Isaiah
Judgment, comfort, and a servant who suffers, across two centuries of Judah's history.
Who wrote it: Isaiah son of Amoz preached in Jerusalem from about 740 to 690 BC. Chapters 40 to 66 address the exile a century and a half later; tradition reads them as his prophecy, many scholars as later writers in his school. Both readings take the book seriously.
What it is
Isaiah's call is in chapter 6: a vision of the LORD on a throne, seraphim shouting 'holy', and a man who says 'I'm ruined, I have unclean lips' before he says 'send me'. He's sent to Jerusalem in the years of the Assyrian threat, and chapters 1 to 39 are mostly that setting. The nation is religious and rotten. They keep the feasts and crush the poor, and God says he's sick of their sacrifices, then in the same chapter offers to make scarlet sins white as snow if they'll come and talk it through.
Woven into the judgment are the passages Christians read at Christmas: a virgin will conceive and call him Immanuel (7), a child is born, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace (9), a shoot from Jesse's stump on whom the Spirit rests, in whose kingdom the wolf lies down with the lamb (11). In their first setting these are about a king for Judah in dark times. The New Testament read them as pointing further, and the book's own language keeps outrunning any king Judah ever had.
Chapter 40 changes key. 'Comfort, comfort my people.' The audience is now Judah in Babylon, sentence served, and the message is that the God who measures oceans in his palm hasn't forgotten them. Cyrus of Persia is named as the one who'll send them home. Idols get mocked at length. And a mysterious 'servant' appears in four songs, ending in chapter 53: despised, rejected, pierced for our transgressions, silent like a lamb, carrying the sins of many. Israel is sometimes the servant in these chapters. Chapter 53 reads like one person, and the early church saw Jesus there.
Chapters 56 to 66 look past the return to a renewed people: foreigners and eunuchs welcomed in, a fast that means freeing the oppressed, a Spirit-anointed preacher of good news to the poor (61, which Jesus read out in Nazareth), and finally new heavens and a new earth where the former things aren't even remembered.
Look for the swing. Isaiah never lets judgment sit without hope, or hope without a hard look at sin. That's the book's rhythm and, arguably, the Bible's.
Verses worth keeping
- Isaiah 1:18WEB
“Come now, and let’s reason together,” says the LORD: “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Gen Zsame meaning, your words'Come on, let's talk this through,' says the LORD. 'Even if your sins are scarlet, they'll be white as snow. Even if they're red as crimson, they'll be like wool.'
Said right after God has told them he can't stand their worship. The invitation to talk comes in the same chapter as the disgust.
- Isaiah 6:8WEB
I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsI heard the Lord's voice saying, 'Who will I send? Who'll go for us?' And I said, 'Here I am. Send me.'
Three verses earlier he'd said 'I'm ruined'. The order matters: he's cleaned up before he volunteers, not the other way around.
1But now the LORD who created you, Jacob, and he who formed you, Israel, says: “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine. 2When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, and flame will not scorch you.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsBut now the LORD who created you, Jacob, the one who formed you, Israel, says: don't be afraid, because I've redeemed you. I've called you by name. You're mine. When you go through deep water I'll be with you, and the rivers won't sweep you away. When you walk through fire you won't be burned, and the flame won't scorch you.
Said to exiles, not to people avoiding hardship. The promise is presence in the water, not a way around it.
- Isaiah 53:5WEB
But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.
Gen Zsame meaning, your wordsBut he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our wrongdoing. The punishment that made peace for us landed on him, and his wounds are what heal us.
The heart of the fourth servant song. Whoever the first readers thought it meant, the New Testament writers were sure.
8“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways,” says the LORD. 9“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Gen Zsame meaning, your words'My thoughts aren't your thoughts, and your ways aren't my ways,' says the LORD. 'As high as the sky is above the earth, that's how far my ways are above yours, and my thoughts above your thoughts.'
Usually quoted when something bad happens. In context it's about how much more willing to forgive God is than we expect. Read verse 7.
Read Isaiah
The full text, every chapter, from the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation. Pick a chapter below. The highlighted verses are the place to start if you have never read it.
Isaiah 40
1“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.
2“Speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and call out to her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received of the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.”
3The voice of one who calls out, “Prepare the way of the LORD in the wilderness! Make a level highway in the desert for our God.
4Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain.
5The LORD’s glory shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.”
6The voice of one saying, “Cry out!” One said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field.
7The grass withers, the flower fades, because the LORD’s breath blows on it. Surely the people are like grass.
8The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.”
9You who tell good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who tell good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with strength! Lift it up! Don’t be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold, your God!”
10Behold, the Lord GOD will come as a mighty one, and his arm will rule for him. Behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
11He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom. He will gently lead those who have their young.
12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the sky with his span, and calculated the dust of the earth in a measuring basket, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
13Who has directed the LORD’s Spirit, or has taught him as his counselor?
14Who did he take counsel with, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
15Behold, the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on a balance. Behold, he lifts up the islands like a very little thing.
16Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor its animals sufficient for a burnt offering.
17All the nations are like nothing before him. They are regarded by him as less than nothing, and vanity.
18To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to him?
19A workman has cast an image, and the goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts silver chains for it.
20He who is too impoverished for such an offering chooses a tree that will not rot. He seeks a skillful workman to set up a carved image for him that will not be moved.
21Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? Haven’t you been told from the beginning? Haven’t you understood from the foundations of the earth?
22It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in,
23who brings princes to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
24They are planted scarcely. They are sown scarcely. Their stock has scarcely taken root in the ground. He merely blows on them, and they wither, and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble.
25“To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their army by number. He calls them all by name. By the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.
27Why do you say, Jacob, and speak, Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and the justice due me is disregarded by my God”?
28Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
29He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might.
30Even the youths faint and get weary, and the young men utterly fall;
31but those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.
Questions about Isaiah
Did one person write Isaiah?
Chapters 1 to 39 fit the 8th-century prophet closely. Chapters 40 onward speak to exiles in Babylon a hundred and fifty years later and name Cyrus, who hadn't been born. Tradition says Isaiah saw it all in advance; most scholars think later prophets in his tradition wrote those chapters. The book never signs the later parts. What everyone agrees on is that it was handed down as one book with one vision, and it reads as one.
Is Isaiah 53 about Jesus?
The New Testament says so repeatedly, and the fit is remarkable: rejected, silent, pierced, buried with the rich, bearing others' sin. Jewish readers have usually taken the servant as Israel, suffering in exile, and the book does call Israel the servant elsewhere. The chapter itself doesn't name anyone. What you can say without hedging is that this is where the idea of one person suffering in place of many first gets said clearly, and Christians have read it at Easter ever since.
Does Isaiah 7:14 say 'virgin' or 'young woman'?
The Hebrew word almah means a young woman of marriageable age, and the Greek translation made two centuries before Jesus rendered it 'virgin', which is the text Matthew quotes. In Isaiah's own setting, the sign is a child born soon whose infancy will mark the end of a threat to King Ahaz. Matthew saw a fuller meaning. Both are honest readings of a verse that has always had two horizons.
Why is Isaiah so angry about worship?
Chapter 1 has God saying he's had enough of sacrifices and can't stand their festivals. The problem isn't the worship itself, which he'd commanded. It's that the same hands lifted in prayer were taking bribes and ignoring widows. Isaiah, like Amos and Micah, says worship that doesn't change how you treat people is noise to God. That's an uncomfortable thing to hear in any century.