Isaiah 40:1-2

New Catholic Bible

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 40:1 Over a century had passed since the death of Isaiah. The Jewish people had lost their independence. The process of decline seemed irreversible. Jerusalem fell in 587 B.C., and then came the Exile. Beginning in 550 B.C., a new people entered the scene in the Near East. They were not Semitic but Aryan; they were the Persians and were led by a man who would make history: Cyrus. Within ten years, he made the East subject to him; to the peoples who had been oppressed, crushed, and deported by the Babylonians, he appeared as a liberator. From that point on, stories, oracles, and songs began to appear among the exiled Hebrews that extolled God’s work in the history of the world. The time was now past in which idols held sway; they saw the true God, the only God, in control of events that were leading to the salvation and liberation of his people. This noble idea of God and this new hope of deliverance burst forth in the “Book of Consolation,” which is also known as Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah (chs. 40–55).
   In 539 B.C. Babylon fell. Cyrus gave the Israelites leave to return to their homeland and practice their own religion. The most religious among the Jews began to think that the time of the “new covenant” or “new testament” announced by the prophets (Jer 31:33; Ezek 36:26) had arrived. Should they perhaps see in Cyrus the Lord’s messenger, a “messiah?” But God’s Messenger, who would complete his work, was not Cyrus, although Cyrus was a glorious figure in human history. It would be necessary to wait for this Messenger to come in a humbler form, that of a just man who expiates by his own suffering for the sins of all humanity. Thus, amid the cries of hope for a new Exodus, there is already present a purer expectation: the expectation of God’s authentic Messenger, whose portrait is sketched in the four “Servant Songs.”
2. Isaiah 40:1 A minority among the deportees has reflected on Israel’s extraordinary history: Is it possible that God formerly delivered his people by so many miracles only to see the whole process end in exile? In light of Cyrus’ dazzling military sweep, the idea was born that a new Exodus was on the way, an exodus even more marvelous than the liberation from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land.
3. Isaiah 40:1 From the very outset, this second part of the Book of Isaiah has a new tone: that of consolation. An unknown prophet arises in the night of exile. He realizes that God now speaks of love and forgiveness and will never again change his language. The prophet’s most obvious call is to speak to his people about the strength and tenderness of God’s love for them. The day will come when the voice will be that of John the Precursor, who will lead his fellow countrymen on the path of conversion and open the way for Christ.