Isaiah 42:5

“Thus saith God the LORD” opens the commission as an oracle, a message that comes straight from God and carries his own authority. Two of his names stand together. ʼêl means God, and the word is also used of strength and might. Yᵉhôvâh, “the LORD”, is his personal covenant name, the name by which he bound himself to Israel and keeps faith with them. So the mighty Creator of everything is also the God who has made promises to his own people.

Before he says a word about his Servant, God tells us who he is. He “created the heavens, and stretched them out”. The verb for created, bârâʼ, means to create, and here it speaks of God bringing the heavens into being. “Stretched them out” (nâṭâh) pictures the sky spread out by his hand like a vast canopy. He “spread forth the earth”, where râqaʼ is a word for beating or spreading something out flat, “and that which cometh out of it” (tseʼĕtsâʼ), everything the ground brings forth. Three lines in a row begin “he that”, and together they show one God who made all that is above and below, as Scripture says from its first verse: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

Then the verse comes down to each person: he “giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein.” God goes on giving, so the one who stretched out the heavens is also the one who keeps you breathing today. Paul told the Athenians that God “giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25), and a psalm says that when God takes away the creatures’ breath they die, and when he sends forth his spirit they are created (Psalm 104:29–30).

This opening matters for everything that follows. Isaiah 40–55 (Isaiah 40–55) speaks to God’s people facing exile in Babylon (Jeremiah 29:10), surrounded by the many gods and carved images of their captors. The chapters just before this one proclaim God’s majesty (Isaiah 40) and expose the emptiness of idols. By naming himself as the Creator and Sustainer of all life, the LORD shows that the one who sends the Servant has all the power needed to finish the Servant’s work, however hard it looks. The God who brought the universe into being was well able to bring his people home and keep every promise he had made to them.

The New Testament shows the Son at work in this creating. “All things were made by him” (John 1:3), “for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth” (Colossians 1:16), and he is “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). The same Lord who gives breath also gives new life by the Spirit. Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth” (John 6:63), and he promised rivers of living water to those who believe in him, speaking of the Spirit they would receive (John 7:38–39).

“I the LORD have called thee in righteousness”. The call comes from God, so the Servant’s mission is God’s own appointment and part of his plan to save. “In righteousness” means the call is just and fully in keeping with God’s holy character, and the Servant he calls is himself upright, fitted for the work by his integrity.

God then makes two promises: “and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee.” To hold someone’s hand is to guide him, to give him strength and to stay close beside him. To keep him is to guard and preserve him, so God promises to protect his Servant against every adversary until the work is done. He gave his people the same kind of assurance through Moses: “he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deuteronomy 31:6).

Jesus lived his whole ministry under this promise. At his baptism the Father’s voice said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). God kept him through death itself, raising him up and keeping his Holy One from seeing corruption (Acts 2:24–27).

The Servant is given “for a covenant of the people”, and “the people” here is Israel. The word bᵉrîyth means a covenant, a binding agreement, alliance or league. Its origin is often traced to a root meaning to cut, since covenants were made by passing between the pieces of a sacrifice, although the history of the word is uncertain. God’s covenants were the foundation of Israel’s life, from his promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3) to the covenant sealed with blood at Sinai (Exodus 24:8).

The striking thing is that the Servant is given as the covenant itself. In his own person he is the way God keeps his promises to his people and brings them into a renewed relationship with himself. Jeremiah foretold a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and at the Last Supper Jesus said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). Hebrews calls him the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6–13), established through his death on the cross, and Paul says that Jesus Christ came “to confirm the promises made unto the fathers” (Romans 15:8).

The second gift reaches beyond Israel. The Servant is “a light of the Gentiles”, where gôwy is the word for a foreign nation, the peoples outside Israel. ʼôwr means light, illumination, and here it stands for salvation, truth and guidance brought to people who live in darkness. The two lines belong together: the Servant is a covenant for Israel and a light for the nations, so his work takes in the whole world.

God meant to bless all nations from the beginning, and Isaiah says so more than once. “And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising” (Isaiah 60:3). In the second Servant Song God says, “I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

When the infant Jesus was brought to the temple, Simeon took him in his arms and called him “A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32), holding both halves of this verse together. Paul and Barnabas, turning to the Gentiles at Antioch, quoted Isaiah 49:6 as the Lord’s command to them (Acts 13:47). The risen Jesus sent his followers to “teach all nations” (Matthew 28:18–20), so the church’s mission to every people grows straight out of the Servant’s commission here.

Verse 7 says what the Servant will do: “To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” The verb pâqach means to open, especially the eyes, and figuratively to become observant, so opened eyes see and understand. The last two lines say the same thing twice with growing force, moving from the prison to the deepest darkness of the prison house.

“Sit” is yâshab, which also means to dwell or remain, and it describes people who have settled into the dark and stayed there, unable to get themselves out. The word for darkness, chôshek, means literal darkness and is used figuratively for misery, death, ignorance, sorrow and wickedness. Isaiah had already promised, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2), and he later speaks of God’s will “to loose the bands of wickedness” and “to let the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 58:6). Zacharias sang that the coming Saviour would “give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79). For people carried away to Babylon, prisoners and darkness were words they knew from their own lives, and their deepest need was the healing of their spiritual blindness.

Jesus opened his public ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth by reading the matching promise from Isaiah 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18–19). In reading it he told them plainly that he was the one Isaiah spoke of.

“I am the LORD: that is my name”. God names himself with Yᵉhôvâh, the name drawn from the verb “to be”, which speaks of the self-existent, eternal God who revealed himself as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). In naming himself he sets himself apart as the one true and living God, faithful to his covenant. Moses heard the same claim: “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me” (Deuteronomy 32:39).

His glory, kâbôwd, is his splendour, honour and majesty, his own worth and the shining of his presence. His praise, tᵉhillâh, is the adoration and worship offered to him in song and word. A graven image, pᵉçîyl, is a carved idol, and its very name points to the human hands that hewed it. Idols are lifeless and powerless: “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not” (Psalm 115:4–7). God says it again a few chapters later, “and I will not give my glory unto another” (Isaiah 48:11), and the psalm calls every family of the peoples to “Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name” (Psalm 96:7–8).

This verse comes right after the Servant’s commission for a reason. God is about to do great things through his Servant, and every bit of the glory for them will be his. The word “jealous” is absent from the verse, yet this is God’s holy jealousy, which Moses names: “for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14). It is the zeal of his perfect holiness for the honour that belongs to him alone, and it guards his people from wasting their worship on things that can give them nothing back.

“Behold” (hinnēh) calls us to look at something plain to see. “The former things”, riʼshôwn, are the first or previous things, the events God foretold that have already come to pass. Isaiah does not list them, and they include his past acts of salvation and judgment, such as bringing Israel out of Egypt. Each one adds to his record of keeping his word.

“New things” are châdâsh, things new and fresh, different from what came before. God says, “new things do I declare”, and the verb nâgad means to announce openly, to make something known face to face. “Before they spring forth I tell you of them” pictures a plant pushing up out of the ground. God tells his people what is coming before the first green shoot appears, because the whole plan is his.

This is the test God set for the idols in the chapter before (Isaiah 41): “Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods” (Isaiah 41:22–23). The idols can say nothing, and the LORD declares “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). He does the same in Isaiah 48:3–6, where he tells his stubborn people that he announced things long beforehand so that they could never credit an idol with them. His word is certain because the God who speaks it is the God who brings it to pass. Peter calls it “a more sure word of prophecy”, spoken by “holy men of God” who “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:19–21).

For Isaiah’s first hearers the new things included the return from Babylon and the coming of the Servant. They reach on to the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31, Hebrews 8:6) and to the new creation, when the one on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Christ himself is the greatest of God’s new things. He told his disciples of his betrayal before it happened, “Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he” (John 13:19), and he foretold his suffering, death and rising on the third day (Matthew 16:21). In him “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and he is “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God” (Revelation 3:14).

Every breath you take today is a gift from the God who stretched out the heavens, and that is reason enough for awe and thanks. The same God who held his Servant’s hand and kept him is the God we trust with our own lives, and his care reaches from the sky above us to the air in our lungs.

If Christ has opened your eyes, you were once among those who sat in darkness, and his light now shines through his people to others, near and far. That is the Servant’s mission carried on in the church, in the gospel we share and in the justice and kindness we show. The verse about God’s glory asks us to notice what receives our praise. Success, wealth, the approval of others and our own comfort can quietly take the place of a carved image, and the LORD keeps his glory for himself because he alone is worthy of it. And because every former thing he promised has come to pass, we can wait for the new things he has promised with confidence and hope.