Comfort My People

Isaiah had given warnings, and hardly anybody listened. Then the warnings came true: the city was emptied out and the people were marched away east to Babylon, where they sat down among strangers and wondered whether God had finished with them. Isaiah’s words for those people are nearly all comfort, and he spoke them long before they needed them. They are poetry, made to be heard.

First God tells somebody to go and speak kindly. “Comfort my people. Comfort them, says your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem. Tell her that her hard time is over and her sin is taken away — that she has had from the Lord’s hand twice over for everything she did.” Then a voice starts shouting out in the empty country, the way a man shouts when a king is coming and the road is not ready. “A voice cries in the wilderness: get the road ready for the Lord. Make the paths straight for our God. Every valley will be filled in, every mountain and hill brought down, every crooked road pulled straight, and the rough ground turned into a plain. And the glory of the Lord will come out where everyone can see it, and every living person will see God’s rescue — because the Lord has said so.” Then the voice tells Isaiah to shout, and Isaiah asks what he is supposed to shout. “What shall I cry? — People are grass. Everything beautiful about them is like a flower out in a field. The grass dries up, and the flower drops off. But the word of our God stands forever.” Then the good news is handed to somebody to carry, with orders to get up high with it. “You who bring good news to Jerusalem, go up a high mountain. Lift your voice with all the strength you have. Lift it up. Do not be afraid. Say to the towns of Judah: look — your God! The Lord is coming with strength, and his arm comes with power. He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs up in his arms, and go gently with the mothers.”

Then Isaiah asks a string of questions and waits for no answers. “Who has measured out the sea in the hollow of his hand, and the sky with the span of his hand, from thumb to little finger? Who has held the whole earth in one handful, and weighed the mountains on a pair of scales? Who ever gave him advice, or taught him how to judge anything?” “All the nations together are one drop off the bottom of a bucket. All the trees of Lebanon would not make enough firewood for his fire.” And Isaiah takes one short look at the people who carve gods out of wood: a workman makes the image, a goldsmith beats gold over it, and the workman picks a wood that will not rot and works out how to stand it up so it does not fall over. “Do you not know? Have you not heard? He sits above the circle of the earth, and the people on it are like grasshoppers. He put the sky up like a room and spread it out like a tent to live in, and he turns rulers into nothing.” God asks one question himself, in the middle of it. “So who will you compare me to? Who am I like? says the Holy One.” “Lift your eyes up and look. Who made all these? He brings out their army by number, and calls every single one of them by name. Not one of them is missing.”

And then, having made everybody feel about the size of a grasshopper, Isaiah says what he has been getting to all along. “Jacob, why do you say — Israel, why do you keep saying — my way is hidden from God, and my God has forgotten my case? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The God who is from forever, who made the far ends of the earth, does not get tired, and nobody has ever found the bottom of his understanding.” “Young men get hungry. Strong young men get tired and give out. But those who wait for God will get their strength back. They will grow new feathers like eagles. They will run and not get tired, and walk and not go hungry.”

Then God talks about his servant, and says who the servant is: Jacob. Israel. The people themselves. “Jacob is my servant, and I will help him. Israel is my chosen one, and my soul has taken him. I have put my Spirit on him, and he will bring fair judging to the nations.” “He will not shout. He will not raise his voice, and nobody out in the street will hear him. He will not break a reed that is already bent. He will not blow out a wick that is only smoking. He will keep going until fair judging is standing up on the earth — and the nations will trust his name.” Then God speaks straight to him. “I called you, and I will hold your hand and make you strong. I gave you to be a covenant for a people and a light for the nations — to open eyes that cannot see, and to bring prisoners out of the prison, and the people sitting in the dark out of the dark house.” A covenant is a forever promise. After a promise like that, Isaiah wants noise. “Sing a new song to the Lord. Give him glory from the end of the earth, all of you who go down to the sea and sail on it, and the islands, and everybody living on them. Let the wild country be glad, and the tent-people of Kedar, and let the people of Petra shout from their mountain tops.”

And then God says a thing about that servant which is not a compliment. “Listen, you deaf people. Look up, you blind people, so that you can see. Who is blind, if it is not my own servant? Who is deaf, if it is not the ones I put in charge? You saw it happen many times and paid no attention. Your ears were open and you did not hear.” And Isaiah looked, and there were his own people robbed and carried off, and nobody anywhere saying give them back. He knew who had let it happen, and why: they would not walk in God’s ways, and the war came and burned all round them, and even then nobody took it to heart.

Then comes an invitation, shouted the way a man shouts in a market. “Everybody who is thirsty, come to the water! And you who have no money — come, buy, and eat. Buy wine and good rich food, without money, without paying anything at all. Why spend money on what is not bread, and wear yourself out for what never fills you up? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.” “Come to me and listen, and your soul will live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you — the sure and holy things I promised David.” And Isaiah says: do not wait. “Look for God while he can be found. Call on him while he is near. Let the man doing wrong leave off his ways and turn back to the Lord — and he will find mercy, because God forgives on a very large scale.” “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways, says the Lord. As far as the sky is above the earth, that is how far my way is from your ways, and my thoughts from your thoughts.” “Rain comes down out of the sky, and snow, and does not go back up until it has soaked the ground and made things come up in it — seed for the sower and bread for the eater. My word is like that. Whatever goes out of my mouth does not come back empty. It does the thing I sent it to do.” “You will go out with joy and be brought along glad. The mountains and the hills will burst out singing in front of you, and every tree in the field will clap with its branches. Where the bramble was, a cypress will grow; where the nettle was, a myrtle — a sign that never wears out.”

There is one more thing before the comfort finishes, and it is sharp. “Shout out loud. Do not hold any of it back. Lift your voice like a trumpet, and tell my people what they have been doing.” They had been fasting — going without food on purpose, to show God they were sorry and meant it. And they were annoyed, because nothing had come of it. “They come looking for me every day, as if they were a people who had done right all along. And they say: why did we go without food, if you did not see it? Why did we make ourselves small, if you never noticed?” “Because on the very day you go without, you go after everything you want, and you lean hard on every person who works for you. You fast, and it ends in an argument and a fist fight. Bending your neck over like a ring, and lying down in sackcloth and ashes — I never once called that a fast.” Then he says what he does call one, and there is no food in it. “Undo the straps of wrongdoing. Untie the knots of the hard bargains you have tied people into. Let the ones being crushed go free, and tear up every unfair account. Share your bread with the hungry. Bring the poor with no roof into your own house. When you see somebody with no clothes, put clothes on him — and do not walk past your own relatives.” “Then your light will break out like morning, and you will heal up quickly. Then you will call, and God will listen; and while you are still talking he will say: look, here I am. Your darkness will turn into the middle of the day.” “You will be like a garden with plenty of water, like a spring that never fails. Your people will build up the old ruins, and you will be called the one who mends broken walls.” And one thing more: keep the rest day. Do not spend it chasing what you want. Call it a delight.

Then somebody stands up and says who he is, though he never gives his name. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to mend the people whose hearts are broken, to tell prisoners they can go and blind people that they will see; to say out loud that this is the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day when accounts get settled — and to comfort everybody who is crying.” “He sent me to give the people mourning in Zion something beautiful instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, a fine coat instead of a heavy heart. They will be called trees the Lord planted. They will build up ruins nobody alive can remember standing, and make the empty towns new again.” And Zion — the city herself — answers him, and she sounds like somebody dressed for a wedding. “Let my soul be glad in the Lord. He has put the robe of rescue on me and the coat of joy, a turban on my head like a bridegroom and jewels on me like a bride. As the earth pushes up its flowers, and a garden its seed, that is how the Lord will make what is right come up in front of all the nations.”

That was Isaiah’s comfort: comfort at both ends, and in between a road in a desert, a servant too gentle to break a bent reed, and water for people with no money. The man with the Spirit on him was sent to do all of that.