Isaiah 52:7
Isaiah’s good news
The New Testament’s gospel has roots deeper than any emperor’s inscription. They reach back into Israel’s Scriptures, to a runner coming over the hills with news.
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Isaiah 52:7The one who brings news
The Hebrew behind “bring good news” is , here in its participle mevaser, the one who brings news. The word by itself does not say whether the news is good. The LSV, rendering it plainly, has “proclaiming tidings” in this verse. After a lost battle a runner reached Shiloh with the worst news Israel could hear: “the ark of God has been captured” (1 Samuel 4:17). The BSB calls him the messenger; the LSV, the one bearing tidings. On the day Absalom died, Ahimaaz begged to run to David with the victory, and Joab stopped him: “You are not the man to take good news today” (2 Samuel 18:20), because the king’s son was dead. The noun means the news, and also the reward for it: David says of the man who brought word of Saul’s death, “That was his reward for his news!” (2 Samuel 4:10).
Against a word that could carry victory to one side and grief to the other, Isaiah’s news is good through and through: peace, good, salvation. And it fits in one sentence: your God reigns.
Isaiah’s herald
In Isaiah 40, which opens with “Comfort, comfort My people”, the herald climbs a mountain.
Go up on a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Raise your voice loudly, O Jerusalem, herald of good news. Lift it up, do not be afraid! Say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!”
Isaiah 40:9Here the translations part. The BSB and the KJV make Zion itself the herald, and Wesley reads it so Wesley. The Greek translation and the Korean 개역한글 read a herald who brings the news to Zion. The Hebrew allows both. Nahum uses the same picture for the end of Nineveh’s tyranny (Nahum 1:15), and in Isaiah 61 the herald’s task becomes the calling of one anointed by the Spirit of the Lord (Isaiah 61:1).
The Greek Bible’s choice
The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures made over the centuries before Jesus, rendered basar in these verses of Isaiah with . The herald of Isaiah 52:7 became one who brings the good news of peace (εὐαγγελιζομένου ἀκοὴν εἰρήνης); the calling of Isaiah 61:1 became to bring good news to the poor (εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς). The New Testament’s writers knew these Scriptures in Greek, so when they wrote of bringing the gospel, Isaiah’s herald could be heard in the word. Paul takes up the verse for those sent to preach: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:15). The KJV, following later manuscripts, gives the fuller form there, with feet that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.
Matthew Henry sees those beautiful feet in the gospel’s ministers: “keeping themselves clean from the pollutions of the world, they are beautiful to those to whom they are sent” Matthew Henry.
ObjectionWas Isaiah not speaking of the return from Babylon?
To its first hearers this was news that the exile was ending. Matthew Henry grants that “The prophet had some reference to the return of the Jews from Babylon” Matthew Henry, and adds that it was a small event beside the coming of Christ that John the Baptist proclaimed. Mark opens the gospel with the voice in the wilderness from this same chapter (Mark 1:3). The New Testament does not erase the first meaning; it reads that news as come true in Christ.
Read Isaiah 52:7 and 1 Samuel 4:17 side by side in the dictionary of verses, and you will see one word carrying both victory and defeat.
This step’s verses
Read each verse in the original, in several translations, with the commentaries and a note.
- Isaiah 40:9Here is your Godבָּשַׂר
- Isaiah 52:7Your God reignsבָּשַׂר
- Isaiah 61:1Anointed to bring good newsבָּשַׂר
- Nahum 1:15The oppressor is cut offבָּשַׂר
Source
- Jewish translators at Alexandria, The Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) — 3rd–1st century BC. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, often quoted by the New Testament writers. It mostly renders בָּשַׂר (basar) by εὐαγγελίζομαι (euangelizomai) (2 Samuel 18; Psalms 40:9, 68:11, 96:2; Isaiah 40:9, 52:7, 61:1), and calls the reward for news εὐαγγέλια at 2 Samuel 4:10. English: Brenton (1844).