Isaiah 38-53
Introduction
Isaiah is one of the major prophetic books, and many consider it a “mini-Bible” of its own. Though chapter/verse markings were not part of the early copies, it happens that the 1st 39 chapters are more about judgment just as the Old Testament’s 39 books are, while the last 27 chapters are more about consolation just as the New Testament’s 27 books are. Isaiah literally means, “The Lord is Salvation”, which summarizes the book. Isaiah’s focus was on Jerusalem and Judah, and his message was that they would be overrun by Gentiles for their sins. But though God’s judgment had to be harsh, he would never abandon the people of Israel forever. He deals with Israel as a nation, not necessarily as individuals, and the prophecies are not necessarily in chronological order. Please refer to these resources as well: this commentary, the NETS Bible, and this LXX Interlinear.
Isaiah 38-39
King Hezekiah, who had done the right thing and sought God’s will against the Assyrian king Sennacharib, was nonetheless striken with a terminal illness before God delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrians. From our perspective it looks like following God didn’t pay off after all. But the answer is given in 2 Chron. 32:24-26: Hezekiah had become proud and ungrateful. But he repented, and God gave not only the specific number of years he’d live, but also a sign: The shadow of the sun, on steps whose purpose was to mark the hours, would go backwards, just as God would “give back” years to his life.
The commentary makes a feeble attempt to explain this miracle while keeping the earth a spinning ball, but what kind of miracle would it be to merely move a local shadow, and how would that symbolize the giving back of time to Hezekiah? Per 2 Chron. 32:31, this miracle was recorded by the Babylonians, who had come to ask about it, which means it wasn’t merely a local phenomenon. Verse 9 records the prayer Hezekiah had prayed.
Ch. 39 shows that an official in Babylon sent gifts to him to celebrate his recovery. But this flattering gesture, which was a test from God per 2 Chron. 32:31, caused him to do something incredibly stupid: show off all his wealth, his armory, and the loot to be had from his kingdom, instead of crediting God. So Isaiah went to confirm from Hezekiah what he had done, but God’s response was that everything he showed the Babylonians would be hauled away as plunder, including his own descendants. But all Hezekiah cared is that this wouldn’t happen in his lifetime! So we should learn from this example that God’s tests aren’t always simple or obvious, and that consistently honoring God is a wise path to follow.
Isaiah 40-41
Now begins the “New Testament” portion of Isaiah, which some compare also to the Trinity: 40-48 focus on the Father, 49-57 on the Son, and 58-66 on the Spirit. In this chapter, God has finished paying Jerusalem for their sins, and verse 3 is very familiar because it’s quoted in the Gospels as pertaining to John the Baptist preparing Israel to receive the Messiah. And of course, verse 8 is the well-known phrase about the permanence of the decrees of God.
Verse 12 begins a section extoling the greatness of God above all, but notice once again the cosmological descriptions in verse 22. The “circle” or “ring” or “curve” (LXX) of the earth is the visible horizon, which has more to do with the physics of light than the shape of the earth. Many argue that scripture only describes our world in terms the ancients used for what they could see. Yet this argument collapses when similar terminology is used for what is not seen, such as the abode of the dead, “the deep”, and the earth’s pillars and foundation beneath the waters.
But what does it mean that God sits on (really, above) the horizon? The LXX says “controlling” rather than “sitting”, because to sit there means to have sovereignty over it. The sky above has been “stretched” the way one might stretch a curtain, meaning something thin and flat, though in another context this same word clearly refers to something very strong and forged. Also, the purpose of the sky is to provide a “tent” or dwelling place, obviously for us, who should remember that in comparison to God, we’re no more than tiny insects. So in verse 25 we should ask who could possibly be compared to this great God? Not only has he created all this, he even calls the stars by name— all gazillion of them, and they dare not leave their places. Some speculate that these are actually sentient beings, and that the “planets” (wanderers) are fallen angels since they disobeyed and left their assigned places.
At any rate, the point of the passage is that this great Creator, lofty as he is, cares about us, to the point that, as Jesus said in Mat. 10:30, even the hairs on our heads are numbered. So God is both transcendent and personal, separate from creation yet in absolute control over it. Then we see another favorite memory verse in 31.
We see in ch. 41 that the coastlands were the ends of the earth from the perspective of Israel, but we should check context carefully to see whether the world then is in view, or the world now, or possibly both. Here, the point is that God is not just the God of Israel but of the whole world, and the proud nations shouldn’t think they can defy him.
Then the text focuses on Israel, who is to be summoned from around the world to return to the land. No other ancient people who have been destroyed and scattered have returned, more than once the way Israel has, and it’s because of God alone.
Verse 18 begins a familiar passage some apply to modern-day Israel, which actually did turn a wasteland into a thriving agricultural region. But the context seems more about the overalll condition of blessing, which of course will have a literal, physical fulfillment in the Millennium as well. We can at least say that verse 20 is not yet fulfilled, since Israel is still in rejection of the Messiah, as they were in the 1st century a.d.
Now God taunts the nations by demanding evidence that their gods and magic arts have successfully predicted anything of importance. Again, this highlights the fact that fulfilled prophecy is the fingerprint of God on only the Bible, and that Christians are negligent if they ignore it, especially since nearly 1/3 of the Bible is prophecy.
In contrast, God gives examples of his fulfilled prophecies, and the one starting in verse 25 is believed to have been fulfilled by Cyrus the Persian about 150 years after this prophecy was given. The text says Cyrus would call on God’s name, but the commentary claims that this only means God used him for his purposes. Other commentaries put this as a question, “Will he call on God?”, and Ezra 1:2 quotes Cyrus as saying that the God of heaven had given him the kingdoms of the world. The best solution would seem to be that he would simply invoke the name of God as he might invoke the name of any other so-called god, not that he actually served and worshiped the one true God, since there’s no evidence that he did so.
Isaiah 42-43
This is a clear Messianic prophecy, since this one of all the servants of God would accomplish his mission without any fault or flaw of his own. He would not come as a violent conquerer but a gentle lamb, yet one whose spirit could not be crushed by the violent. Verses 6 and 7 are what Jesus read in the synagogue per Luke 4:18-19, along with several other references in Isaiah.
But what does it mean in vs. 8 that “the Lord” is God’s name? The Hebrew has YHWH, but the Greek (LXX) translated that always as kurios. Some claim that the LXX was corrupt, but the New Testament quotes of it also use kurios for YHWH and theos for Elohim. So since it’s undeniable that God allows name changes between languages, the “sacred name” of God is who is meant, not the syllables in our human languages. The name in any language is made sacred by its owner. But whatever the language, the honor and glory due to God must not be reduced or shared with anyone else. This is why saying “we all worship the same God” is a filthy lie. God is identified by his character and deeds, which is what fulfilled prophecy is all about.
Verse 10 reminds people that God will one day make all the suffering end, and that only the one true God will accomplish this. Per verse 14, all this waiting hasn’t been easy for God either, who has to hold himself back for a greater purpose. But when the time finally comes, nothing will stop him.
Then the text returns to Israel’s present condition, at the time the prophecy was given. But though God himself had handed them over to their chosen fate, ch. 43 turns back to the future hope, because these were still his chosen people in spite of all they had done. God, who in verse 3 calls himself Lord (YHWH/kurios), God (Elohim/theos), and the Holy One of Israel, will gather them from all over the world.
The text turns back again to Israel at that time, and God calls the surrounding nations as witnesses in his case against them. The passage goes on to remind them of the miracles God performed in Egypt. But instead of turning water to dry ground, God promises to turn the dry, parched ground into streams of water for their deliverance from exile in Babylon. But for the time being, Israel was still deaf and blind and had forgotten all that God had done for them.
Isaiah 44-45
Ch. 44 returns to the future of refreshing, both physically and spiritually. Remember that the future outpouring of the Spirit is directed at the people of Israel, and this will not be fulfilled to completion until the Millennium. Then it returns to God demanding evidence for the claims of false gods to be his equal, and of course the description “I am the first and last” is quoted as pertaining to Jesus in Rev .1:17, 2:8, 21:6, and 22:13. Then God shows the pathetic imitation idols as the mere work of human hands.
Verse 15 shows the insanity of someone taking some of the same wood he uses to cook or warm himself to make an idol, then bowing down to it. Then after pleading with Israel to come to its senses and return to the one true God, the text turns back to Cyrus as the tool in God’s hand that would be used to accomplish his plans. This continues into ch. 45, and in verse. 4 we see that Cyrus was to enjoy some of God’s blessings in spite of the fact that he didn’t submit to him as God. But what does it mean in verse 7 that God “creates evil”? The fact is that the word there means calamity rather than wickedness, because it’s contrasted with peace, but critics love to use archaic translations to twist the Bible.
Then in verse 9 comes another reminder that it’s just plain stupid to argue with our Creator, and this is quoted in Rom. 9:20-21. Likewise, in the following verses it’s equally stupid for children to disrespect their parents and demand to know why they brought them into the world.
Verse 14 looks again to the Millennium, when the nations will respect both God and his people Israel, and verse 23 is quoted in Rom. 14:11 and Phil. 2:10-11 as pertaining to that time as well.
Isaiah 46-47
Bel and Nebo were the two primary gods of Babylon. Bel is the Caananite equivalent of lord, which senseless critics think means that the God of the Bible is merely a heathen deity. But this was a title, and the actual name was Enlil. You may hear these names among amateur theologians as part of a fiction they’ve developed from a hodgepodge of false religions, largely based on the poor translation skills of someone named Zechariah Sitchin who is promoted by David Icke. Many are being deceived by these people and their stories, and Christians who don’t study scripture are easy prey. You can read more about the Babylonian gods in the commentary. But the point is that all of these so-called gods will bow down to the one true God.
So in verse 5 God asks once again why anyone thinks they compare to him, and 9-10 put an excalmation point on who the real God is. Prophecy is his fingerprint on the Bible as his Word. By the way, the eagle from a distant land describes Cyrus, not the USA.
Ch. 47 turns to Babylon, whose description is quoted in Rev. 18. This “virgin daughter”, called such because it had not yet been conquered, would be brought lower than dirt instead remaining exalted on a throne. She would be exposed for what she really is: pathetic, weak, and evil. Per verse 9, none of her sorceries and incantations will be able to save her, and her overconfident arrogance will be her undoing. She will not be able to conjure away her fate, no matter how faithful she had been all her life to her false gods and dark arts. Many today have returned to such things, thinking they’ll overcome the Creator, but they’re deluded.
Isaiah 48-49
Now it’s back to unfaithful Israel, who were only preserved because of God honoring his promises, and ch. 49 turns again to the other nations who had been part of their punishment. The “Servant” in this passage and others is clearly the Messiah, though the Talmudists try to claim it’s Israel, even though the two are undeniably different entities as per vs. 6 for example.
Verse 14 is another familiar passage, where God again promises never to forget or abandon the people of Israel as a nation, and to restore them in a land that will soon become too small to hold all the people. But for the time being, God had divorced Israel per Jer. 3:8, which violated the covenant of Moses as you can see in the chart referenced in the description.
Isaiah 50-51
Now God asks to see the certificate of divorce. Some presume this is similar to what Jesus said in John 8:10-11 to the woman caught in adultery, when he asked her where her accusers were and said he didn’t condemn her. But it speaks of God divorcing her mother, and since verse 14 identified the “daughter” as Zion, the “mother” must be the northern kingdom. So what God is saying here is that the certificate of divorce must be presented to show the grounds upon which the divorce was granted, which was rebellion and unfaithfulness.
Verse 4 turns back to the Messiah who would do what Israel had refused to do, and verse 6 was literally and physically fulfilled when Jesus was being tormented even before he was put on the cross. There’s a good comparison of the two opposite servants here.
Ch. 51 continues to remind Israel of what God had done, which should assure them that his promises of eventual restoration are trustworthy. It goes beyond the Millennium to the time when God finally destroys the present world and replaces it with a new one— unlike the promises of God, which will never fail to come to pass. Now skipping down to verse 14 we see another description of the suffering Messiah. Some erroneously think it means Jesus was ugly or deformed at birth, but not only does it say he became disfigured by torture, he could not have qualified as the sacrificial Lamb had he been born with any defect.
All of these Servant passages are showing the Messiah to be both the one who suffered unjustly, and the one who will rule with absolute justice. In hindsight we know that these two conflicting attributes were to be resolved by two separate comings, but this couldn’t be known beforehand by anyone but God. In the same way, when we see conflicting prophecies about Jesus’ return in the New Testament (see this source), we should realize that two separate events are being described.
Isaiah 53
We’ll end this lesson with a look at one of the clearest and best known Messianic passages in the Old Testament. Some call it “the holy of holies”, since it depicts the sacrificial Lamb in the temple. According to the commentary, most of the approximately 80 New Testament references to Isaiah come from this passage alone.
It begins with an expression that today would be, “Who could have made this up?” The sheer magnitude of God’s plan was unimaginable, unforseen, unprecedented— and to too many people, especially Israel— unbelievable and unacceptable. The righteous Servant, the Messiah, would come first as a tender child of a poor family. Verse 2 is another one where people get the idea that Jesus was not pleasant to look at, but again, it refers to his lowly social standing, not his physical form. Verse 3 continues to describe him as an outcast, and his own people Israel would come to hate him beyond all reason. The fact that he experienced the trials and illnesses of life made them dismiss him as ordinary at best.
In fact it was not his own faults he suffered for, but Israel’s, and of course the world’s. People in general are always quick to blame the victim— unless it’s someone they like. Though everyone had ignored and rejected him, God laid the sin of the world on this righteous Servant. Jesus did speak at times during his trial, but he never tried to get out of it beyond praying to the Father that there would be some other way. This is Jesus in his humanity, showing us to the last how we should relate to God. As stated in the Gospels, Jesus resolutely marched toward his own demise because of the greater good beyond it, per Heb. 12:2. He was not “murdered by his Father” as the senseless critics claim.
His trial by the Jews was illegal and unjust, but it had to be so, per 1 Cor. 2:8. Even his burial in a rich man’s tomb was fulfilled literally and physically and could not have been prearranged by Jesus or any of his poor, cowardly disciples. But in spite of it all, restitution was made for the sin of the world per John 1:29, which is why Jesus shouted “Paid in full!” on the cross, per John 19:30. The children are all adopted, per Rom. 8:15, 23, 9:4, Gal. 4:5, and Eph. 1:5, but children nonetheless. And because of all this, he will return as the conquering king, per Phil. 2:5-11.