Day 203: Isaiah 40-43 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by ARMA. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Welcome to day 203. We are in Isaiah chapter 40 to 43, a brand new section of the book of Isaiah. Now this may be, I don't know, disorienting for a lot of you, but I promise this part of Isaiah is going to be 200 almost years removed from the stuff that we've already read. So I got to give you a lot of context. If you've done the reading for the day, then everything that I'm gonna say is only gonna make the reading like make more sense. If you haven't done the reading, then you're gonna be confused. So stop the video, stop the audio, go do the reading. We are in a brand new section of the book of Isaiah. Actually, I would kind of map it out this way. Let me give you a bird's eye view. Like always, I'm going to give you context clues. I'm going to give you a ton of nerdy nuggets, and I'm always going to leave you with a timeless truth. We got a lot of context today. We may be heavier on the context than on the nerdy nuggets today. We'll see how the episode shapes out. So Isaiah chapter 1 to 39 is happening in Isaiah's lifetime. All the stuff in Isaiah chapter 1 to 39 is happening somewhere between 742 BC and 700 BC. When we get to Isaiah chapter 40, a hundred years have gone by. So all of the stuff in Isaiah chapter 40 to 55 are happening between 605 BC and 539 BC. Now remember, the Babylonians are gonna come and invade Jerusalem, burn it to the ground, demolish the temple, and cart off everybody as captives to Babylon in 586 BC. Jeremiah lives through the exile. Isaiah does not live through the exile because Isaiah is not 250 years old. So everything that we have in Isaiah chapters 1 to 39 is actually happening in Isaiah's lifetime, 742 to 700 BC. He has a long ministry career. It's 42 years. Some scholars would say maybe 46 years of just prophesying, preaching, being an oracle and a mouthpiece for God. Now the events happening in chapters 40 to 55 are events happening post exile. There is no temple. Jerusalem has already been destroyed. The people are in exile. I don't care what way we slice this. Isaiah didn't write this stuff. At least not Isaiah from Jerusalem. Now, most scholars believe that there's at least three different authors for the book of Isaiah because there's no way that Isaiah is alive for chapters 40 to 55. And the tense of it being written is not predictive. He can predict events all the way in Jesus's lifetime. It's not about prediction. It's literally he's describing things and he's alive. Now, before we move on, authorship in the ancient world does not work like authorship in the modern world.

So this is a modern understanding of authorship that you're going to have to leave at the door. Okay, the moment you cross the threshold into the ancient world, it is a cross-cultural experience. And I can't bring American ideas with me when I travel to Thailand or travel to Italy or travel to Germany. I realize that travel is a cross-cultural experience. So you probably don't know this, but the Iliad, Homer, all types of works had multiple authors. This is not a weird thing. This is not an odd thing. This doesn't take away from the validity of the book of Isaiah. And most likely what happened is that in the same way that Elijah and Elisha had what was called a school of the prophets, Isaiah probably has something similar. And there are people who are part of his school of the prophets who are going to pick up the baton and they are going to write in the spirit of Isaiah. So everything from chapters 1 to 39 is like, I mean, doom, gloom, disaster, and destruction. I mean, this. That's harsh. You know, the mountain will be soaked with blood and God's sword is gonna be soaked with blood and I'm gonna kill all y'all. I'm gonna bring the Assyrians. I'm gonna bring the Babylonians. I'm gonna burn y'all to the ground. I like the first whole, the first 40, the first 39 chapters are quite difficult. Like just they're intense. Like there's no way around the fact that this is an emotional being. God is an emotional being. And the language is very intense. And then all of a sudden you hit chapter 40 and let's like just read chapter 40 together. Here we go. Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Ha ha ha.

We go from I'm gonna kill y'all. I'm gonna send the Assyrians to murk y'all. I'm gonna murder y'all. My sword's gonna be soaked with blood. We go from that to now that has happened. Like the discipline has happened. The harsh thing has happened. Jerusalem has got burned to the ground. The Babylonians have come. They have invaded Jerusalem. They have violated the women and starved the children. They did all of that. And now they are living with the consequences of their disobedience. And God doesn't shove their sin in their face. Here's God's tone. Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Now, let's put that in context because the New Testament is going to use this. But the first thing that I want you to see is the tone totally changes. There's no more prophecy about destruction, okay?

Because in Isaiah's lifetime, destruction was coming. And so Isaiah is predicting and prophesying that destruction is coming. Now, once we get to Isaiah chapter 40, destruction has happened. It is in the past. And what does God say? He says, hey, speak tenderly. He's speaking this through the prophet. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, and that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Now, I'll say this like a broken record, okay? It took the Exodus to get Israel out of Egypt, but it takes the exile to get Egypt out of Israel. And the reality is that they did pay for their sins. Exiles, terrible. Like, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. Like, you're ripped out of your home. You're stripped naked. You're forced to march barefoot over the desert into Babylon and live somewhere that you've never lived. It's not like you can escape or go home. Like, this is torture. This is terrible. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego get castrated. They become eunuchs in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. I mean, God, God enacts judgment.

And then He just wants them to know, if you're wondering whether or not your sin has been paid for, it has. Like, I know that I had to discipline you and chastise you, but I still love you. You're still my people. And now I'm gonna be a God that speaks comfort. So the tone of the whole book totally changes. Also, not only is there no temple, there's no more Jerusalem, there's no predictions about destruction because destruction has happened, but there's no Isaiah. Literally, there's no more Isaiah. There's no more moments where, like, Isaiah goes to meet Hezekiah or Isaiah is gonna go meet Ahaz. Like, Isaiah's gone. Like, Isaiah is no longer in this next section of the book, okay? And just for anyone who's curious, everything from chapters 56 to 66 are written somewhere between 539 BC and 400 BC. So the beginning of this book starts in 742 BC and ends in 400 BC, okay? So literally, the writing of the book, the events that happen in the writing of this book span 300, almost 350 years. So, like, one person didn't write it all. That's not a problem.

That's not a scandal. That's not, like, an issue for God. They're all writing under the name Isaiah and in the authority of Isaiah. That may be weird. That may be plagiarism in the modern world. That is quite normal in the ancient world. And so now that we've kind of got that. All settled and we got a lot of context. Let's move to some nerdy nuggets. I got a lot for you. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books-A-Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one.

I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. The first thing that you're gonna notice is that the identity of the great enemy in chapters one to 39 was Assyria, but the great enemy now is going to be Babylon. So there's a third scene that we're now entering into in this book. The first scene is the Syro-Ephramatic War of chapters one through 12. The second scene is Sennacherib's invasion of Judah in chapters 13 to 39. The third, and now nearing the end of exile in Babylon. The third scene is now the exile, okay? The people are in exile. And this is why God's tone changes. His tone is not destruction. You know, I'm gonna kill you. His tone is comfort, comfort. Jerusalem is ruined. The proof that Jerusalem is ruined is chapter 40, verses one through two. Chapter 44, verses 26 to 28. Chapter 49, verses 14 to 23. Chapter 51, verses 17 to 29, okay? Jerusalem is ruined. Your judgment has come and gone. And the people are in exile in Babylon as Isaiah told Hezekiah it would happen. They had exchanged one foreign suzerain oppressor

for another and lost everything. So exactly what Hezekiah, sorry, exactly what Isaiah said would happen. Remember, he's standing there with Hezekiah. He's saying, you let the Babylonians see how much money we have? Are you crazy? Dude, the Babylonians are now gonna be the next oppressor. But they didn't look like a threat at the time. They were a fellow vassal. And lo and behold, they became a threat. Now, in the exile, the people are calling out to their true king and suzerain, Yahweh. And here's their question. You can see this in verse 47. Has Yahweh forgotten about us? In response, Yahweh speaks to His people in comfort with new oracles, assuring them that He is coming to save, that soon they would return home to Jerusalem. So now there's a promise that you're gonna return home. You're not gonna be in exile forever. So let's break this down because in chapter 40, immediately, you're gonna see this. A voice of one calling in the wilderness or in the desert, prepare a way for the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. So just so that you get some geography, okay? The nation of Israel is right up

against the Mediterranean, okay? If you go east, okay, east is the Babylonian empire, okay? The Babylonian empire's over here. In between Israel and the Babylonian empire is the desert. Okay, so all throughout the Bible, the Bible is gonna say of the Babylonians, they're coming from the north. They're coming from the north. There's a threat coming from the north. Why are they coming from the north? Because they can't go through the desert. No one marches an army through the desert. No one marches people through the desert, okay? So they have to go around the desert, which means they always come in through the north, okay? So when the Bible says that there's a voice of one calling in the wilderness, what God is saying is I'm calling to you from Israel, okay? And you're hearing me through the wilderness, okay? A lot of times we pick this up in the New Testament, we have no idea what the context is, okay? And what God is saying is I'm gonna make a road for you in the wilderness. What does that mean? You're gonna go back home. There's gonna be a road, a highway for you in the wilderness. And the same way that I parted the Red Sea, I'm gonna part the wilderness, okay? Because both the wilderness and the sea are forms of chaos.

And so God promises that the same way that, so remember it takes the exodus to get Israel out of Egypt, but the exile to get Egypt out of Israel. So the exodus and the exile are twins, okay? They're mirror images of each other. So God says in the exodus, I parted the Red Sea to get you out of Egypt and now. Now, I'm gonna part the wilderness. I'm gonna create a road for you in the wilderness. The rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together. Every valley will be raised up, every mountain or hill made low. Okay, so I'm gonna prepare a way for you out of captivity. I'm gonna part the wilderness for you and I'm gonna miraculously bring you back into the land of Israel. Now, one of the things that is gonna begin to get prophesied while they are in exile is Cyrus. Cyrus is advancing. This is chapter 41, verses two to seven. Actually, we can read it really quick. Chapter 41, and for all the history nerds out there, you're already gonna know. Cyrus is going to be the leader of the Persian Empire, okay? And the Persian Empire is gonna overtake the Babylonian Empire. So just quick history lesson, right?

The Assyrian Empire is swallowed up by the Babylonian Empire, and then the Persian Empire is swallowed up, swallows up the Babylonian Empire, and then Alexander the Great is gonna come through, is gonna swallow up the Persian Empire, and then the Roman Empire is gonna swallow up the Greek Empire. And so the way that these empires get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger is because they're cumulative, okay? So the Babylonian Empire just takes everything that the Assyrian Empire has, and on and on and on and on and on, and that is honestly a lot of, you know, that's just, that's history. Okay, chapter 41, and we're gonna start reading in verse two. Who has stirred up one from the east? Okay, this is Cyrus, who literally is in the east. Calling him in righteousness to his service, he hands nations over to him and subdues kings before him. He turns them to dust with his sword. And so Cyrus is going to be prophesied about, and who is actually going to allow these exiled Jews to go back home, and who's gonna release them back to Israel? None other than Cyrus. The last thing that we're gonna see in chapter 42,

which is really, really cool, introduces, chapter 42 is gonna introduce the idea of the servant of Yahweh, and begins the first of what a lot of scholars are gonna call the servant Psalms of Isaiah. The servant is essentially Isaiah's name for the Messiah. Okay, this is why a lot of stuff that's very familiar to Christians are the portion of Isaiah that are messianic in nature, talking about the person of Jesus. And so speaks of a coming king who would save Israel and be true to Yahweh the king in a way they never could. So the servant is actually gonna be the person who's gonna be able to be faithful to Yahweh, even though Israel could not be faithful to Yahweh. And this is what's really cool, okay? If you go to Acts chapter eight, there's an Ethiopian eunuch who wants, who desperately wants to understand what this portion of the book of Isaiah is about. And it is this portion of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 42, that the Ethiopian eunuch is reading in Acts chapter eight. Philip replies with the good news about who? Jesus. So Philip sees that the fulfillment of the book of Isaiah is found in the person of Jesus. And what's really, really cool is that Isaiah 42 is written to exiles, people in exiles, people in exile, people who were eunuchs, people who had been castrated so they can actually be

in the court of the Babylonian king. By the way, nerdy nugget, if you were gonna be in the court of a king, you were castrated, okay? Because you couldn't run the risk that your queen would be raped or sexually assaulted or impregnated with anybody else's competing seed. So you would castrate men. And also, castration makes men less aggressive. And the last thing you need is aggressive men working around the king and the queen. Why? Because these are subjugated people. These are people who are enslaved. And the thing that they want more than anything is to overthrow the king and the queen and go back to their homeland, okay? So they were castrated. So Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego are castrated men. They are eunuchs. And this is why Isaiah chapter 40 starts with comfort, comfort. God knows, man, what the Babylonians have done to you has been evil. It's been terrible. And I wanna speak a word of comfort. What's crazy is that 600 years later, there's a eunuch, there's a person who is reading this content, who's in the exact same context

as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And he hears... the words about the servant, um, of Yahweh and just so happens that the Holy Spirit sends a man by the name of Philip to begin to interpret to him that this man is none other than the person of Jesus. All right. Thomas truth for the day is that God's a God of comfort, like that God's character is nuanced and it's complex. And if you ask me, do you like rakes? I would ask, well, is it, are there leaves on the ground? If you ask me, do you like, do you like shovels? I'd be like, is there snow? Um, and God knows exactly what instrument to use, which emotions to exert, what, uh, tool to use for the season that his people are in. And so all the intense language of the first 39 chapters, you're not going to find them here, um, because the people don't need punishment language anymore. They need comfort and God immediately is there to comfort his people. And one of the big themes of the exile is that the spirit of the Lord is no longer in the temple in Jerusalem, but the spirit of the Lord got, got, uh, literally Ezekiel is going to see the spirit of the Lord lift up over the temple, move through the wilderness and come settle with them in, uh, captivity and exile. And so even in our worst season, God's there and man, he's a comforter. God knows how to comfort his people. He's not a God that prevents everything from happening, but he is a God who comforts us in the middle of turmoil. And so we have shifted gears drastically. Okay. There's a totally different section of the book of Isaiah. We're going to buckle up.

We're going to get through this section. I will see you tomorrow. Tomorrow we got day 204, Isaiah chapter 44 and 48. It's going to be really, really good. I'm loving the book of Isaiah. I can totally understand why scholars consider this to be the fifth gospel. There's so much in here that is predicting the person of Jesus. And I hope that it's encouraging to you. I hope it's a value add. I'm proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.