Isaiah 42:15

Just before this, in Isaiah 42:1–9, the LORD introduces his Servant, who brings justice to the nations so gently that he spares even a bruised reed (Isaiah 42:2–3). The chapter then breaks into a new song of praise (Isaiah 42:10–13), and verse 13 turns to the God who sends and strengthens the Servant. He is a fierce and active warrior. This gave Israel deep assurance, because the quiet, healing work of the Servant has the overwhelming might of the LORD behind it. In God’s plan, tender grace and great power belong together.

“The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man.” The word gibbôwr means a powerful man, a warrior, a champion, a man of valour. To go forth is to march out into battle on purpose. Israel had known this God at the sea. They had been told there, “The LORD shall fight for you” (Exodus 14:14), and after their deliverance from Egypt they sang, “The LORD is a man of war” (Exodus 15:3).

Isaiah’s hearers needed to hear it again. These chapters speak to a people facing the Babylonian exile, overwhelmed by empires that threatened to swallow them, and feeling abandoned. The nations around them credited their victories in battle to their own gods. Isaiah shows them the LORD as the one true Divine Warrior, who fights for justice, for his covenant and for the vindication of his people.

“I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself.” Now God speaks in his own voice, and he piles up words for his restraint. The first, châshâh, means to hush or keep quiet. The second, chârash, means to be silent, to keep silent. Strong’s sets this beside a verb meaning to engrave or plough and links the two only through the idea of secrecy, and other lexicons list them as separate verbs, so the word here simply means silence. “Refrained myself” shows that the silence was God’s own choice. He held in his power and his indignation.

The “long time” may be the years of Israel’s turning away from him, the years of oppression they endured, or the patience that came before the exile and the return that followed it. Among the nations a silent god could be taken for a weak or indifferent one, and people might ask whether he was there at all. God’s silence was patience, giving time for repentance and for his plans to come to their fullness. Peter says the same of the Lord’s patience today, that he waits because he wants people to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). That patience has a limit, and in this verse the limit is reached.

“I will make waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs.” The verb chârab can mean to parch through drought and so to lay waste. In this sense it means that a place lies in ruins, so that settled life there comes to an end. Mountains and hills stood for strength and permanence, and they were often the high places where idols were worshipped. Their herbs, the green growth on them, were the life and fruit of the land. God will strip all of it.

“I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the pools.” The verb for dry up, yâbêsh, means to dry up or wither, and it can also mean to become weak or to be ashamed. Here it is the drying of water and the withering of plants, and the same verb comes back at the end of the verse for the pools. The word for islands, ʼîy, means a coast, a coastland or an island, and Strong’s also gives dry land. The rivers become dry ground, their channels empty of the water that gave life. For Isaiah’s hearers water meant life, fruit and prosperity, and in a dry land the pools were where life gathered. The judgment reaches every source of it.

“And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known.” After judgment comes guidance. The word for blind, ʻivvêr, can mean physical blindness, and in Isaiah it often describes blindness of the spirit, the inability to see and respond to God’s truth. Israel, God’s own people, had his law and still turned from his covenant, and the verses that follow lament that blindness (Isaiah 42:18–20). The word reaches the nations as well, who were strangers to the true God. God’s promise to bring the blind is his own gracious step toward people who are lost and astray.

The way they knew not fits the exile, where the familiar roads home to Jerusalem were lost to them. God promises to lead them back himself through the wilderness, as he once led Israel by a pillar of cloud and of fire (Exodus 13:21). He has just declared that he is doing new things (Isaiah 42:9–10), and this road home is one of them, wholly his own planning. Jeremiah confesses, “O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself” (Jeremiah 10:23). The wise man tells us to trust in the LORD with all our heart (Proverbs 3:5–6), and David’s shepherd leads him in paths of righteousness (Psalm 23:3).

This promise also ties back to the Servant, who is sent to open blind eyes (Isaiah 42:7). God himself is at work in that restoring of sight.

“They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed.” Turned back, çûwg, means to flinch or go back, to retreat, and figuratively to turn away from God. People who marched forward in confidence are forced into retreat. Ashamed, bûwsh, means to turn pale, to be ashamed, to be disappointed. “Greatly” stands for bôsheth, a noun from the same root meaning shame, both the feeling and the condition. Together they speak of a deep and public disgrace, the exposure of a confidence that was misplaced from the start.

“That trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods.” Trust, bâṭach, means to be confident or sure, to take refuge. A graven image, peçel, is an idol carved from wood or stone. A molten image, maççêkâh, is cast from melted metal. Both are things people make with their hands. The word for gods is ʼĕlôhîym, a plural form that names the true God in many places and here names false ones. The people speak to cast metal and call it their gods, and the claim collapses when they need it most.

Idolatry ran through the life of the nations around Israel. They worshipped many gods in physical images, believed the images carried divine presence and power, and trusted them for prosperity, victory and protection. Israel felt the pull of those gods, especially through alliances with foreign nations. Isaiah mocks the idol-maker at length in Isaiah 44:9–20. The psalmist describes idols made by human hands that are as powerless as those who trust them (Psalm 115:4–8), and Jeremiah sets the folly of idols beside the living God (Jeremiah 10:1–16). The law forbade such worship from the start (Exodus 20), and among the curses for disobedience was this very shame (Deuteronomy 28:15–68). Paul describes people who exchanged the glory of God for images (Romans 1:21–25).

The two verses stand side by side. The blind whom God leads are kept, and those who lean on idols are turned back. The verses that follow turn to Israel’s own blindness and deafness, so the warning is aimed at God’s people as much as at the nations.

The New Testament shows us that the gentle Servant of this chapter and the warrior God of these verses meet in Jesus Christ. In his first coming he was the quiet Servant who “shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street” (Isaiah 42:2). Before his accusers “he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). Yet the might of the LORD was fully in him. He came without a physical sword as the warrior against sin, death and the powers of evil. He cast out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28), he cried from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), and through his death and resurrection he disarmed principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). When he comes again he rides out as the rider on the white horse to judge and to finish the defeat of his enemies (Revelation 19:11–16). He is the Lamb who was slain and the Lion of Judah who will prevail.

The picture of labour finds an echo in him too. Jesus himself spoke of a woman in labour whose anguish turns to joy once the child is born (John 16:21), and through his suffering God brought forth redemption and new life. So the patience and the decisive action of verse 14 are seen in his two comings, the first marked by patient suffering and grace, the second by judgment and the making of all things new. “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Even now, anyone in Christ is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Christ also fulfils the promise to the blind. He is the light of the world (John 8:12). He gave sight to a man born blind (John 9:1–7), and he opened the way to the Father, calling himself the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). His promise to his followers carries the last words of verse 16: “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

Against the idols of verse 17 stands the one who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9), and who offered himself once for all to put away sin (Hebrews 9:26). Those who trust in carved and cast gods are turned back and ashamed. Of those who trust in him Paul writes, “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:11), and Peter says the same of the chief corner stone laid in Zion (1 Peter 2:6).

These verses hold together what we are quick to pull apart. The God who holds his peace for a long time is the God who rises with a war cry. The God who dries up rivers is the God who leads the blind home and makes their darkness light. His silence is real patience, and his power is always bent toward keeping his word to his people.

When God is quiet for a long time, verse 14 tells us that he is holding back on purpose and that his “now” will come. When the road ahead is unknown, verse 16 gives his promise to lead the blind on paths they have never walked and to bring them to the end of it still in his care. Verse 17 shows where every other trust ends, whether its object is carved, cast or simply loved too much. The trust Isaiah calls for rests on the LORD, who goes out to fight for his people and stays with them all the way.