NOTES for Isa 49:1-6
Speaking about his prophetic ministry, Isaiah utters bitter words: "I have labored in vain, and spent my strength for nothing." What disappointed the prophet so deeply? At first glance, it appears that his ministry, on the contrary, was quite successful. He became, in effect, the prophet of the first aliyah, that first repatriation, that return of the Jews from captivity to the land of their fathers, which everyone, both those who set out for Judea and those who preferred to remain in Babylon, perceived as the triumph of God's people, as the beginning of blessed times that would be crowned by the soon coming of the Messiah.
Isaiah began to speak about the imminent end of the captivity when the Babylonian Empire still seemed unshakable, and when what he had spoken about actually happened, the prophet became a true national hero. But this did not make him glad, and his own words allow us to understand why. He says that God made him a gatherer of the people, the one through whom He wants not only to gather the people but also to renew them spiritually. God wants Yahwism itself to become different, for the witness about Him to resound throughout the whole earth, for His people, a significant part of whom had by that time remained in the communities of an already quite extensive and numerous diaspora, to become His witness for all who seek truth and spiritual life.
Meanwhile, the people did not correspond at all to the task that had been set. There was euphoria over the decree of Cyrus the Great about the return; there were intense, almost feverish messianic expectations. But the closedness of the community was already showing itself, along with a certain contempt for the nations and self-isolation explained by the demand for strict observance of ritual purity. In short, all the traits had already appeared that would later bloom luxuriantly and produce the worst examples of Pharisaic religiosity.
Under such conditions, there could be no question of any witness to the nations, not because there were not enough missionaries, since Jewish mission was quite active over the following centuries, but because these missionaries bore witness to themselves, to their people, to their tradition - in short, to anything at all except the main thing needed for spiritual life: living communion with God and how to find it.
This was not done out of malice or because the missionaries considered those whom they addressed unworthy. They were simply absolutely certain that until those whom they addressed became Jews in every respect just like themselves, no communion with God was possible for them. Thus the mission among the nations that God wanted to organize through His people, scattered throughout the whole civilized world of that time even before Christ's coming, failed. It had to be postponed until Christian times and entrusted to the Church.