Isaiah 40
Dear RTB’ers,
We return to Isaiah and will be with him for the rest of this year and into 2026. In fact, we will not finish Isaiah until January 4, the date of our first RTB gathering of the new year. So, three weeks, get it on your calendars! [NOTE: Carol and I will be out of town, so we will not have an end-of-the-year gathering as in past years.]
Please read your STS introduction. Isaiah began his ministry to Judah in 740 BC, a century and a half before Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC and its people were taken into captivity to Babylon. Their exile ended around 537 BC, so Isaiah is prophesying their release some two centuries before that outcome – and he speaks most of it in the present tense. Isaiah lived more than seven centuries before Jesus was born. It’s one of the reasons why his Messianic prophesies are so amazing! We read one of them yesterday in our first lesson from Isaiah 7:10-17.
I was taken back to Job beginning in verse 12 today. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span… God challenging his people that He has no equal. Isaiah speaks these rhetorical questions, then makes fun of idol-casting later in Isaiah 40:19-20.
A number of well-known verses today:
- Comfort, comfort my people… (v. 1a)
- A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (v. 3)
- The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. (v. 8)
- Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? (v. 21a)
And finally,
- …but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (v. 31)
Blessings!
See also: August 18 (2023) / Isaiah 40-41.