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Isaiah 42: What the Passage Says

104 claims across 25 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Isaiah 42 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God presents his servant, whom he has chosen and given his Spirit, and who will quietly and steadily bring justice to the nations. God, the maker of the heavens and the earth, says he called this servant to be a covenant for the people and a light to the nations, opening blind eyes and freeing prisoners, and he declares that he will not give his glory to idols. The chapter calls the whole earth to sing a new song, then pictures God going to war after long silence, leading the blind on unfamiliar roads and shaming those who trust in images. It ends by calling God's own servant blind and deaf, and explaining that Israel was plundered because the LORD handed them over for their disobedience, and even then they did not take it to heart.

Claim by Claim

  1. 42:1
    • God calls attention to his servant.
    • God upholds his servant.
    • The servant is God's chosen one.
    • God's soul delights in the servant.
    • God has put his spirit upon the servant.
    • The servant will bring forth justice to the nations.
  2. 42:2
    • The servant will not cry out.
    • The servant will not raise his voice.
    • The servant will not make his voice heard in the street.
  3. 42:3
    • The servant will not break a crushed reed.
    • The servant will not quench a dimly burning wick.
    • The servant will bring forth justice in truth.
  4. 42:4
    • The servant will not grow dim or fail.
    • The servant will not be crushed or discouraged.
    • The servant will continue until he has established justice in the earth.
    • The coastlands will wait for the servant's instruction.
  5. 42:5
    • What follows is spoken by God the LORD.
    • God created the heavens.
    • God stretched out the heavens.
    • God spread out the earth and what comes out of it.
    • God gives breath to the people upon the earth.
    • God gives spirit to those who walk on the earth.
  6. 42:6
    • The speaker is the LORD.
    • The LORD has called the addressee in righteousness.
    • The LORD will hold the addressee's hand.
    • The LORD will keep the addressee.
    • The LORD will give the addressee as a covenant of the people.
    • The LORD will give the addressee as a light of the nations.
  7. 42:7
    • The addressee is to open blind eyes.
    • The addressee is to bring prisoners out of confinement.
    • The addressee is to bring those who sit in darkness out of the prison house.
  8. 42:8
    • The speaker is the LORD.
    • The LORD's name is the LORD.
    • The LORD will not give his glory to another.
    • The LORD will not give his praise to carved images.
  9. 42:9
    • The former things have come to pass.
    • The LORD declares new things.
    • The LORD tells of the new things before they spring forth.
  10. 42:10
    • The hearers are told to sing a new song to the LORD.
    • The hearers are told to sing his praise from the end of the earth.
    • Those who go down to the sea are addressed.
    • All that fills the sea is addressed.
    • The coastlands and their inhabitants are addressed.
  11. 42:11
    • The wilderness and its cities are to lift up their voice.
    • Kedar inhabits villages.
    • The inhabitants of the rock are to sing for joy.
    • They are to shout from the top of the mountains.
  12. 42:12
    • They are to give glory to the LORD.
    • They are to declare his praise in the coastlands.
  13. 42:13
    • The LORD will go forth as a mighty man.
    • The LORD will stir up zeal like a man of war.
    • The LORD will shout.
    • The LORD will raise a war cry.
    • The LORD will prevail against his enemies.
  14. 42:14
    • The LORD has kept silent for a long time.
    • The LORD has been still and restrained himself.
    • The LORD will now cry out like a woman in labor.
    • The LORD will gasp and pant at once.
  15. 42:15
    • The LORD will lay waste mountains and hills.
    • The LORD will dry up all their vegetation.
    • The LORD will turn rivers into islands.
    • The LORD will dry up the pools.
  16. 42:16
    • The LORD will bring the blind by a way they did not know.
    • The LORD will lead them in paths they have not known.
    • The LORD will make darkness into light before them.
    • The LORD will make crooked places straight.
    • The LORD will do these things.
    • The LORD will not forsake them.
  17. 42:17
    • Those who trust in carved images will be turned back.
    • Those who trust in carved images will be greatly ashamed.
    • Some say to molten images, You are our gods.
  18. 42:18
    • The deaf are commanded to hear.
    • The blind are commanded to look so that they may see.
  19. 42:19
    • No one is blind but the LORD's servant.
    • No one is deaf like the messenger the LORD sends.
    • No one is blind like the one who is at peace with God, or made whole, or committed to God.
    • No one is blind like the servant of the LORD.
  20. 42:20
    • The addressee sees many things.
    • The addressee does not observe them.
    • The ears are open.
    • He does not hear.
  21. 42:21
    • The LORD is pleased for the sake of his righteousness.
    • The LORD will magnify the law.
    • The LORD will make the law glorious.
  22. 42:22
    • This is a people robbed and plundered.
    • All of them are snared in holes.
    • They are hidden in prison houses.
    • They have become a prey.
    • There is no one who delivers them.
    • They have become a spoil.
    • No one says, Restore.
  23. 42:23
    • It is asked who among them will give ear to this.
    • It is asked who will listen and hear for the time to come.
  24. 42:24
    • It is asked who gave Jacob for a spoil and Israel to robbers.
    • It was the LORD.
    • The speakers have sinned against the LORD.
    • They were unwilling to walk in the LORD's ways.
    • They did not obey his law.
  25. 42:25
    • The LORD poured out on him the fury of his anger.
    • The LORD poured out on him the strength of battle.
    • It set him on fire all around.
    • He did not know it.
    • It burned him.
    • He did not lay it to heart.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

42:1
"Servant" translates a Hebrew word (ebed) for anyone in another's service, from a household slave to a king's trusted official (it carries no sense of insult. Isaiah uses it a few verses earlier for the whole people of Israel (41:8), and here for a figure the text never names, so the identity is left open in the Hebrew itself. "Judgment" in the King James does not mean condemnation: the Hebrew mishpat means a right ruling, and by extension justice as a settled state of affairs. "Gentiles" translates goyim, simply "the nations") everyone outside Israel.
42:2
In the King James, "cry" means to shout out loud, not to weep. Officials and preachers shouted in the street to gather a crowd.
42:3
A reed is a tall hollow marsh plant, snapped easily by hand; flax is the plant fiber twisted into wicks for small clay oil lamps. A bent reed and a wick down to its last smoke were both things you would normally throw away. "Quench" means put out.
42:4
"The isles" translates iyyim, the coastlands and islands of the Mediterranean, for Isaiah's hearers, the far edge of the known world westward. "Law" here is torah, which means instruction or teaching rather than legislation; the same word appears again in verses 21 and 24.
42:5
Hebrew uses one family of words for breath, wind, and spirit, so "breath" and "spirit" in this verse are near-synonyms for the life in a living body. "Stretched them out" pictures the sky being spread like a tent cloth.
42:6
A covenant is a formal binding agreement, the word was used for treaties between kings and for the sworn bond between God and Israel. "Give thee for a covenant of the people" is famously obscure in the Hebrew; it can mean the servant embodies the agreement, or is made the means of it, and translators have never settled the question.
42:7
Releasing prisoners and lifting the burdens of the poor were the standard boasts of a just king in the ancient Near East. Ancient prisons were often unlit pits or cellars, so "those who sit in darkness" and "the blind" are overlapping pictures of the same confinement.
42:8
Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters, the Hebrew has God's personal name, the four letters YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; the translators substituted "the LORD." So "I am the LORD: that is my name" is a claim about that specific name. "Graven" means carved.
42:9
"The former things" and "new things" are terms Isaiah uses repeatedly in a courtroom-style argument against other gods: the point of contest is which god announced events before they happened.
42:10
"A new song" is a set phrase, common in the Psalms, for a song composed to mark a fresh deliverance or victory rather than an old song reused.
42:11
Kedar was a nomadic Arab tribe of the northern Arabian desert, tent-dwellers known for their flocks and their trade caravans. "The inhabitants of the rock" is ambiguous in the Hebrew: sela means simply "crag" or "rock," but it is also the name of a fortified town in Edom, so the line may mean cliff-dwellers in general or the people of that specific place.
42:13
"Jealousy" here is qinah, a word for fierce heat of feeling (zeal, passion, protective fury), not petty envy. "A mighty man" and "a man of war" both mean a seasoned warrior.
42:14
The two Hebrew verbs at the end of this verse are uncertain. They can be read as sounds a woman in labor makes, gasping and panting, or as "destroy and devour," which is the way the King James translators took them; the image of God in labor is being pressed either toward birth pangs or toward devastation.
42:15
"I will make the rivers islands" uses the same word rendered "isles" in verse 4; the sense is that riverbeds dry out until only dry patches remain. "Herbs" in 1611 English means green plants generally, not seasonings.
42:16
"Crooked things" here means uneven, rocky ground, not dishonest people. Roads then were rough, and smoothing one out was hard work.
42:17
Ancient idols were made two ways, and both are named here: carved from wood or stone, or cast by pouring molten metal into a mold. "Turned back" is the language of an army driven into retreat.
42:18
These people could hear and see just fine. God calls them deaf and blind because they would not pay attention.
42:19
"Perfect" in 1611 English means complete or fully committed, not flawless. The Hebrew word behind it, meshullam, is a genuine puzzle (it may mean the one in a covenant relationship with God, the one paid for, or the one made whole) and translators differ sharply.
42:20
"Thou observest not" means you do not pay attention. In 1611, to observe something was simply to notice it.
42:21
"Magnify" means to make large or hold up as great, not to exaggerate. "The law" is again torah, instruction.
42:22
"Snared in holes" pictures people caught in pits or hiding in caves, where fugitives from invading armies took shelter. "Spoil" and "prey" both mean plunder, here the plunder is people, carried off as captives, and "Restore" is the demand that they be sent home.
42:24
"Jacob" and "Israel" are two names for the same ancestor, and both are used as names for the whole nation descended from him; pairing them in parallel lines is standard Hebrew poetic form, not a reference to two different groups.
42:25
"He laid it not to heart" means he never stopped to think seriously about what was happening to him.

Read Isaiah 42