NOTES for Isa 40:11

Thus the prophecy about future destinies turns to the consolation of the very people to whom so many rebukes had been addressed. Now the sins have been paid for, twice over, which usually calls to mind the provision of the law that a thief had to repay twice the value of what was stolen. Of course, far from all sinners were thieves in the literal sense, and theft is not the only vice, but that is unimportant at the moment: no one has the right to exalt himself above robbers, for other sins, which often seem “permissible,” are no better. But now forgiveness comes, and with it the hope of a new and qualitatively different life in harmony with the Creator’s will.

Quite naturally, after the promise of hope the prophet begins to speak of the Lord’s greatness, of how He can neither be compared with anything nor imagined. Here Isaiah’s words recall to some extent the final chapters of the Book of Job, where Job’s questions fall away after the Creator reveals His incomprehensibility to him. The situation here is different, of course: unlike Job, the people of Israel did not suffer without cause. Yet even now, when the sinners have apparently repented of their sins and at last “understand everything,” the Lord shows once more that both He Himself and His mercy surpass every degree of our understanding.

For us, the Bible is a word of consolation. People opening it for the first time most often say that it is a book about cruelty, vengeance, and the inevitability of punishment. But it is enough to make an effort and you will hear what God says to the human person, and how and what He taught His people. He says, "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God." All flesh: that is, no one is rejected, there are no better and worse people, no righteous and sinners; He offers salvation to everyone. When we read this text and the parable of the one lost sheep, we can understand this apparent injustice of merciful love. He seeks everyone, even when the others feel that they have been abandoned to their fate. When the one being sought is you, lost and thirsting for salvation, this is understandable and obviously right. It is harder to admit that for the moment you can wait while another person is found.

Through the prophet Isaiah the Lord calls His people to be comforted, yet He leaves 99 sheep in the mountains for the sake of one that has gone astray. The Lord "comes with might, and His arm rules," yet He takes the lambs in His arms and carries them at His breast.

These are not contradictions, although it may appear that community does not go hand in hand with individuality, or strength with tenderness. But the Lord shepherds the whole flock - the Church; it is all His body. And at the same time He died for each of us, and even if only one person remained on earth, the Lord would still have died for him on the Cross and, dying, would have looked at him with love and tenderness.

The Lord conquers our enemies with a strong hand, yet He also supports us if we stumble and carries us in His arms if we no longer have the strength to walk. But the most astonishing thing is that we are His children, and He calls us to the same thing: to be strong in weakness, to support, comfort, and strengthen the weak, and humbly allow ourselves to be comforted in weakness and sorrow; to live together, love one another, be the one Body of Christ - the Church, and personally answer for ourselves before God, standing firmly before Him in our individuality and trying to become again what He created us to be.

Babylonian Isaiah was the first to say that the time of exile was drawing to an end, that the people had atoned for their sins and that the road to Judea, to the land of the fathers, would soon open to them again. Then a fully natural question arose before him in that situation: what is the people of God? That people, that community of Jerusalem residents deported to Babylon, with which the history of exiled Jewry had begun, no longer existed. There was a community, but it was different, new. New both spiritually and religiously. In essence, a new people, a new Jewry. A people that had received the chance to live another, second historical life. What connects it with the former people to which the Jerusalem residents deported to Babylon had belonged? Historical continuity? But is that not an illusion? What is historical memory?

What is a people, any people? Grass that dries up in the dry steppe under the rays of the hot summer sun. Here today, gone tomorrow. But can the people of God be like that? Surely God must have a plan for His people. His people cannot be drying grass in the field of history. So what makes the Jewish people God's people? The answer to the prophet was the vision revealed to him: the glory of God, the shining Presence moving through the wilderness toward Jerusalem.

Once, soon after the Babylonians devastated Jerusalem, another prophet, Ezekiel, in another vision had seen this same shining Presence leaving Jerusalem. Leaving because there was no longer room for God in Jerusalem. Not because of the Babylonian soldiers who destroyed the Temple, but because of those servants of God who had defiled it long before those Babylonian soldiers made the hidden thing visible. And now God was ready to return to the emptied city, to the ruined Temple.

The way had to be prepared for Him. The road had to be made level. And participation in that task alone could make the community born in Babylon the true people of God. Neither national features nor religion make God's people God's people, but active participation in carrying out God's design for the salvation of humanity. And witness to God, who had given His people a new historical life. A witness that all Judea would hear from Zion. And the whole world.