1Comfort, O comfort My people,
says your God.
2Speak to the heart of Jerusalem
and call out to her,
for her term of service is ended,
her crime is expiated,
for she has taken from the LORD’s hand
double for all her offenses.
3A voice calls out in the wilderness:
Clear a way for the LORD’s road,
level in the desert a highway for our God!
4Every valley shall be lifted high
and every mountain brought low,
and the crooked shall be straight,
and the ridges become a valley.
5And the LORD’s glory shall be revealed,
that the LORD’s mouth has spoken.
6A voice calls out, saying: “Call!”
And I said, “What shall I call?”—
All flesh is grass
and all its trust like the flowers of the field.
7Grass dries up, the flower fades,
for the LORD’s wind has blown upon it.
The people indeed is grass.
8Grass dries up, the flower fades,
but the word of our God stands forever.
9On a high mountain go up,
O herald of Zion.
Raise your voice mightily,
raise it, do not fear.
Say to the towns of Judah:
10Look, the Master LORD shall come in power,
His arm commanding for Him.
Look, His reward is with Him,
His wages before Him.
11Like a shepherd He minds His flock
in His arm He gathers lambs,
and in his lap He bears them, leads the ewes.
12Who with his hand’s hollow has measured the waters,
the heavens has gauged with a span,
and meted earth’s dust with a measure,
weighed with a scale the mountains
and the hills with a balance?
13Who has gauged the LORD’s spirit,
and what man told then His plan?
14With whom did He counsel, who informed Him,
who taught Him the path of justice,
taught Him knowledge
and the way of discernment informed Him?
15Why, nations are a drop from the bucket,
like the balance’s dust are reckoned.
Why, the coastlands He plucks up like dust.
16Lebanon has not enough fuel,
and its beasts not enough for burnt offering.
17All the nations are as naught before Him,
as nothing and void they are reckoned by Him.
18And to whom would you liken God,
and what likeness for Him propose?
19The craftsman has shaped the idol,
and the smith overlays it with gold
and forges the links of silver.
20Mulberry wood for the gift,
wood that won’t rot he chooses.
A skilled craftsman he seeks for himself
to ready an idol that will not topple.
21Do you not know,
have you not heard?
Was it not told to you from the first,
have you not grasped how the earth was founded?
22He is enthroned on the rim of the earth,
and its dwellers are like grasshoppers.
He spreads out the heavens like gauze
and stretches them like a tent to dwell in.
23He turns princes into nothing,
earth’s rulers He makes as naught.
24Hardly planted, hardly sown,
hardly their stem rooted in earth,
When He blows on them, they wither,
and the storm bears them off like chaff.
25And to whom would you liken Me
that I be compared, says the Holy One?
26Lift up your eyes on high,
and see, who created these?
He Who musters their host by number
and all of them calls by name.
Through abundant strength and mighty power,
no one lacks in the ranks.
27Why should you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel:
My way is hidden from the LORD,
my cause is ignored by my God?
28Do you not know,
have you not heard?—
an eternal God is the LORD,
Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not tire, is not weary,
His discernment cannot be fathomed.
29He gives vigor to the weary,
and great power to those sapped of strength.
30Lads may grow weary and tire,
and young men may badly stumble.
31But who wait for the LORD shall renew vigor,
shall grow new pinions like the eagles,
walk on and not be weary.
CHAPTER 40 NOTES
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1. Comfort, O comfort My people. The prophecies of Second Isaiah begin abruptly, with no introductory formula such as “The word of the LORD came to me, saying.” If such introductory matter once existed, it would have been editorially deleted in order to encourage the perception that these prophecies are a direct continuation of what has preceded. Scholars have long puzzled over who is being addressed in the first verse. A prevalent view that it is the members of the divine council seems unlikely because there are no hints in the entire passage of a celestial setting. Others have proposed that these (the Hebrew verb is a plural) are a group of prophets exhorted to comfort Israel, but there are no such groups in the texts of the literary prophets. Groups of prophets appear only in the narrative books, where they are wandering bands of ecstatics. Perhaps it is simplest to assume that those addressed are people in general, or even the nations, enjoined to comfort Israel. In any event, the key word “comfort” at the very beginning of Second Isaiah sounds the great theme of Second Isaiah’s prophecies.
2. her term of service. The exile is imagined as a term of indentured servitude, or even a prison sentence, which is now completed.
4. the crooked shall be straight. The power of this stark formulation is worth preserving literally, even though the phrase might mean “the rugged ground shall be leveled.” The poet, conjuring up the expanse of arid land, abounding in ravines and ridges and rough terrain, that stretches between Babylonia and Judah, imagines a miraculous smoothing out of the ground as a great highway is laid down for the return of the exiles.
5. all flesh together see. This universalizing phrase might be taken as an indication that all humanity is addressed at the beginning of the prophecy.
6. A voice calls out. This could well be a truncated version of the divine call to the prophet to take up his mission.
trust. The Hebrew ḥesed here carries its sense of faithfulness or loyalty in meeting an obligation.
8. Grass dries up, the flower fades. The fondness of this poet for evocative repetition is evident here. In this case, it amounts to an incremental repetition, in which the increment is a strong antithesis to what has been repeated: “but the word of the LORD our God stands forever.”
9. here is your God. God’s vivid presence is manifest in the power and love with which He brings the exiles back to their land.
11. Like a shepherd He minds His flock. This simile makes a lovely counterpoint to the previous verse: first God shows overwhelming force (“His arm commanding for Him”) and now tender solicitude as the shepherd gathering lambs in His lap.
12. Who with his hand’s hollow has measured the waters. With this prophecy, soaring poetry becomes the vehicle to convey God’s magisterial role over all creation. It is perhaps at this point, most likely in the later sixth century B.C.E., that the universalist potential of biblical monotheism is fully realized. As several commentators have noted, there is a certain affinity here with the Voice from the Whirlwind in Job 38, though one cannot assume that either poet knew the other’s work.
weighed with a scale the mountains. Throughout these lines, there is a yawning gap between the paltry instruments of human measurement and the vastness of creation.
14. With whom did He counsel. This excludes not only puny humankind but also perhaps any traditional notion of a divine council from playing any part in creation.
15. the balance’s dust. This strikingly picks up the imagery of measuring instruments from verse 12, pushing it further by likening humankind to the dust left on the pans of a balance after it has been used—which is to say, something that has no weight at all.
17. as nothing and void. The second of the two Hebrew terms, tohu, takes us back to the primordial chaos (tohu wabohu) before creation.
19. The craftsman has shaped the idol. This would be a woodworker carving the idol, which would then be overlaid with precious metals. The focus on the manufacturing process that produces idols vividly conveys the futility of fashioning such material images of purported deities and stands in contrast to God, Who has no likeness (verse 18).
20. Mulberry wood. The Hebrew mesukan is obscure. This translation adopts one scholarly proposal, assuming that attention to craft materials fits in with the preceding verse, but there is no consensus on this.
22. He spreads out the heavens like gauze. This verset and the next are reminiscent of the splendid depiction of the grandeur of the Creator in Psalm 104.
26. He Who musters their host by number / and all of them calls by name. This is a beautiful instance of the focusing or heightening that takes place between the first verset and the second in a line of biblical poetry: first, God musters the host of the heavens, the stars, as their supreme commander; then, going beyond what any terrestrial general could do, He is able to name each one of the vast multitude of the stars.
31. grow new pinions like the eagles. The phenomenon of molting and getting new feathers is here extended, probably as a deliberate hyperbole, to the growing of new wings. The Hebrew ʾever is clearly a poetic term for “wing,” and does not mean “feather,” as some translations have it.
shall run and shall not tire. God’s inexhaustible nature is transferred to those who wait or hope for Him. If the prophet still has in mind his previous vision of a miraculous return to Zion, this idea here of a spectacular infusion of strength in the faithful would serve a double function: it would link up with the idea of a renewal of national strength after the crushing ordeal of the exile, and it could suggest that those marching over the long highway through the wilderness will not weary on the way.