Isaiah 40
The book of Isaiah turns here, and the turn is felt in the very first line. Through thirty-nine chapters the dominant note has been warning - the looming judgment, the coming exile, the long consequence of a people's sin. Now, without warning, a different voice breaks in, and the first thing it does is repeat itself for emphasis: Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God (v. 1). This is the opening of what readers have long called the book of consolation, the great sweep of chapters that runs to the end of Isaiah. The exile is not denied; it is named and owned. But it is not the last word. The message to a broken Jerusalem is that her warfare is accomplished… her iniquity is pardoned (v. 2) - the hard service is over, the debt is settled, the time of comfort has come.3
Then a voice cries out to make ready: Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (v. 3). Valleys are to be lifted, mountains brought low, the crooked made straight - the road-work a kingdom would do before a king arrived, here done for the coming of God Himself, and the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together (v. 5). All four Gospels take this cry and place it in the mouth of John the Baptist, the herald who went before Jesus. The chapter then sets the frailty of everything human - all flesh is as grass - against the one thing that lasts: the word of our God shall stand for ever (v. 8). And the God who comes is announced not as a tyrant but as a shepherd who will feed his flock… gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom (v. 11).2
From the shepherd the chapter lifts its gaze to the heights, and the questions begin to thunder. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand…? (v. 12). To whom then will ye liken God? (v. 18). The nations are a drop in a bucket; the idols are blocks of wood a craftsman nails down so they will not topple; the princes of the earth are blown away like stubble. And the One who is incomparable bends His knowledge to the smallest things - He calleth them all by names (v. 26), every star in the sky. All of this answers the quiet despair of an exiled people who say, My way is hid from the LORD (v. 27). The God who is that great has not overlooked you. And so the chapter ends on the promise that has lifted the exhausted ever since: they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (v. 31).
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 40:1-2Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye My People
1Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 2Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.
After thirty-nine chapters in which the prevailing word has been warning, the book turns on a single repeated command: Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God (v. 1). The doubling is not accidental; in Hebrew, to say a thing twice is to say it with all weight and certainty. This is the opening of the long word of consolation that fills the rest of Isaiah, and every part of the first verse is tender. The verb is comfort. The objects are my people. The speaker is your God. After all the chapters of estrangement, the covenant bond is spoken again from both sides at once - my people, your God. Notice too that the comfort is commanded. God turns to His messengers and tells them to go and console a broken city, to speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem (v. 2) - literally, to speak to her heart, the warm phrase used elsewhere of a man wooing the one he loves. The God who had every right to be done with His people instead orders that they be tenderly addressed. The exile is real; the ruin is owned. But the first word over the rubble is not judgment. It is comfort.3
The reason for the comfort is laid out in three clauses, and they are worth weighing one at a time: her warfare is accomplished… her iniquity is pardoned… she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins (v. 2). The first word, warfare, can mean a hard term of military service or forced labour; the announcement is that the appointed time of hardship is finished, the tour of duty served out. The second clause goes deeper: not only is the service over, the guilt beneath it is pardoned - the iniquity that brought the exile has been dealt with and forgiven. The third clause is the most striking and the most discussed: she has received… double for all her sins. The point is not that God has been unfair, exacting twice what justice required. It is the language of a debt paid in full and more, of a discipline so complete that nothing remains to be settled. The account is not merely balanced; it is closed. This is why the messengers can speak to Jerusalem's heart with such confidence. The comfort is not a soothing lie told over an unhealed wound. It rests on something finished - the hard service ended, the guilt pardoned, the debt fully discharged.
Isaiah 40:3-11Prepare Ye the Way · Behold Your God
3The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: 5And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. 6The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: 7The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. 8The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. 9O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! 10Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. 11He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
A new sound enters: The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (v. 3). The image is drawn from the ancient world's road-work. When a king was coming, crews went ahead to build and smooth the route - filling the gullies, cutting down the ridges, straightening the bends - so the royal procession could pass in honour. Here the road is being prepared not for a human monarch but for God Himself, and the place of the work is striking: the wilderness, the desert. It is in the wasteland, the very emblem of exile and barrenness, that the highway for God is to be built. Verse 4 spells out the labour: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. Every obstacle is leveled, every low place lifted, so that nothing can hinder the coming of the LORD. The picture is of a God so determined to come to His people that the very landscape is reordered to make a way. And the work is moral as much as physical - the crooked made straight is the language Scripture uses for hearts and lives made ready to receive Him.
The purpose of the highway is named: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it (v. 5). The road is built so that glory can come - the weighty, shining presence of God made visible. And the reach of the promise is vast: not Israel only but all flesh shall see it, and see it together. What had been the hope of one covenant people opens out toward the whole earth. The closing line seals it with the surest guarantee Scripture knows: the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. This is not the prophet's hope or a hopeful reading of events; it is the declared word of God, and therefore as good as done. Then the prophet's attention shifts, and a second voice speaks: The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? (v. 6). The answer that comes is the great meditation on frailty that follows - a deliberate setting of all that is human and passing against the one thing that endures. Before the chapter can preach the everlasting Creator, it must first lay bare how fleeting everything else is.
The cry, when it comes, is sobering: All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth… surely the people is grass (vv. 6-7). Anyone who has watched the wild grass of a dry country knows the image at once - green and lovely in the morning, scorched and gone by afternoon when the hot wind blows. So it is, the prophet says, with everything human: our strength, our beauty, our achievements, the empires that look so permanent. The grass withereth. And the cause is named plainly - because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it; the same word that means breath and wind. It is the breath of God passing over the field that exposes how briefly the flower lasts. This is not despair for its own sake; it is the ground being cleared for the one thing that does not wither: but the word of our God shall stand for ever (v. 8). Set every passing thing against that single enduring fact. Kingdoms rise and fall like grass; the armies that carried Judah into exile would themselves be grass before long. But the word God speaks outlasts them all. For an exiled people tempted to think the great powers of the world were the lasting reality and God's promises the fragile thing, this reverses the whole picture. The empire is the flower. The word is forever.
Now the news itself is handed to a herald and the tone lifts from frailty to proclamation: O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain… lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! (v. 9). Zion is told to become a herald of good news - to climb where the voice will carry, to shout without fear, and to deliver the heart of the whole message in two words: Behold your God! Everything the chapter is about converges there. The God who seemed absent through the long exile is coming, and the only fitting response is to point and cry, Look - here He is. Then the herald describes the One who comes, and the description holds two pictures in a single breath. First, strength: Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him (v. 10). He comes with power, His own arm winning the victory, bringing recompense with Him. But the very next verse turns that strong arm to a gentler use, and the surprise of it is the turning point of the whole passage - the mighty arm that rules becomes the arm that gathers lambs.
The God of the strong hand stoops down: He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young (v. 11). The same arm that ruled for Him in the verse before now cradles newborn lambs against His chest. This is one of the tenderest portraits of God in all of Scripture. He does not merely own a flock; He feeds it, leads it to pasture, watches over it. He notices the ones that cannot keep up - the lambs too small to walk far, whom He gathers up and carries in his bosom, and the ewes with young, heavy and slow, whom He does not drive but gently leads at the pace they can bear. Read it against verse 10 and feel the deliberate contrast: the God who comes with a strong hand and a ruling arm is the very God who carries lambs. Power and tenderness are not at war in Him. The strength is real, and it is bent entirely toward the care of the weak. For a people worn down by exile, faltering and afraid they will be left behind, this is the shape of the God who is coming - not a conqueror who tramples the slow, but a shepherd who slows His own pace to keep them.
Isaiah 40:12-26To Whom Then Will Ye Liken God?
12Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? 13Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? 14With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? 15Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. 16And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. 17All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.
From the shepherd carrying lambs, the chapter lifts suddenly to the heights and a barrage of questions begins - questions whose only possible answer is God: Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? (v. 12). The images are deliberately staggering. The oceans of the world - held in the hollow of his hand, a single cupped palm. The whole expanse of the heavens - measured off with the span, the distance from thumb-tip to little finger of one outstretched hand. The dust of the earth weighed by the basketful, the mountains set on a scale like a grocer weighing produce. Every picture takes something we cannot fathom and makes it small enough for God to handle with ease. Then the questions turn from creation to wisdom: Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? (v. 13). No one taught God how to make the world or shewed Him the way of understanding (v. 14). He had no advisors, no instructors, no committee. The greatness being pressed here is not only power but utter self-sufficiency. The God who is coming to comfort His people is the God who measures oceans by the handful and needed no one's counsel to do it.
Now the chapter turns that vastness on the thing exiled Israel feared most - the great empires - and cuts them down to size: Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing (v. 15). To the people of Judah, Babylon was overwhelming, world-spanning, irresistible. The chapter answers with two unforgettable images. A drop of a bucket - the single drip left clinging to the rim after the water is poured out, so slight no one notices it. The small dust of the balance - the speck of dust on a weighing-pan, far too light to tip the scale. That, the prophet says, is what the mightiest nations amount to before God. Even Lebanon, with all its famous cedar forests and its wealth of beasts, would not be sufficient to make a fire and an offering grand enough for such a God (v. 16). And then the climax, which goes further than any of it: All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity (v. 17). Not merely small - nothing; and not merely nothing but less than nothing. The empire that held God's people captive was, measured against the One who made the seas, an emptiness. This is comfort disguised as cosmology: the power that looks unbeatable to you is, to your God, a drop on the rim of a bucket.
18To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? 19The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains. 20He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved. 21Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: 23That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
Out of that vastness comes the question at the chapter's heart: To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? (v. 18). It is a challenge. If God measures oceans by the handful and counts the nations as less than nothing, what could you possibly set beside Him as His equal? The prophet answers with biting irony by describing how an idol is actually made. The workman melteth a graven image, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold (v. 19) - a god that has to be manufactured, cast and gilded by human hands. And for the poor man who cannot afford gold and silver? He chooseth a tree that will not rot and hires a skilled craftsman to carve it into an idol that shall not be moved (v. 20) - that is, one nailed down securely so it will not topple over. There is the whole absurdity in a phrase: a god that must be fastened in place so it does not fall down. Then the prophet presses the obvious: Have ye not known? have ye not heard?… hath it not been told you from the beginning? (v. 21). This is not new information. From the foundations of the world it has been plain who God is: It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain (v. 22). He sits enthroned above the whole globe, to whom all its peoples look as small as insects, and He spreads out the vast sky as easily as a person pitches a tent. Set that beside a block of wood nailed to a stand. The contrast is the argument.
The same God who unrolls the heavens like a tent-cloth does something else with the powerful: That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity (v. 23). The rulers who seem so permanent - the kings and governors and judges whose decisions shape nations - God reduces to nothing and vanity, the same emptiness he assigned the nations in verse 17. And the next verse drives it home with the chapter's recurring image of grass and wind: Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown; yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble (v. 24). Barely are the great ones of the earth established - scarcely planted, scarcely rooted - before the breath of God passes over them and they wither like the flower of verse 7, and the storm carries them off like dry stubble. The point is not contempt for human authority but perspective. The powers that hold a captive people in their grip, that look immovable and eternal, are in truth as rooted as a cut flower in the wind. Then comes the second sounding of the chapter's great question, now spoken by God Himself: To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One (v. 25). The question that began as the prophet's challenge to idolaters becomes the voice of the Holy One Himself, daring all creation to name His equal - and waiting, because there is none.
25To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. 26Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.
The argument reaches its summit by sending the eye upward into the night sky: Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth (v. 26). Step outside, the prophet says, and look up. Who made the countless stars? The God of Israel did. And He does not merely make them in an uncountable mass; He bringeth out their host by number, marshalling them like an army led out rank by rank, and - the detail that takes the breath away - He calleth them all by names. The stars beyond all human counting are each known to Him personally, summoned by name, and held so securely by His might that not one faileth - not one goes missing, not one falls out of its place. The chapter is careful in how it speaks of this making: God created these things, brought forth their host, called them out - the language stays close to the awe of the act itself, marvelling that He did it and that He sustains it, rather than pausing to explain the manner of it. And the comfort folded inside this immensity is about to be made explicit. If God numbers and names every star and never loses one, the despairing thought that He has lost track of you cannot stand. The same care that holds the galaxies in place is bent toward His people.
Isaiah 40:27-31They That Wait upon the LORD Shall Renew Their Strength
27Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God? 28Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 31But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
The chapter now turns the everlasting strength of God toward the exhausted: He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength (v. 29). The God who never grows weary does not hoard His tirelessness; He hands it out, precisely to those who have run out - the faint, those with no might left. And then comes a contrast that is the key to the whole closing promise: Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall (v. 30). Take the very picture of natural human strength - youths, young men, the fittest and most vigorous, the ones least likely to tire - and even they will faint, even they will utterly fall. Human strength at its peak still has a bottom; the strongest runner eventually drops. The verse clears away every illusion that we might, by sheer youth or grit or willpower, simply outlast our troubles on our own. We cannot. The young and strong collapse. This is not meant to crush but to redirect, for the next verse names the one source of strength that does not run dry - and it does not belong to the strong. It belongs to those who wait.
The chapter lands on the promise that has carried the weary ever since: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint (v. 31). The little word But turns the whole thing. The youths faint and fall - but there is another way to be strong, and it is not by being young or mighty. It is by waiting upon the LORD. Those who do, renew their strength - literally exchange their spent strength for fresh, trading what is exhausted for what is His. And the renewed life is pictured in three movements that, tellingly, descend rather than climb. First, the heights: they shall mount up with wings as eagles, rising on the wind the way a great bird spreads its wings and is lifted without beating them. Then the road: they shall run, and not be weary. Then, last and lowest and hardest, the plodding daily walk: they shall walk, and not faint. The order matters. Anyone can feel carried in the soaring moments; the deeper miracle is the strength to walk - to keep putting one foot in front of the other through the long, unglamorous stretch - and not faint. And all of it hangs on that one posture: not striving harder, but waiting. The strength does not come from within; it comes from the everlasting God who never tires, drawn down by the act of waiting on Him.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 40 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Radak side by side - useful for the doubled imperative nachamu, nachamu (v. 1, “comfort ye, comfort ye”), for qavah (v. 31, the “wait” that means to hope and to be bound together like a cord), and for the run of rhetorical questions in verses 12-26 that press the Creator's incomparable greatness.
- Isaiah 40 ↔ Matthew 3 · Mark 1 · Luke 3 · John 1 · 1 Peter 1Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 40 to the New Testament - the voice in the wilderness (v. 3) quoted of John the Baptist in all four Gospels, the word that stands for ever (v. 8) named the gospel in 1 Peter 1:24-25, and the LORD feeding His flock as a shepherd (v. 11) read beside the good shepherd of John 10.
- Isaiah 40 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 40 - the legal sense of “warfare accomplished” and “double for all her sins” in verses 1-2, the punctuation question of where the voice cries in verse 3, and the much-discussed imagery of the Creator measuring the waters and stretching out the heavens in verses 12 and 22.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye My People
- Isaiah 61:1-2he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted... to comfort all that mourn.The comfort commanded in verse 1 taken up as the mission of the Anointed One - the words Jesus read of Himself.
- Luke 2:25the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.Isaiah’s promised comfort (v. 1) looked for in a coming person - the consolation of Israel.
- Isaiah 66:13As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.The same verb as verse 1 - the book ends, as it turns here, on the comfort of God.
- 2 Corinthians 1:3-4the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation.The comforting God of verses 1-2, named by the apostle as the source of all consolation.
- Matthew 5:4Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.The promise of verse 1 pronounced as a beatitude - comfort for those who grieve.
Prepare Ye the Way · Behold Your God
- Matthew 3:1-3In those days came John the Baptist... The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord.Verse 3 quoted of John the Baptist - the herald who prepared the way for Christ.
- John 1:23I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.The Baptist applies verse 3 to himself - the voice preparing the way of the Lord.
- 1 Peter 1:24-25All flesh is as grass... but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.Verses 6-8 quoted and named the gospel - the everlasting word that outlasts the withering grass.
- John 10:11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.The shepherd of verse 11 named in person - the good shepherd who lays down His life.
- Ezekiel 34:11-12I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out... so will I seek out my sheep.The same promise as verse 11 - God Himself coming to shepherd His scattered flock.
To Whom Then Will Ye Liken God?
- John 1:3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.The Creator of verses 12 and 26 - the One by whom all things were made.
- Colossians 1:16-17by him were all things created... and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.The God who stretches out the heavens (v. 22) and holds every star (v. 26) - the One by whom all things consist.
- Psalm 147:4He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.The same wonder as verse 26 - the God who names every star in the sky.
- Isaiah 44:9-17They that make a graven image are all of them vanity... he maketh a god, and worshippeth it.The folly of idol-making spelled out further (vv. 18-20) - a god that must be carved and fastened down.
- Job 38:4-7Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?... when the morning stars sang together.The same questions as verses 12-14 - the Maker who needed no counsel to found the world.
They That Wait upon the LORD Shall Renew Their Strength
- Matthew 11:28-29Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest... ye shall find rest unto your souls.The promise of verses 29-31 in person - renewed strength and rest for the weary who come to Him.
- Psalm 27:14Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.The same verb and the same promise as verse 31 - strength for the heart that waits on the LORD.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.The strength given to the faint (v. 29) - God’s power resting on those who have no might.
- John 15:5I am the vine, ye are the branches... for without me ye can do nothing.The waiting of verse 31 as abiding - strength drawn from union, not summoned from within.
- Lamentations 3:25-26The LORD is good unto them that wait for him... It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait.The posture of verse 31 - the goodness of the LORD toward all who wait for Him.