Isaiah (first)

• monotheism not widely accepted until

92:6.17The He­brew re­li­gion en­com­passes the philo­sophic tran­si­tion from poly­the­ism to mono­the­ism; it is an evo­lu­tion­ary link be­tween the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion and the re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion. The He­brews were the only west­ern peo­ple to fol­low their early evo­lu­tion­ary gods straight through to the God of rev­e­la­tion. But this truth never be­came widely ac­cepted un­til the days of Isa­iah, who once again taught the blended idea of a racial de­ity com­bined with a Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator: “O Lord of Hosts, God of Is­rael, you are God, even you alone; you have made heaven and earth.” At one time the hope of the sur­vival of Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion lay in the sub­lime He­braic con­cepts of good­ness and the ad­vanced Hel­lenic con­cepts of beauty.

• Isaiah (first)

96:4.9The most unique and amaz­ing fea­ture of the re­li­gious his­tory of the He­brews con­cerns this con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion of the con­cept of De­ity from the prim­i­tive god of Mount Ho­reb up through the teach­ings of their suc­ces­sive spir­i­tual lead­ers to the high level of de­vel­op­ment de­picted in the De­ity doc­trines of the Isa­iahs, who pro­claimed that mag­nif­i­cent con­cept of the lov­ing and mer­ci­ful Cre­ator Fa­ther.

• appeared in wake of arousal of Hebrew conscience
• preached God’s infinite wisdom and perfection

97:5.1These were the times when some were pro­claim­ing threat­en­ings of pun­ish­ment against per­sonal sins and na­tional crime among the north­ern clans while oth­ers pre­dicted calamity in ret­ri­bu­tion for the trans­gres­sions of the south­ern king­dom. It was in the wake of this arousal of con­science and con­scious­ness in the He­brew na­tions that the first Isa­iah made his ap­pear­ance.

97:5.2Isa­iah went on to preach the eter­nal na­ture of God, his in­fi­nite wis­dom, his un­chang­ing per­fec­tion of re­li­a­bil­ity. He rep­re­sented the God of Is­rael as say­ing: “Judg­ment also will I lay to the line and righ­teous­ness to the plum­met.” “The Lord will give you rest from your sor­row and from your fear and from the hard bond­age wherein man has been made to serve.” “And your ears shall hear a word be­hind you, say­ing, ‘this is the way, walk in it.’” “Be­hold God is my sal­va­tion; I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my song.” “‘Come now and let us rea­son to­gether,’ says the Lord, ‘though your sins be as scar­let, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like the crim­son, they shall be as wool.’”

• Jesus’ birthday text from writing of

97:5.3Speak­ing to the fear-rid­den and soul-hun­gry He­brews, this prophet said: “Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” “The spirit of the Lord is upon me be­cause he has anointed me to preach good tid­ings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives and the open­ing of the prison to those who are bound.” “I will greatly re­joice in the Lord, my soul shall be joy­ful in my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with his robe of righ­teous­ness.” “In all their af­flic­tions he was af­flicted, and the an­gel of his pres­ence saved them. In his love and in his pity he re­deemed them.”

• preached beneficent king-deliverer

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

• said Jerusalem would never fall

97:9.22The next king, Amaziah, had trou­ble with the re­volt­ing tax-pay­ing Edom­ites and their neigh­bors. Af­ter a sig­nal vic­tory he turned to at­tack his north­ern neigh­bors and was just as sig­nally de­feated. Then the ru­ral folk re­volted; they as­sas­si­nated the king and put his six­teen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah, called Uzziah by Isa­iah. Af­ter Uzziah, things went from bad to worse, and Ju­dah ex­isted for a hun­dred years by pay­ing trib­ute to the kings of As­syria. Isa­iah the first told them that Je­ru­sa­lem, be­ing the city of Yah­weh, would never fall. But Jeremiah did not hes­i­tate to pro­claim its down­fall.

• Jesus’ birthday text from writing of

123:5.11When en­ter­ing school at seven years (at this time the Jews had just in­au­gu­rated a com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion law), it was cus­tom­ary for the pupils to choose their “birth­day text,” a sort of golden rule to guide them through­out their stud­ies, one upon which they of­ten ex­pa­ti­ated at their grad­u­a­tion when thir­teen years old. The text which Je­sus chose was from the Prophet Isa­iah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free.”

• Isaiah (first)
• Jesus’ birthday text from writing of

126:4.2“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free; to pro­claim the year of God’s fa­vor and the day of our God’s reck­on­ing; to com­fort all mourn­ers, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy in the place of mourn­ing, a song of praise in­stead of the spirit of sor­row, that they may be called trees of righ­teous­ness, the plant­ing of the Lord, where­with he may be glo­ri­fied.

126:4.3“Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you. Hate the evil and love the good; es­tab­lish judg­ment in the gate. Per­haps the Lord God will be gra­cious to the rem­nant of Joseph.

126:4.4“Wash your­selves, make your­selves clean; put away the evil of your do­ings from be­fore my eyes; cease to do evil and learn to do good; seek jus­tice, re­lieve the op­pressed. De­fend the fa­ther­less and plead for the widow.

126:4.5“Where­with shall I come be­fore the Lord, to bow my­self be­fore the Lord of all the earth? Shall I come be­fore him with burnt of­fer­ings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou­sands of rams, ten thou­sands of sheep, or with rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No! for the Lord has showed us, O men, what is good. And what does the Lord re­quire of you but to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

• Isaiah (first)

137:6.2When Je­sus stood up, the ruler of the syn­a­gogue handed him the Scrip­ture roll, and he read from the Prophet Isa­iah: “Thus says the Lord: ‘The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my foot­stool. Where is the house that you built for me? And where is the place of my dwell­ing? All these things have my hands made,’ says the Lord. ‘But to this man will I look, even to him who is poor and of a con­trite spirit, and who trem­bles at my word.’ Hear the word of the Lord, you who trem­ble and fear: ‘Your breth­ren hated you and cast you out for my name’s sake.’ But let the Lord be glo­ri­fied. He shall ap­pear to you in joy, and all oth­ers shall be ashamed. A voice from the city, a voice from the tem­ple, a voice from the Lord says: ‘Be­fore she tra­vailed, she brought forth; be­fore her pain came, she was de­liv­ered of a man child.’ Who has heard such a thing? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or can a na­tion be born at once? But thus says the Lord: ‘Be­hold I will ex­tend peace like a river, and the glory of even the gen­tiles shall be like a flow­ing stream. As one whom his mother com­forts, so will I com­fort you. And you shall be com­forted even in Je­ru­sa­lem. And when you see these things, your heart shall re­joice.’”

• Jesus’ birthday text from writing of

140:3.2“I send you forth to pro­claim lib­erty to the spir­i­tual cap­tives, joy to those in the bond­age of fear, and to heal the sick in ac­cor­dance with the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. When you find my chil­dren in dis­tress, speak en­cour­ag­ingly to them, say­ing:

• Isaiah (first)

142:5.4“Said the Prophet Isa­iah, speak­ing of these times: ‘When the spirit is poured upon us from on high, then shall the work of righ­teous­ness be­come peace, quiet­ness, and as­sur­ance for­ever.’ And for all who truly be­lieve this gospel, I will be­come surety for their re­cep­tion into the eter­nal mer­cies and the ev­er­last­ing life of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. You, then, who hear this mes­sage and be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom are the sons of God, and you have life ev­er­last­ing; and the ev­i­dence to all the world that you have been born of the spirit is that you sin­cerely love one an­other.”

• Isaiah (first)

145:2.2As Je­sus taught in the syn­a­gogue this Sab­bath af­ter­noon, ac­cord­ing to cus­tom he took the first text from the law, read­ing from the Book of Ex­o­dus: “And you shall serve the Lord, your God, and he shall bless your bread and your wa­ter, and all sick­ness shall be taken away from you.” He chose the sec­ond text from the Proph­ets, read­ing from Isa­iah: “Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Dark­ness may cover the earth and gross dark­ness the peo­ple, but the spirit of the Lord shall arise upon you, and the di­vine glory shall be seen with you. Even the gen­tiles shall come to this light, and many great minds shall sur­ren­der to the bright­ness of this light.”

• Isaiah (first)

147:8.1That night, long af­ter the usual lis­ten­ers had re­tired, Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach his apos­tles. He be­gan this spe­cial in­struc­tion by quot­ing from the Prophet Isa­iah:

147:8.2“‘Why have you fasted? For what rea­son do you af­flict your souls while you con­tinue to find plea­sure in op­pres­sion and to take de­light in in­jus­tice? Be­hold, you fast for the sake of strife and con­tention and to smite with the fist of wicked­ness. But you shall not fast in this way to make your voices heard on high.

147:8.3“‘Is it such a fast that I have cho­sen—a day for a man to af­flict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bul­rush, to grovel in sack­cloth and ashes? Will you dare to call this a fast and an ac­cept­able day in the sight of the Lord? Is not this the fast I should choose: to loose the bonds of wicked­ness, to undo the knots of heavy bur­dens, to let the op­pressed go free, and to break ev­ery yoke? Is it not to share my bread with the hun­gry and to bring those who are home­less and poor to my house? And when I see those who are naked, I will clothe them.

147:8.4“‘Then shall your light break forth as the morn­ing while your health springs forth speed­ily. Your righ­teous­ness shall go be­fore you while the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then will you call upon the Lord, and he shall an­swer; you will cry out, and he shall say—Here am I. And all this he will do if you re­frain from op­pres­sion, con­dem­na­tion, and van­ity. The Fa­ther rather de­sires that you draw out your heart to the hun­gry, and that you min­is­ter to the af­flicted souls; then shall your light shine in ob­scu­rity, and even your dark­ness shall be as the noon­day. Then shall the Lord guide you con­tin­u­ally, sat­is­fy­ing your soul and re­new­ing your strength. You shall be­come like a wa­tered gar­den, like a spring whose wa­ters fail not. And they who do these things shall re­store the wasted glo­ries; they shall raise up the foun­da­tions of many gen­er­a­tions; they shall be called the re­builders of bro­ken walls, the re­stor­ers of safe paths in which to dwell.’”

• Jesus’ birthday text from writing of

150:8.9And when he had ceased read­ing from the law, he turned to Isa­iah and be­gan to read: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me be­cause he has anointed me to preach good tid­ings to the poor. He has sent me to pro­claim re­lease to the cap­tives and the re­cov­er­ing of sight to the blind, to set at lib­erty those who are bruised and to pro­claim the ac­cept­able year of the Lord.”

• Isaiah (first)

153:3.3Then one of the Je­ru­sa­lem spies who had been ob­serv­ing Je­sus and his apos­tles, said: “We no­tice that nei­ther you nor your apos­tles wash your hands prop­erly be­fore you eat bread. You must well know that such a prac­tice as eat­ing with de­filed and un­washed hands is a trans­gres­sion of the law of the el­ders. Nei­ther do you prop­erly wash your drink­ing cups and eat­ing ves­sels. Why is it that you show such dis­re­spect for the tra­di­tions of the fa­thers and the laws of our el­ders?” And when Je­sus heard him speak, he an­swered: “Why is it that you transgress the com­mand­ments of God by the laws of your tra­di­tion? The com­mand­ment says, ‘Honor your fa­ther and your mother,’ and di­rects that you share with them your sub­stance if nec­es­sary; but you en­act a law of tra­di­tion which per­mits un­du­ti­ful chil­dren to say that the money where­with the par­ents might have been as­sisted has been ‘given to God.’ The law of the el­ders thus re­lieves such crafty chil­dren of their re­spon­si­bil­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the chil­dren sub­se­quently use all such monies for their own com­fort. Why is it that you in this way make void the com­mand­ment by your own tra­di­tion? Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you hyp­ocrites, say­ing: ‘This peo­ple hon­ors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they wor­ship me, teach­ing as their doc­trines the pre­cepts of men.’

• Jesus’ birthday text from writing of

190:5.4As they walked along, Je­sus said to them: “How slow you are to com­pre­hend the truth! When you tell me that it is about the teach­ings and work of this man that you have your dis­cus­sions, then may I en­lighten you since I am more than fa­mil­iar with these teach­ings. Do you not re­mem­ber that this Je­sus al­ways taught that his king­dom was not of this world, and that all men, be­ing the sons of God, should find lib­erty and free­dom in the spir­i­tual joy of the fel­low­ship of the broth­er­hood of lov­ing ser­vice in this new king­dom of the truth of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s love? Do you not re­call how this Son of Man pro­claimed the sal­va­tion of God for all men, min­is­ter­ing to the sick and af­flicted and set­ting free those who were bound by fear and en­slaved by evil? Do you not know that this man of Naz­a­reth told his dis­ci­ples that he must go to Je­ru­sa­lem, be de­liv­ered up to his en­e­mies, who would put him to death, and that he would arise on the third day? Have you not been told all this? And have you never read in the Scrip­tures con­cern­ing this day of sal­va­tion for Jew and gen­tile, where it says that in him shall all the fam­i­lies of the earth be blessed; that he will hear the cry of the needy and save the souls of the poor who seek him; that all na­tions shall call him blessed? That such a De­liv­erer shall be as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. That he will feed the flock like a true shep­herd, gath­er­ing the lambs in his arms and ten­derly car­ry­ing them in his bo­som. That he will open the eyes of the spir­i­tu­ally blind and bring the pris­on­ers of de­spair out into full lib­erty and light; that all who sit in dark­ness shall see the great light of eter­nal sal­va­tion. That he will bind up the bro­ken­hearted, pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives of sin, and open up the prison to those who are en­slaved by fear and bound by evil. That he will com­fort those who mourn and be­stow upon them the joy of sal­va­tion in the place of sor­row and heav­i­ness. That he shall be the de­sire of all na­tions and the ev­er­last­ing joy of those who seek righ­teous­ness. That this Son of truth and righ­teous­ness shall rise upon the world with heal­ing light and sav­ing power; even that he will save his peo­ple from their sins; that he will re­ally seek and save those who are lost. That he will not de­stroy the weak but min­is­ter sal­va­tion to all who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness. That those who be­lieve in him shall have eter­nal life. That he will pour out his spirit upon all flesh, and that this Spirit of Truth shall be in each be­liever a well of wa­ter, spring­ing up into ev­er­last­ing life. Did you not un­der­stand how great was the gospel of the king­dom which this man de­liv­ered to you? Do you not per­ceive how great a sal­va­tion has come upon you?”