NOTES for Isa 61:1-11

Today's reading again offers us the messianic preaching of Isaiah of Babylon. Among other things, it is remarkable also because, as the Gospel tells us, Jesus read this very passage in the synagogue at Nazareth. Still, in the text of today's passage itself there is no sign that it speaks about the Messiah rather than about the prophet himself, testifying to his mission: to proclaim the nearness of the messianic Kingdom (vv. 1-3). Of course, Isaiah speaks here chiefly about the coming return of the Jews to the land of their fathers and about the rebirth of Judea after decades of desolation (vv. 3-6). At the same time, however, the prophet mentions the poor, or "the needy," to whom he has been sent to bring the good news of consolation (v. 1).

It is quite possible that the first verse refers to a completely concrete situation connected with the persecutions to which the Jewish community was probably subjected in the final years of Babylonia's existence. Still, the Hebrew word usually translated into Russian as "needy" or "poor" carries another meaning as well, connected with the understanding of poverty as a spiritual state, one that presupposes complete surrender of oneself to the will of God. Such poor people could receive what they were waiting for only when the Messiah promised by God came into the world, and with Him the messianic Kingdom. And when Isaiah says that he has been sent to bring such poor people good news, he evidently wanted thereby also to bear witness to the nearness of the Kingdom awaited by the poor.

And again before us is an interweaving of the historical perspective with the messianic perspective: on the one hand, the end of the exile and the return of the Jews to the land of their fathers was an event that fully fit within the bounds of earthly history; on the other hand, it became the beginning of a process that truly, centuries later, ended with the coming of the Savior. Of course, everything did not happen as easily and quickly as the repatriates returning to Judea expected, and perhaps as Isaiah himself expected. But the only spiritual force that shaped the post-exilic history of the people of God was precisely the coming of Christ, and in this sense the messianic perspective that becomes so clearly visible specifically at the end of the era of exile is, of course, visible not by accident.

The spiritual world has its own laws and its own flow of time. But all the lines of history at the end of time converge at one point: where the Risen One, who brought the Kingdom to the world, triumphs.