The pronouns in these chapters are important to watch. In fact, I’m tempted to copy and paste most of chapter 50 here and put parts of it in red letters.

Verse 1 begins (very helpfully) with “Thus saith the LORD.” So it’s obvious Who is talking. And Yahweh compares Himself to a man who has lost everything. His wife left Him and took the kids with her. But He points out that it’s not because He’s helpless.

Then in verse 4 a new speaker enters the chat. 💬 Who is this gifted person? Verse 6 gives Him away:

“I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭50‬:‭6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The Septuagint has it as “I gave my back to whips, and my cheeks to blows, and I turned not away my face from the shame of spitting.” This is an eye-witness at the scourging of Christ. I would say that Witness is Christ Himself; the Eternal Word.

Now, I don’t know if Isaiah had these experiences (getting whipped and beat up and maybe even his beard pulled out) and he is writing first-person as a prophetic picture (kinda like Hosea), or if this is just straight-up the Son of God speaking about the future as if it’s already in the past. Either way, verses 4-9 could be in red letters.

😐 You aren’t gonna start doing that whole mind-bendy, God being outside of time stuff again are you?

No. I don’t think that’ll be necessary.

TWO LIGHTS (v10-11)

There are two options for light to those in darkness:

• Trust in the name of the LORD and rely on God 🙏
• Build a fire, make your own light 🔥

The second option comes with a warning directly from God: “You’re going to end up in a place of torment.” 🔥 Not good.

Most of chapter 51 is Yahweh encouraging the first group- the ones who are choosing to trust Him. 🙏

People who are facing what appears to be imminent destruction need to be reminded that God started with one man. And He can start over again even if there’s only one left.

This chapter repeats themes from Exodus a lot. That was the cornerstone of Israel’s history. It was their beginning as a truly organized nation. The themes aren’t in chronological order but here are some that stood out to me:

• Giving the Law (51:4, 7)
• Crossing the Red Sea (51:9-10)
• Freedom from oppression (51:11-14)

The basic idea from there to the end is that Israel has gotten itself into a comparable situation as it was in Egypt. They’ve been conquered- by Assyria, then Babylon. They have to work for and pay heavy taxes as tribute to an empire that has the power to crush them. They are back in bondage.

😐 You can take a man out of bondage but only God can take the bondage out of the man.

Wow.

Did you come up with that all by yourself?

🙂 Yeah. Why?

That was actually quite profound. Good job.

☺️ Thanks.

☺️ She said I was profound.

🙄 I heard… Let’s move on before your head starts swel….

🙄 Ho boy. We’re never gonna hear the end of this are we?

Nope.

Since it’s gonna be a while before he comes down, I’ll just wrap up with Isaiah 51.

The message of hope is this:

God did it before, He can do it again.

He doesn’t need them to have military might or wealth or power. He got Israel out of bondage in Egypt without any help from them or anyone else, thank you very much.

And that’s true for you and I too.

Even if you are utterly powerless- or maybe it works better when we are utterly powerless… God doesn’t need your help or anyone else’s to rescue you. He’s done it before, He can do it again.

We’ve already noticed a decided change of tone in the book of Isaiah. In the beginning there were plenty of warnings and lots of judgment and anger. Now we can see a little flicker of light in the dark. We’re learning about this mysterious “Servant” who is going to rescue them. He’s going to be special and Yahweh will empower Him. But He’s also going to be hated and beat up and that’s somehow part of the plan. That light is only going to grow brighter from here to the end of the book.

In the next post, we’ll cover the crown jewel 💎 of Isaiah- the motherlode of prophecy about the Servant of Yahweh and what He will do.