Isaiah 49:10

These verses close the second of Isaiah’s four Servant Songs, in which God speaks of the Servant he has chosen and the work he sends him to do. The songs are found in chapters 42, 49, 50 and 52–53, and this one runs through Isaiah 49:1–13. It belongs to the part of Isaiah often called the Book of Comfort (Isaiah 40–55), which speaks to God’s people in their exile in Babylon. They had been carried away from home, their land lay desolate, and their temple had been destroyed. Many of them wondered whether God had forgotten them.

Earlier in the song the Servant tells how the LORD called him from birth (Isaiah 49:1–3). Then he speaks of his discouragement: “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought” (Isaiah 49:4). The LORD answers by giving him a larger task. He is to restore Israel and also to be “a light to the Gentiles”, bringing God’s salvation “unto the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:5–6). Verse 8 continues that answer with God’s promise of help, and the verses after it describe what the Servant’s work will bring about.

“Thus saith the LORD” marks what follows as God’s own word, carrying his full authority and certainty. The name is Yᵉhôvâh, the eternal God who keeps his covenant with Israel.

The word “acceptable” is râtsôwn, which means delight, favour, good pleasure or will. An “acceptable time” (ʻêth, time) is a season of God’s favour, chosen by his own good pleasure, when he acts in kindness to carry out his purposes. The next line says the same thing in other words: “a day of salvation”. The word for day, yôwm, means a day or a span of time, and yᵉshûwʻâh, salvation, means deliverance, help or victory. Scripture uses it even of rescues God brings about through men, as when Jonathan “hath wrought this great salvation in Israel”, and it always traces deliverance back to the LORD. Here the LORD brings it himself.

“Heard” and “helped” (ʻâzar) pair the same way. God has listened to his Servant and has stepped in to give him aid. “I will preserve thee” uses nâtsar, to guard or keep, and promises that God will keep the Servant safe through the opposition and suffering ahead until his work is done.

Paul quotes this verse and then applies it to the present age of the gospel: “For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). The time of favour promised to the Servant has arrived in Jesus Christ, it is open to all who believe, and now is the moment to respond to God’s grace. The Father always heard and helped his Son, and he kept him through his earthly ministry and through the cross until his saving work was finished.

“And give thee for a covenant of the people” is the weightiest line in the passage. A covenant, bᵉrîyth, is a binding agreement, an alliance or a treaty, and in Scripture God is usually the one who makes it, with its terms and its promises. Here God gives the Servant himself as the covenant. The Servant mediates God’s covenant and is also its living embodiment, the one through whom God’s promises are kept and people are brought into fellowship with him. The LORD said the same of his Servant in an earlier song, where he promises to hold his hand and keep him (Isaiah 42:6).

“The people” (ʻam, a people) are first Israel. Since verse 6 has just made the Servant a light to the Gentiles, the covenant reaches the nations as well. This is the new covenant God promised through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and Jesus made it in his own blood: “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). He is the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6), and through his cross he has made Jew and Gentile one, reconciling both to God (Ephesians 2:14–16). In him all the promises of God are “yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

The Servant is sent “that thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth”. The verb is ‘âmar, the ordinary word for saying, telling or commanding, and the power of this saying lies in what is said and in the God who sends the Servant to say it. “Go forth” is the word that opens the prison door. “Shew yourselves”, which can also be rendered “appear”, calls those hidden in the dark to come out into the light and be seen, free and known.

The darkness is chôshek, from a root meaning “to be dark”. It means darkness you can see, and in Scripture it also pictures misery, death, ignorance and wickedness. For the exiles the prisoners were real captives in a foreign land. For all of us they are the people bound by sin, despair and the powers that hold them down, living apart from the light of God’s truth and presence. God gave his Servant the same mission in the first song, “to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house” (Isaiah 42:7).

Jesus took up this work when he read Isaiah 61:1–2 in the synagogue at Nazareth: “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, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18–19). He promised, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). He is the light of the world (John 8:12), and Matthew says that in him “the people which sat in darkness saw great light” (Matthew 4:16).

Once the prisoners are free, Isaiah pictures them as a flock on the move. “They shall feed in the ways” uses râʻâh, to tend a flock, to pasture or to graze, a word that can also mean to rule or to keep company with someone as a friend. The flock grazes along the roads as it travels, and “their pastures shall be in all high places”, on the bare heights where nothing usually grows. In the rugged, dry hill country of Israel, finding grazing for the flocks was a constant struggle. God promises food on the open road and on barren hilltops, wherever his people happen to be.

Verse 10 names what threatens travellers in the desert and promises protection from each threat. They will be spared hunger (râʻêb) and thirst (tsâmêʼ). The heat (shârâb, the glare of the desert, also used of a shimmering mirage) and the sun (shemesh) will not smite them, the verb nâkâh meaning to strike or wound. The road from Babylon crossed dry, harsh country, and God promises to bring his people through it safely.

The reason follows: “for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them”. The word for mercy, râcham, means to love and to show compassion. It is the tender pity that moves God to act for his people, and his leading flows from it. Two verbs describe the leading. Nâhag means to drive or lead, as a shepherd drives a flock or a man drives a chariot. Nâhal comes from a root meaning to flow, and from there it means to conduct, protect and sustain. He leads them “by the springs of water”, mabbûwaʻ (a spring, a place where water bursts out) and mayim (water), and in dry country a spring is life itself.

This is a new exodus. God led Israel out of Egypt with a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night (Exodus 13:21), gave them water from the rock (Exodus 17:6) and fed them with manna for forty years (Exodus 16:35). He will do the same again for the exiles coming home. The picture is that of the shepherd psalm: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters” (Psalm 23:1–2).

Jesus is that shepherd. He calls himself the good shepherd (John 10:11), the door through which his sheep go in and out and find pasture (John 10:9), who came so that they “might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). He is the bread of life (John 6:35), he offers living water (John 4:10), and he says that rivers of living water will flow from the one who believes in him (John 7:38). He took on himself, on the cross, the curse of sin and the judgment that would have struck us, and he has promised, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

“And I will make all my mountains a way” uses sûwm, to put, set or place, and God speaks in the first person because he does this work himself. Mountains (har) are the great barriers to any traveller, and the road from Mesopotamia back to Jerusalem crossed deserts, rivers and mountain country. God calls them “my mountains”, because they are his to shape as he wills. He turns them into a road.

“And my highways shall be exalted.” A highway, mᵉçillâh, is a built-up road raised above the land around it, and rûwm means to be high or to raise up. God’s people will travel home on a clear, raised road, a journey made safe, easy and honourable by his hand. Isaiah gave the same picture at the start of the Book of Comfort, where every valley is exalted and every mountain made low to prepare the way of the LORD (Isaiah 40:3–4), and Luke applies those words to John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus (Luke 3:4–5). God says elsewhere, “I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). He leads his people “in the paths of righteousness” (Psalm 23:3).

The mountains here are the real hills on the road home from exile, and they also stand for every obstacle that lies between God’s people and his purposes for them, whether political, spiritual or personal. In Christ God has made the way. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). The cross, a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others (1 Corinthians 1:23), became the road by which sin, condemnation and death were overcome and people are brought home to the Father.

“Behold, these shall come from far.” The verb bôw means to go or come, and the distance lies in râchôwq, far or remote. The verse moves from “far” in general to particular directions, the north (tsâphôwn) and the west. The word for west is yâm, “sea”, because the Mediterranean lies to the west of Israel. Last comes “the land of Sinim”, the most distant place named. The repeated “these … these … these” shows group after group arriving from every side, so that God’s people come home from wherever they have been scattered.

God made the same promise earlier: “I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 43:5–6). Zechariah carries it forward, with God saving his people from the east country and the west country and bringing them to dwell in Jerusalem (Zechariah 8:7–8).

Since the Servant is a light to the Gentiles, this gathering also looks ahead to the nations coming to God, fulfilling his promise to Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed in him. Jesus said, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). Paul tells Gentile believers that they who were once far off “are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13), and John sees the gathering complete in “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” before the throne (Revelation 7:9).

The passage ends in praise. “Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains.” The word for joyful, gîyl, means to rejoice or be glad, and Strong’s gives its root sense as spinning round under strong feeling. “Break forth” is pâtsach, to break out, and “singing” is rinnâh, a raised voice, a ringing cry of joy. The heavens, the earth and the mountains stand for the whole creation, which is called to rejoice. The Psalms call on creation in the same way: “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad” (Psalm 96:11–12), and the sea, the floods and the hills join in before the LORD who comes to judge the earth (Psalm 98:7–9). John hears every creature in heaven and on earth praising the One on the throne and the Lamb (Revelation 5:13).

The reason for the song is that “the LORD hath comforted his people”. The verb nâcham has the root sense of sighing or breathing deeply, and it means to pity and to console. God’s comfort reaches deep sorrow and brings real relief. It is spoken of as already done, so certain is it. The next line looks ahead: he “will have mercy upon his afflicted”. Mercy is râcham again, the compassion that moved God to lead his people by springs of water in verse 10, and it is closely related to rechem, the word for womb, a mother’s tender love. The afflicted, ʻânîy, are the depressed, lowly, needy and poor, from a root meaning to press down or afflict. That was Israel’s condition in exile, and God’s mercy reverses it. “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy” (Psalm 103:8). Even in judgment, “the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies” (Lamentations 3:31–32).

The very next verse gives Zion’s complaint: “But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me” (Isaiah 49:14). God’s call to sing comes first, so his assurance of comfort stands before his people voice their doubt, and the rest of Isaiah 49 answers that complaint.

This comfort comes to its fullness in Jesus, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He gives a peace “which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), he sends the Holy Spirit, whom he calls the Comforter (John 14:26), and he calls the weary to himself: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30).

Paul’s “now” still stands. We live in the day of salvation that God promised his Servant, so his favour is open today, and today is the time to receive it. Because God fixed this time by his own good pleasure, we can trust his timing in the rest of life as well, even when his plans unfold slowly.

The Servant’s work reaches the far places of the earth, and those who follow him share in it. The church carries the word that sets prisoners free to people in every land, and shows God’s care in practical ways to the poor and afflicted, as people who were themselves gathered from far away.

And the passage ends in song. Heaven and earth are called to rejoice over what God has done for his people, and his people can join them, thanking him for the comfort already given and trusting him for the mercy still promised. The God who turned mountains into roads for the exiles leads his flock today, and he will bring them at last to living fountains of waters.