Sunday, February 14
In Isaiah 40:1, 2, God comforts His people. Their time of punishment has finally ended. What punishment is that?
Is this 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)? Or is it 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)?
“Assyria” and “Assyrian(s)” are mentioned 43 times from Isaiah 7:17 to 38:6, but 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 (Isaiah 43:14; Isaiah 47:1; Isaiah 48:14, 20), and it is Cyrus, the Persian who conquered Babylon in 539 B.C., who is to free the exiles of Judah (Isaiah 44:28, Isaiah 45:1, Isaiah 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?
Isaiah 39 serves as a transition to the following chapters by predicting a Babylonian captivity, at least for some of Hezekiah’s descendants (Isaiah 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: “For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, And will yet choose Israel, And set them in their own land. … And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon” (Isaiah 14:1-4). 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?
