Comfort for the Future (Isa. 40:1, 2)
In Isaiah 40:1, 2, God comforts His people. Their time of punishment has finally ended. What punishment is that?
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There are many answers to this question. There was the punishment
administered by Assyria, the rod of God’s anger (Isaiah 10), from which God delivered Judah by destroying Sennacherib’s army in 701 b.c.
(Isaiah 37). There was the punishment administered by Babylon, which
would carry away goods and people from Judah because Hezekiah had
displayed his wealth to the messengers from Merodach-baladan (Isaiah
39, NRSV). And there was the punishment administered by one of the
other nations against which Isaiah wrote messages (Isaiah 14–23).
Meanwhile, though “Assyria” and “Assyrian[s]” are mentioned 43
times from Isaiah 7:17 to 38:6, this nation appears only once in the rest
of Isaiah, where Isaiah 52:4 refers to past oppression by Egypt and then by “the Assyrian.” In the latter part of Isaiah, deliverance from exile in Babylon is mentioned (Isa. 43:14; Isa. 47:1; Isa. 48:14, 20), and it is Cyrus, the Persian who conquered Babylon in 539 b.c., who is to free the exiles of Judah (Isa. 44:28, Isa. 45:1, Isa. 45:13).
Isaiah 1–39 emphasizes events leading up to deliverance from the
Assyrians in 701 b.c., but at the beginning of chapter 40, the book leaps
ahead a century and a half to the end of Babylon, in 539 b.c., and the
return of the Jews shortly thereafter.
Is the theme of return from Babylon linked with anything earlier in Isaiah? If so, what?
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Isaiah 39 serves as a transition to the following chapters by predicting
a Babylonian captivity, at least for some of Hezekiah’s descendants (Isa.
39:6, 7). Furthermore, the oracles of Isaiah 13, 14, and 21 predict the
fall of Babylon and the liberty this would bring to God’s people: “But the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land. . . . When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon” (Isa. 14:1–4, NRSV). Notice the close connection with Isaiah 40:1, 2, where God promises His people there is an end to their suffering.
What do Bible promises about the end of suffering mean to you
now, amid your present suffering? What good would our faith be
without those promises? Why, then, is it so important to cling to
them, no matter what?