NOTES for Isa 52:7
Isaiah of Babylon was among the first to speak of the imminent end of Babylonia and the return of the Jewish people to the land of their ancestors. When he began preaching, this seemed utterly incredible: nothing pointed to changes coming soon. And yet they came, swiftly and, for most people, unexpectedly: the Persian army under Cyrus the Great took Babylon by storm and brought that empire to an end. For the Jews, this meant the possibility of returning to the land of their ancestors: shortly after the war ended, in 517 BCE, Cyrus issued a decree for the exiles to return.
Who, then, was Isaiah: a foreteller of the future? A seer who saw everything that was destined to happen? Probably not, after all. It is quite possible that the prophet was not even thinking about political events when he foretold the imminent end of captivity. Something else had been revealed to him: he understood that the spiritual condition of the people had changed and that the period of repentance was over. Of course, this cannot be understood by the human mind alone, however perceptive: one must see into the depths of the human heart—and not just one heart, but many. Only God can do that. But God can reveal His vision to whomever He wishes. And then the good news rings out over the mountains: the time of the people's redemption has come—and with it, the time of the Messiah's coming.
Indeed, the good news was above all news of the coming of the Messiah, who was expected immediately after the end of captivity and the people's return to the Promised Land. Of course, the city and the Temple, of which only the foundation remained, still had to be rebuilt, but this task seemed easily achievable to those preparing to return. What mattered most was that the time of the Kingdom of God had finally come, the time when God Himself would rule His people. In essence, most faithful worshippers of Yahweh understood the messianic Kingdom as the Kingdom of God: they saw the Messiah primarily as a Ruler sent by God, who was to restore an independent Jewish state and establish laws in it that accorded with the Torah.
This was important: none of those waiting for the chance to return to the land of their ancestors wanted to lose it again through breaking the commandments given by God. The Kingdom of God was to be the Kingdom of God Himself, where He rules according to His own laws through the Messiah whom He has sent and placed at the head of the people. Of course, this picture of an ideal society and state was somewhat schematic, and hopes for its immediate realization were somewhat naive. And the coming of the Messiah was still several centuries away.
And yet it truly was a very different people that was returning from captivity. A people for whom apostasy was worse than death, a people for whom following the Torah was so self-evident that it did not even need to be mentioned, a people that no longer wanted a return to the past, but wanted to move forward—into the Kingdom of the Messiah, which they still imagined in very earthly terms, but which they sincerely awaited. A new stage in the history of God's people was beginning, one that was to end at the threshold of the New Testament.