40:1–2  Comfort and give solace to my people, says your God; speak kindly to Jerusalem. Announce to her that she has served her term, that her guilt has been expiated. She has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

This is where scholars divide the book of Isaiah, and say, “Well, the first part of the book was written by Isaiah himself, and this second part of the book was written by a guy called Second Isaiah, some hundred years later, who lived during the time of Israel’s exile.” Well, the structures of Isaiah, including the seven-part structure, totally discount that idea. This is very much a part of the book of Isaiah, very much a part of this particular unit of chapters, thirty-six through forty, which parallel chapters six through eight, in the book of Isaiah. I show that in my book, The Literary Message of Isaiah.” What happens here is a complete turn-around. Here, the book of Isaiah begins with the Vision of Isaiah where we saw the Lord’s people, Israel, are rebelling. “The Lord has reared sons, brought them up but they have revolted against me. And the heavens and the earth are called as witnesses against the Lord’s people who are witnesses of the Sinai covenant. “Israel does not know. My people are insensible. They have forsaken the Lord, spurned the Holy One of Israel, lapsed into apostasy,” and then the judgments of God set in, through the king of Assyria and his agency, which are the consequences resulting from Israel breaking the covenant.

All the things the king of Assyria did to the people of God help to bring them back to reality. And the people of Zion or Jerusalem, in chapter thirty-seven, had passed the test of faithfulness, and there is a reversal of circumstances there. The Assyrians had been the world power, in their day, and now that Assyrian power is brought to grief, “even at Zion’s gates,” even at the gates of Jerusalem, as they’re trying to deal the death blow, as it were, to God’s people. So this is a time to be comforted. It’s Jerusalem that’s addressed here. It’s that level of people, the one’s who’ve passed the test. They have served their term.

Whenever the iniquities of the people bring about covenant curses, the curses have to endure for a time. They’re not just there today and gone tomorrow. The curses rest upon the people of God for a time. They’re natural consequences. What was prophesied forty years ago by Isaiah is now fulfilled in the days of king Hezekiah. That wickedness, or the effects of transgressions of former generations, took time to be fulfilled. But there comes a time when the people faithfully endure the effects of former transgression, can turn it around. Abraham did that, in the case of the famine. He delivered three-hundred souls with him, from the famine. They call came down and lived with him in the Promised Land. He turned curses into blessings. And so it is, here. She has served her term, like a pregnancy. When it’s full term, then there is deliverance. Her guilt has been expiated. By whom? Partly by her suffering the curses of the covenant. By her experiencing the effects of transgression and faithfully doing so, and then eventually the Lord reversing and turning it into a situation of blessing again. That is how her guilt is expiated. Also we see that guilt is expiated by the Lord himself, because there is no curse reversal if it can happen without the Lord doing it. And he does it all based on the law of justice. He himself pays the price of transgression, as we see in chapter fifty-three, so that the people may operate under the law of mercy, if they repent. And so her guilt is expiated by that, by the Lord.

Remember, in chapter six, where the angel brings an ember that he takes with tongs from the altar of atonement, and touches it to Isaiah’s mouth, and says, “See, this has touched your lips. Your sins are taken away, your sins are atoned for, as in verses six and seven. The Lord does that. The altar of atonement, in the book of Isaiah, says God, himself, is likened to a lamb who expiates guilt. “She has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” So long as she didn’t repent, the law of justice operates and continues until she repents and the situation reverses. So, eventually she does so. “Double for all her sins,” implies that she suffered the consequences, but also that she’s been able to reverse the situation. The Lord’s “hand,” there, is the metaphor describing the king of Assyria. He is the one that meted out the punishment. The Lord has two hands. The right hand is his Servant, and the left hand is the king of Assyria.

40:3  A voice calls out, In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; in the wilderness pave a straight highway for our God:

And in this scenario, here in this scene, in the first few verses of chapter forty, there is a vision going on. The prophet is having a vision of the Lord, as he did in chapter six. In Isaiah’s seven-part structure, chapter forty directly parallels chapter six. In chapter six Isaiah sees the Lord. And the seraphs, there, are surrounding the throne of God, and they have a cosmic view of everything. And Isaiah does not have that view, in chapter six. He’s looking from below, up toward the Lord. There he’s having this vision. And here, in this instance, he’s also having a revelatory experience, but it’s a little different. It’s more of an audition; he’s hearing things. And yet, he’s also seeing things. But what he sees here is a cosmic vision that the seraphs have, in chapter six. In chapter six, the seraphs praise God, saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts. The consummation of all the earth is his glory.” It implies a cosmic vision. They see the big picture, the whole earth and its consummation bringing to pass its fulfillment, or the purpose of its creation. And Isaiah doesn’t see that. But he does see it in this chapter, in chapter forty. From verse twelve, until the end, there appears a great cosmic vision, or a vision of the whole world as a creation. He sees the heavens and the earth. He sees what’s going on, on the earth, like a big picture, like the seraphs do. And even though he doesn’t come right out and say, “Guess what guys, I’ve see this,” he does imply that’s what he’s seen. All the things he says from verse twelve and on are things that he’s seen in this vision. He sees things but he doesn’t come out and say it. But he does let us know things: that the earth is round, for example. When we read those verses we’ll be able to see that he’s looking down from above. And in chapter six he’s looking from below, upward-- the exact opposite.

And here, the emphasis is on an audition, of the things that he hears. And one of the things he hears is a voice calling out: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; in the wilderness pave a straight highway for our God.” Well, what happens in the desert and wilderness, in the book of Isaiah? What happens there is that the people wander through the wilderness on a return exodus to the Promised Land. All through the forties, and even in chapter seven we was that those who lived in the wilderness eat cream and honey, right? That the whole land, there, reverts to wilderness. And those who survive eat cream and honey, and live in the land there. It implies that there is a remnant that survives in the wilderness. The remnant doesn’t survive in the cities. The king of Assyria destroys the cities. And those who survive go out from the cities, in an exodus, and wander through the wilderness like the Israelites of old, under the protection of the Lord’s cloud of glory. And they end up in the Promised Land, in a renewed Promised Land, and are given inheritances there, in the Millennium, that will endure throughout the Millennium.

So the way of the Lord is the way of return. They return to him. They repent—which means to return, in Hebrew—then he returns to them, when they do so. Like in chapter thirty-five, beginning in verse eight: “There shall be highways and roads which shall be called “The Way of Holiness,” for they shall be for such as are holy. The unclean shall not traverse them. On them shall no reprobates wander. But the redeemed shall walk them. The ransomed of the Lord shall return; they shall come singing to Zion, their heads crowned with everlasting joy.” And so this voice calls out in the desert: “Prepare the way for the Lord.” The New Testament identifies John the Baptist as a “voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” Matthew applies the fulfillment of this verse of Isaiah, to John the Baptist. Is that true? Can Matthew do that? Yes, of course he can. What was John the Baptist’s role? It was as a forerunner to the coming of Christ, to his first coming. By that very fact it establishes the pattern for a forerunner for Christ’s coming, or the coming of the Lord. And that’s also the case for his Second Coming. In Isaiah the coming of the Lord is preceded by a Servant’s mission to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord to his people.

And it is in the desert. “In the desert” implies covenant curse also, doesn’t it? Otherwise it would be a lush land. So this land is under a curse. But in Isaiah we see that the desert blossoms as the crocus. Some translate it as the rose. And the crocus is a desert flower, the first flower of spring, and it blossoms suddenly. And the desert is what is reversed, from curse, to blessing. The desert actually becomes paradise, in the book of Isaiah. We see that is several places. Chapter fifty-one, verse three, says the Lord is comforting Zion, “bringing solace to all her ruins. He is making her wilderness like Eden, her desert as the garden of the Lord. Joyful rejoicing takes place there, thanksgiving with the voice of song.” It is the desert that is the first part of the earth that becomes paradise like the Garden of Eden. Why? Because the people who are under the curse are able to reverse the curse, and turn it into blessing. The people who go on the exodus are the ones who inherit the earth in the Millennium, after they wander through the wilderness, through the desert. It is the people who are able to reverse the curse who participate in the Millennial civilization. It’s not the ones who remain in a state of wickedness, or who live in the cities who are destroyed with the cities.

So, where does this Preparer of the Way, this forerunner, preach? And who does he preach to? He preaches to the people who are under a curse, and he says, “Get your act together. Repent! Renew your allegiance to God and he will reverse your covenant curses and turn them into blessings. He will deliver you on an exodus from the Assyrian destruction.” Then God will come. A highway for our God is the way for the Lord to come on. The highway is also the way to return home—home from exile, home from dispersion, home to Zion, to the Promised Land. Also, it is a straight way; it’s not a crooked way. Because the ways of the world are crooked; the ways of Babylon are crooked. The ways of God are straight. Chapter twenty-six, verse seven says: “The path of the righteous is straight. Thou pavest an undeviating course for the upright. In the very passage of thine ordinances we anticipate Thee, O Lord.” You can see the Lord through his ordinances, through following his rites of passage. They will bring you into God’s presence, or bring God to you. He’s going to come to the earth, to reign upon the earth. It means you must first be brought into his presence and be worthy of that.

40:4  every ravine must be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground must become level and rough terrain a plain.

That’s an allegory of what? Yes, it’s true that during the horrendous destructions of the earth there will be many mountainous places that will be made low, and many low places that will be raised up. But it also refers, allegorically, to people’s spiritual condition. That those who are lowly will be raised up. The oppressed must be released from their bondage, and lifted up. And those who are high mighty, the exalted, and the elite of the earth must be made low, so that there is unity among the people, an equality.

40:5  For the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh see it at once. By his mouth the Lord has spoken it.

The glory of the Lord is the cloud of glory in which the Lord appears, or as it implies, his presence, and all flesh see it at once. All flesh which remains on the earth at that time. “By his mouth the Lord has spoken it.” It is a decree from the Lord, but mouth is also a metaphor describing the Lord’s Servant. He’s the Lord’s mouth, or mouthpiece, in Isaiah. The king of Assyria is also a mouth. There are two mouths. In the book of Daniel, the king of Assyria, or the king of the North, is a mouth speaking great things against the Most High, so “mouth” is a metaphor. But it implies that at the time of the coming of the Lord, before the glory of the Lord is revealed, that Servant will be commencing his mission and declaring those kinds of things.

40:6  A voice said, Announce it. And I asked, How shall I announce it? All flesh is grass, and at its best like a blossom of the field.

So he giving him a commission to announce these things. Isaiah’s seven-part structure is a type of a Servant. So that what Isaiah does, the Servant will do. The Servant will be a prophet. He will also be a king, like king Hezekiah. He’s a new Moses, a new Abraham. He’s also a new Isaiah, as it were. And all of those types from the past come together in him, in this forerunner. So his job is to announce the coming of the Lord to declare the fact that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and so forth, and that there should be a way prepared for the coming of God—as John the Baptist did in the New Testament. “A voice said, announce it. And I asked, How shall I announce it?” How can you announce it, when people are so hard of hearing? They’re so closed up. Nobody cares. “All flesh is grass,” he says, “and at its best, like a blossom of the field.”

40:7–8  Though the Spirit of the Lord breathe within it, the people themselves are but herbage—grass that withers, flowers that fade—only the word of our God endures forever.

People come and go, here today and gone tomorrow. They’re all excited one day, and the next day they’re wilting. It’s too hard to talk to people. The only thing is the Spirit of the Lord that animates them. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. He doesn’t call them weeds, however, does he. He calls them grass and flowers—not wild grass. So he gives them credit for being okay, but even so his job seems too hard. If the Spirit doesn’t animate them, then there’s not that can be done with them.

40:9  Scale the mountain heights, O Zion, herald of good tidings. Raise your voice mightily, O Jerusalem, messenger of good news. Make yourself heard, be not afraid; proclaim to the cities of Judah: Behold your God!

So God is coming, and they are to announce it. Who’s to announce it? First of all the prophet, as in verses six, seven, and eight. But also Zion and Jerusalem are to announce it. Not Israel or Judah or Jacob, but Zion and Jerusalem. People have passed the test of faithfulness, as it says in chapters thirty-six and thirty-seven. They receive a commission to go and declare good tidings of the coming of God. So what do we see here? We see that the prophet receives the commission and the people receive the commission. You mean the people receive a separate commission, apart from the prophet? No. God commissions the prophet, and the prophet commissions the people. Everything follows a proper order. And who do they preach to? They preach to Jacob, or to Israel. They proclaim to the cities of Judah, “Behold, your God!” The cities of Judah are where the people of God lived who were overpowered by the Assyrians. They were the people who did not pass the test. When the Assyrians laid siege to Jerusalem, people in the city did not capitulate to the Assyrians. They were loyal to their king and to their God. God delivered them. The other people had not had that experience. They did not pass that kind of test. So these people who did pass the test are now commissioned to go to the others. These are the people for whom God has reversed the covenant curse, ones who receive a curse reversal who are now blessed and empowered to do this.

Zion and Jerusalem are receiving a commission to be heralds of good tidings, to be messengers of good news, to do that to others of the people who haven’t heard that good news, and to herald the coming of God himself. And that’s also what we find there in the cross reference, chapter fifty-two, verses seven through ten: “How comely upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger announcing peace, who brings tidings of good, who heralds salvation, saying to Zion, your God reigns!” And that is heralded by the watchmen who lift up their voice, “who cry out for joy, and they see eye-to-eye when the Lord returns to Zion. And it happens in the day when the Lord bares his holy arm “in the eyes of all nations, that all the ends of the earth may see our God’s salvation.”

So there, those watchmen are heralding the coming of the Lord, and here, Zion and Jerusalem are heralding the coming of the Lord. In Isaiah, the watchmen are those special servants of God who are on king Hezekiah’s level and, eventually, on Isaiah’s level, who come out of Zion. So they’re individuals within the people of Zion or Jerusalem, who pass additional tests. These people, Zion and Jerusalem, pass the test of loyalty to God in a time of crises, with raises them from an Israel level to a Zion level. Hezekiah passed the test in a set of circumstances that lifts him from a Zion level to a Servant level.

Then there are those who pass the test who rise from a Servant level to a Seraph level, as a ministering angel. And then above them is God himself. Each one gets a commission at that time. And they all fulfill their missions, or commissions, on different levels of the spiritual ladder. Some are higher than others, such as the 144,000, in the book of Revelation. There are examples of the 144,000 on the Seraph level. In Isaiah, those servants ascend to the Seraph level and are endowed with special powers from on high to preach the Good News, in power, to the convincing of the people and also to bring them out through physical elements that may stand in the way, in an exodus to the place, Zion. What you read here, and what we read in verse nine of chapter forty is part of a much larger scenario that happens before the coming of the Lord.

40:10  See, my Lord the Lord comes with power; his arm presides for him. His reward is with him; his work precedes him.

So the coming of the Lord is not just even instantaneous itself, or the actual, literal coming of the Lord in person. It is a whole scenario that accompanies his coming. That includes the Day of Judgment, or the Day of the Lord, when the king of Assyria fulfills his work, the work of destruction. And then there’s the work of deliverance from the destruction—a simultaneous event. The exodus is out of Babylon, just as Lot came out of Sodom on the eve of its destruction. All of that is associated with the coming of the Lord. It’s with power. The destruction’s with power and the deliverance is with power. The king of Assyria is empowered to destroy, and the Lord’s Servant is empowered to deliver, the Lord’s people on an exodus, physically, like Moses delivered the Israelites. And this is all happening at the same time.

And the Lord God of Israel, the King of Zion, does not come actually, literally, physically, in person, until the king of Babylon—which is another name for the king of Assyria-- is put down. And that’s in the structure that I talk about in my book, called The Literary Message of Isaiah.
Babylon descends from her throne, into the dust at the time that Zion ascends from the dust to sit on her throne. The king of Zion comes and rules at the time the rule of the king of Babylon ends. It’s a great reversal of circumstances that happens in the end time. So when it says, “My Lord Jehovah comes with power,” it’s that whole series of events that climaxes with his actual, literal, physical appearing. But, all of it is his coming. He comes like a thief in the night, as it says in the New Testament. He’s not the thief; the king of Assyria is the thief. He plunders the whole world. But that happens at the coming of Christ.

“His arm presides for him.” The arm is the Lord’s Servant who precedes the Lord and who presides for him at the time immediately preceding the actual coming of the Lord himself. The “arm” also signifies Divine intervention. God stretches out his arm. He reveals his arm, in power. The arm is a person. There are two arms of God, in the book of Isaiah. The Lord himself is the arm of Salvation, and the Servant is the arm of Righteousness. Isaiah identifies them as two arms, in chapter fifty-one, verse five: “My Righteousness shall be at hand, and my Salvation proceed; my arms shall judge the peoples.” Through a series of parallelisms throughout his book, Isaiah identifies the two arms as Righteousness, and Salvation. We know from other parts of the book that Salvation is the Lord himself, at his coming. And Righteousness is his Servant; the Lord calls him that in chapter forty-one, verse two. He personifies righteousness. So the arm presiding for him is the arm that presides for him among his people at the time of his coming, that when he comes, his reward is with him—his reward for the righteous, that is. Or, if you like, for the wicked the reward of their wickedness.

“His work precedes him.” The word “work,” all the way through Isaiah, identifies
the work of destruction, and the work of deliverance. Rhetorically, you can link that word all the way through the book to those two events, and various manifestations of those two events. So the work that precedes him is the work of destruction—mass destruction, worldwide destruction of the wicked, and also deliverance of the righteous. And that precedes his actual, physical, appearing. Verse nine says, “Behold your God--” your covenant God. He comes to those people who keep covenant with him. He doesn’t come to the others.

40:11  Like a shepherd he pastures his flock: the lambs he gathers up with his arm and carries in his bosom; the ewes that give milk he leads gently along.

It’s not as Esau did, when Jacob gave him part of his flock as tribute, and he rushed the ewes that were pregnant as he hurried them along, and some of them aborted. Here it is as a gentle shepherd who gives them plenty of time. He leads them to pasture. This is symbolic of the Good Shepherd who knows how to pasture a flock. It’s very much like when Christ spoke to Peter, saying, “Feed my sheep; feed my lambs.”
Now, the gathering up of the lambs by the arm, is the gathering up of the flock of the Lord’s people, Israel, the people of God, through the agency of the Lord’s Servant.

His job is to gather the people of God from the four corners of the earth. We saw that in chapter eleven, where the Lord gathers his people from the four directions of the earth, in an exodus out from the destruction. And he does it through the Servant, the sprig of Jesse who stands for an ensign to the peoples. He is sought by the nations in that day when the Lord raises his hand to reclaim the remnant of his people who are left out of Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the isles of the sea. He raises the ensign to the nations and assembles the exiles of Israel, and gathers the scattered of Judah from the four directions of the earth. This is the time the Servant fulfills his mission.

The word Shepherd is also a link to Moses, in chapter sixty-three. There, he is called the shepherd of his people. And that’s what Moses did; he gathered the Israelites out of Egypt, and led them to the Promised Land. And that scenario will repeat itself, in that latter day. The carrying of the lamb in the bosom, and the gathering up with the arm is also imagery that Isaiah uses elsewhere for the gathering of his people, Israel. And the kings and queens of the Gentiles carry them in their bosoms and lift them up on their shoulders, and carry them in their arms, and so forth. The kings and queens of the Gentiles serve as nursing mothers and fathers to the House of Israel; they assist the Servant in this work.

And what does that mean when he talks about them being converted, or reconverted to the God of Israel and their renewing their covenants with him? It involves, first of all, spiritual conversion, and then physical gathering. Their exile was preceded by spiritual apostasy. So, in this case, there is spiritual conversion and then physical gathering. Those things are reversed.
And the ewes that give milk, and the lambs—all of it implies fruitfulness and pasturing and the gathering of the flock, God’s people, from wherever they may be scattered. Then begins this cosmic passage which begins with the Creation. From here on there’s a series of alternating motifs of chaos and Creation. Isaiah starts of with cosmic creation and ends up with the creation of an exalted people of God, individuals who are individually exalted and ascend as on eagle’s wings in the last verse, who run without wearying and who walk without losing strength. That’s the whole purpose, to raise up an exalted people, people who are like him. And this chapter has in it the most detailed cosmic description of any that appears in the scriptures. There’s nothing like it in the Psalms or the other prophetic books. It’s quite an important cosmic description.

40:12  Who measured out the waters with the hollow of his hand and gauged the heavens by the span of his fingers? Who compiled the earth’s dust by measure, weighing mountains in scales, hills in a balance?

The chaos motifs are waters and dust. They’re organized. They’re measured out, and gauged, and compiled, and weighed. The scales in the balance. They’re not created out nothing. They already exist and then something is created of them. And that, in Isaiah, is a message which comes very clear through this series of alternating chaos and creation motifs. The idea of creation, ex nihilo, out of nothing, doesn’t exist in the Old Testament. It comes out of Greek philosophy. There’s always chaos before creation. And waters and dust is what’s there, preceding the creation.

40:13  Who has comprehended the Spirit of the Lord, that a man should let him know his plan?

The Spirit of the Lord is what created these things, that brings order out of chaos, the power of his Spirit. And it’s all according to a foreordained plan which man cannot comprehend. Man cannot know it. Who has comprehended? The Lord has. “Who” sometimes is a synonym of the Lord himself. God has comprehended the Spirit of the Lord.

40:14  Of whom was he counseled that he might be enlightened, by whom instructed in the path of discretion, imparting to him knowledge, acquainting him with the way of understanding?

Man could not do that. God could. But God is a paradigm for man. So man should be counseled. Man should become acquainted with the Plan of Salvation, or the plan of God for the creation of his people, which is the Plan of Salvation. Man should become enlightened and instructed the path of discretion and should have knowledge imparted to him. He should become acquainted with the ways of understanding. That must be. That’s how man becomes like God.

40:15  The nations are but drops from a bucket, counting no more than dust on a balance; the isles he displaces as mere specks.

so we go back to chaos again, “ the isles he displaces as mere specks.” Drops, and dust, and specks are chaos motifs.

40:16  Lebanon would not suffice to kindle a fire, nor all its beasts be adequate for sacrifice.

40:17  Before him all nations are as nothing; as less than the ether they are reckoned by him.

All of those are chaos motifs. What’s happening? We move from cosmic waters, and dust, heavens, to the earth, to the earth being formed? And then there appears nations, and islands, and a particular nation—Lebanon, which stands for Israel, in the Old Testament—and then other nations. So do you see how its moving from general things to very specific things. The purpose of the Creation is not that there should just be dust and cosmic matter and cosmic waters flying out there, but that something should be done with those elements. They can become a habitation for people, for the children of God, for nations. Also, there’s a little chiasm here of nations, in verse fifteen, Lebanon in verse sixteen, and nations, in verse seventeen, to let you know that, at this point in time, Lebanon, or the Lord’s people, are among all nations.

40:18  To whom then will you liken God? What does he resemble in your estimation?

40:19  A figure cast by the artisan, overlaid by the smith with gold, fitted with a silver chain from the craftsman?

In others words, can you make statues, or statuettes, of God? Can you put God in human terms, and say this is Jesus, or this is Heavenly Father? Can you do that? Isn’t that kind of a desecration of who he really is? Or what about other gods—say, this is Buddha, or this is whomever he may be, and you can pray to him and be delivered. He’s showing how ridiculous it is to cast God in that light, to try to construct him using materials, trying to make a replica of him. You can’t do it.

*41:7  The artisan encourages the smith, and he who beats with a hammer urges him who pounds the anvil. They say of the welding, It is good, though they fasten it with riveting that it may not come loose.

40:20  Those too poor for this type of sacrifice select a wood that resists decay. They seek an expert sculptor to carve them an image that will not deteriorate.

So we go from the creation of the heavens and the earth, to nations, to a particular nations—Israel or Lebanon—and what is the first thing we get? Idolatry. They’re all idolaters. The first thing people do is corrupt themselves. And how disappointing that must be to God the Creator, who when he creates an earth and puts people upon it, the first thing that they do is to start corrupting themselves. They start making little statues of their god. They’ve lost track, totally, of who God is, what he’s really like. The first purpose in becoming acquainted with God is to get a correct idea of who he is, of his attributes.

40:21  Are you so unaware, that you have not heard? Have you not been told before, that you do not understand by whom the earth was founded?

That’s the God who did it! That’s what he’s like.

40:22   —By him who sits enthroned above the earth’s sphere, to whom its inhabitants are as grasshoppers, who suspends the heavens like a canopy, stretching them out as a tent to dwell in.

The earth is a sphere; it’s round, it’s a globe. And God created it and sits above it. That’s a correct idea of his attributes. You need to see that Isaiah is looking at the earth from above, here,” to whom its inhabitants are as grasshoppers, who suspends the heavens like a canopy, stretching them out as a tent to dwell in.” The view is from above, looking down below, whereas, in chapter six Isaiah was below, looking up above. Isaiah now shares the cosmic view of the Seraphim, because he’s become like them. After forty years of serving as God’s prophet, faithfully fulfilling his calling as prophet, Isaiah’s received up into a higher dimension. He sees like the Seraphim do, and he gets a commission, like the Seraphim do.

In the first part of chapter forty, he’s to declare that Israel’s sin has been expiated, just like in chapter six where the Seraphs declared Isaiah’s sin expiated. So, in every way, Isaiah assumes the role of Seraph, or a higher being, an angel, one who comes and goes between the worlds. We would say he’s a translated being, because they can do that—like Moses or Elijah. So we go back, from the chaos that we mentioned in verses fifteen through seventeen: the dust, the specks, the ether. And then the idolatry is still part of that chaos, because idolatry leads to chaos, which brings destruction and punishment, and then back to creation, the founding of the earth. Who did it? The One “who sits enthroned above the earth to whom its inhabitants are as grasshoppers, who suspends the heavens like a canopy stretching them out as a tent to dwell in.” It’s creation. The heavens and the earth are meant to be a dwelling place for God and for God’s children, and he sends his children to earth to live, for a time.

40:23  By him who brings potentates to nought and makes the authorities of the world null and void.

This is going back to chaos, again. “Null and void” actually uses the word, chaos, in Hebrew, “tohu.” That’s a chaos motif. So, do you see the alternating creation/chaos motifs, here? It goes all the way through to chapter forty-six. What does that tell you? And as we go to the end of chapter forty-six, with these alternating chaos/creation motifs they form a great chiasm, with Babylon in the middle of chaos, and the Lord’s people at the center of creation.
The purpose of the Lord’s creation is to bring a covenant people into being, and to exalt them. And the whole creation of the heavens and the earth and everything is specifically geared, or aligned, for having a suitable dwelling place where God’s people can come and grow, and become something more, or higher, than they were before. But there are casualties. Not everyone goes along with God’s plan or program. They’re not enlightened. They’re not instructed in the path of discretion. They don’t receive knowledge or become acquainted with the way of understanding. Many don’t. Some do and are exalted and progress, while others don’t. What happens to them? They may even be world rules and potentates of the earth, but they come to nothing.

40:24  When scarcely they are planted, or scarcely they are sown, when hardly their stock has taken root in the earth, he puffs at them and they wither, and a storm sweeps them off as chaff.

This is chaos again. They’re reduced to chaos. They come here; they live here for a time, and they go off and are reduced to nothing. Why? They have squandered their probation. They’ve missed the purpose of coming here. But they provide opposition to those who do achieve, or fulfill, the purpose for coming here on the earth. In Isaiah, that opposition grows and grows and grows, until it becomes so intense that out of that very difficult and stiff opposition comes a group of people who are exalted. But also, out of it comes a people who make it their life’s calling to pose as opposition to them. The same circumstances that make some men angels, also make devils of others. We’re back to chaos, here, after having creation:

40:25  To whom then will you liken me, to whom can I be compared? says the Holy One.

40:26  Lift your eyes heavenward and see: Who formed these? He who brings forth their hosts by number, calling each one by name. Because he is almighty and all powerful, not one is unaccounted for.

We have, here, heavenly beings. “Lift your eyes heavenward and see.” What do you see up in heaven? Stars. Who formed them? God formed them. “Who” is a metaphor for God. “He brings forth their host by number.” In other words, every one of them is numbered. Their names are inscribed in the Book of Life, as he says later on. These are exalted beings who move on from an earthly existence to a heavenly existence. “Because he is Almighty, and All Powerful, not one is unaccounted for.” because they rely upon God, and that’s how they get there. They don’t come there under their own steam. They don’t achieve that exalted status themselves; they rely upon God. And they have learned to do so when the going got rough.

40:27  Why then do you say, O Jacob, and speak thus, O Israel: Our path has become obscured from the Lord; our cause is overlooked by our God?

Here we see the category Jacob or Israel, who are people yet to pass a test of loyalty to God. Yes, they are the covenant people of God, Jacob or Israel, but they’re murmuring. They’re wondering. They’re like the Israelites in the wilderness: “Our path has become obscured. Our cause is overlooked by our God.” Is that true? Has God overlooked the cause of his people? No; never! So, what are these people indulging in? A little bit of self-pity and murmuring and whining, and a little bit of deception. You can see that these people, Jacob or Israel, that category of people is a category that still needs to repent. And that’s why Isaiah defines Zion, in chapter one, verse twenty-seven, which we discussed, as those of God’s people who repent. And also, in chapter fifty-nine, he defines Jacob as those who repent of transgression. And that’s what these guys need to do. They still need to pass the test of loyalty to God. And he’s contrasting them with the ones in verse twenty-six. The same test that those guys pass, these guys fail. And you end up with a dichotomy, two different types of people. One group that is going on to exaltation, and the second group—the ones who are still going around in the dark, wondering what’s going on? Why are we here? Where are we? Where is our God?

40:28  Is it not known to you; have you not heard? The Lord is the God of eternity, Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not grow faint or weary; his intelligence cannot be fathomed.

Who’s growing faint and weary? Jacob and Israel are. They’re faltering; they want to sit down and wait for God to come and deliver them, while they themselves do nothing. “His intelligence cannot be fathomed.”

40:29  He supplies the weary with energy and increases in vigor those who lack strength.

When does he do that? When they look to him. If they don’t look to him to help them—he’s Almighty and All powerful, not one is unaccounted for-- if they don’t ask, they won’t get.

40:30  Youths grow faint and weary, and young men slump down of exhaustion.

40:31  But they who hope in the Lord shall be renewed in strength: they shall ascend as on eagles’ wings; they shall run without wearying, they shall walk and not faint.

That’s the key. They must hope in the Lord. Another way of translating that is they wait for the Lord. In Hebrew the word to wait, to hope for, is the same word. It can be translated two different ways. And all the way through the book of Isaiah you’ll see that those who are the remnant who participate in the exodus, who are the people of God—one of their main tests is to wait for the Lord, to hope in him. Isn’t that what the people did when the Assyrians surrounded Jerusalem? They sat tight and they waited for the Lord to deliver them. And he did! That was the test. And that distinguishes the ones who grow faint, from the ones who are empowered, or renewed in strength. It’s that simple.

You may ask, well how can that be? If it’s so simple, if all you have to do is wait for the Lord and trust in him, when the going gets rough, why do I still whine and moan and groan and complain, and talk to my friends instead of talking to the Lord? Why do I go back to the arm of flesh, and all that? That’s the point he’s trying to make, here. Even youths grow faint. In the life cycle, when do you have the most energy and strength? When you’re a young man or a young woman, right? Those are the people that Israel depends on for defense in time of war. Yet, even they grow faint and weary. But the Lord can renew their strength. Those verses are a chiasm, between verses twenty-eight and thirty-one. In verse twenty-eight, God does not grow faint or weary, his intelligence cannot be fathomed. He’s unwearying. Verse twenty nine: there are people who get weary. The theme, there, is weariness. Verse thirty: the theme is weariness. Verse thirty-one: The theme is unweariness. They are renewed in strength; they ascend. What does that tell you? It’s telling you, between the lines, that the nature of the unweariness of those who ascend, or progress—in verse thirty-one—is the same as God’s unweariness. The chiasm tells you that; it’s in the structure that lets you know, through parallelism that they assume the same unweariness as God has. What we have here is the closest thing to a people assuming the translated state, in verse thirty-one, of this chapter.

“They who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall ascend as on eagle’s wings.” They progress, spiritually, to a point that they can actually fly, like Seraphs, or translated beings do, or like Elijah did, or like other characters in the scriptures did as the Spirit took them from place to place. “They shall run without wearying, they shall walk and not faint.” They won’t grow tired anymore. They’re not immortal yet, but they are somewhere in between mortality and immortality. And that’s where we end up. That’s the whole purpose of God’s creation, to bring people to become like him, and to ascend the spiritual ladder, to that degree. And it can be done, even in this mortality.