NOTES for Isa 9:1-21

Today’s reading includes a messianic hymn (vv. 1–7) linking the Messiah’s earthly ministry with Galilee—a place that was unremarkable in religious terms. There were no major Yahwistic religious centres here like those farther south in Samaria, and even Jerusalem with its Temple was, by local standards, quite far away. Yet none of this prevented Galilee from hearing the preaching of the Messiah-Christ, nor from becoming the place where the Saviour spent His childhood. Outward grandeur and ancient tradition do not always further God’s work. Who knows what Jesus’ childhood would have been like had He spent it not in quiet Nazareth but in Jerusalem?

God’s purpose often requires quiet and obscurity, especially at the beginning, when it is only starting to unfold. Human designs, by contrast, often presume from the outset the noise, fame, and earthly grandeur that fallen humanity loves so much (vv. 8–10). It is no accident that today’s reading contrasts universally despised Galilee with the Kingdom of Israel.

The irony was that Galilee belonged to this state, though not entirely, yet was regarded there as a remote backwater of no interest or distinction. All the country’s large cities and significant political and religious centres lay farther south, in Samaria. Galilee was a border region already inhabited in part by Gentiles (which is why the prophet calls it “of the Gentiles,” v. 1). But centuries passed, and only memories remained of the Kingdom of Israel, whose rulers had taken pride in the grandeur of what was, in fact, a very small country. Today, the best-known city on its territory is not even Bethel—the religious capital of the North and one of the most ancient Yahwistic religious centres—but Nazareth, which did not yet exist at the height of the Northern Kingdom and later remained wholly obscure until it was made famous by the One to whom Isaiah bore witness.