all the nations of the Earth collectively.)

¹⁸To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare unto Him? (This great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, is contrasted here with idols in Verses 18 through 26.)

¹⁹The workman melts a graven image, and the goldsmith spreads it over with gold, and casts silver chains. (The Holy Spirit through Isaiah now employs ridicule, and the first ground of His ridicule is the formation of an image. It is made by man himself out of known material substance. Can it be supposed that such things are likenesses of God, or that He is comparable to them?)

²⁰He who is so impoverished that he has no oblation chooses a tree that will not rot; he seeks unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved. (As someone has said, The thing carries its own satire in the mere plain description of it. Is such a thing comparable to God?)

²¹Have you not known? have you not heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the Earth? (That God made a Revelation of Himself to man at, and from, the beginning is clear from this Verse and Rom. 1:19-21. Therefore, man has no excuse for the worship of idols, religion, or the works of his own hands.

Modern man has the Bible, which is the Word of God and, thereby, fully explains itself so that man has no excuse.)

²²It is He who sits upon the circle of the Earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grass hoppers; Who stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in (the word upon would better read above. The words, the circle of the Earth, reveal that the Earth is round. The curtain speaks of the atmosphere surrounding the Earth, which protects it from violent rays coming from the Sun. While the Bible is not a scientific Textbook, and is not meant to be, still, whatever it does say about science is impeccably correct):

²³Who brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the Earth as vanity. (Men who think of themselves as mighty count as nothing to God. Men rule, but God overrules!)

²⁴Ye s, they shall not be planted; yes, they shall not be sown: yes, their stock shall not take root in the Earth: and He shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. (The idea of this Passage is: all of mans efforts, no matter how powerful he may think he is, in his opposition to God, sow the seed of his own destruction.)

²⁵To whom then will you liken Me, or shall I be equal? says the Holy One. (Once again, the Holy Spirit asks the question. This is a summary to conclude the section, as Verse 18 concludes the preceding one. If God is paramount over idols, over nature, and over humanity, to whom can He be likened? Is He not altogether unique and incomparable?)

²⁶Lift up your eyes on high, and behold Who has created these things, that brings out their host by number: He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power; not one fails. (Some 50 years ago, it was claimed by Astronomers that there were over 40 sextillion [40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000] stars in the Universe. There are as well approximately 500,000 entries in the Websters Unabridged Dictionary. If every one of these stars were named, there would be enough names to fill approximately 80 quadrillion [80,000,000,000,000,000] books of this size. To understand that the Supreme Being has created all of these stars, and calls them each by name, is beyond our comprehension!)

²⁷Why sayest you, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? (Understanding, at least somewhat, of the Greatness of God, and then to think that we can hide things from Him, presents foolishness of the highest order.)

²⁸Have you not known? have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the Earth, faints not, neither is weary? there is no searching of His understanding. (In this Verse, the Lord tells Israel and us that He never fails or wearies in upholding the feeblest of His people, nor does He ever tire of our circumstances, nor grow uninterested in our affairs. On the contrary, far from fainting in His Action on our behalf, He, as the next Verse tells us, gives power to those who do faint among us. The strongest men grow feeble in effort and interest, but the Great Shepherd never!)

²⁹He gives power to the faint; and to them who have no might He increases strength. (So far is He from being faint Himself that He has superabundant energy to impart to any who are faint among His servants. What a Promise!)

³⁰Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall (this has reference to the fact that even the most vigorous and powerful men will faint under enough strain and eventually fall; mans strength is grossly limited, even the strength of the strongman; however, those who trust the Lord, as the next Verse tells us, will not fall):

³¹But they who wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (The word wait, in the Hebrew, is qavah, and means to bind together by twisting. The sense is that if we really wait upon the LORD, we will be constantly seeking His Face and, being bound together with Him, we will be desirous of carrying out His Will.

The Holy Spirit uses eagles as an example. Eagles do not stay perpetually young, but do in fact periodically take on a luster on their wings that gives them a perpetual youthful appearance. Such is intended here!

God promises to give strength for the journey in order that we may run and not be weary.)