Isaiah 61:1

Note

One on whom the Spirit of the Lord rests, anointed by the LORD, says why he has been sent. The first reason is to bring good news to the lowly. In the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus read these words aloud and said that today they had been fulfilled.

The speaker in Isaiah 61:1–3 is "I." He has been sent "to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners" (Isaiah 61:1), and then "to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of our God’s vengeance, to comfort all who mourn" (Isaiah 61:2), giving "a crown of beauty for ashes" (Isaiah 61:3). The word for "liberty," deror, is the word of the Jubilee, when Israel was to "proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants" (Leviticus 25:10). Isaiah takes the language of the year when each family returned to its land and those sold into service went free, and uses it for the freedom God Himself will bring.

"To preach good news" is levaser, the piel infinitive of basar (בָּשַׂר) with the preposition of purpose, and it follows directly on "the LORD has anointed Me." The first purpose of the anointing is to bring news. The verb ‘anoint,’ mashach, gives the noun mashiach, the Messiah. The ones who receive the news are anavim, people bowed down by poverty and trouble.

The English versions show how wide that word is. The KJV has "to preach good tidings unto the meek," and the LSV "to the humble," reading the inner side of it. The BSB, "to preach good news to the poor," reads the outer side, as the Septuagint did with its πτωχοῖς and as Luke does when he quotes the verse: "to preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18). The two Korean Bibles part along the same line: the 흠정역 follows the KJV with 온유한 자들, the meek, the 개역한글 has 가난한 자, the poor. Luke's form of the quotation also follows the Septuagint in including "recovery of sight to the blind."

Wesley says that though the prophet may speak of himself, "yet it is principally to be understood of Christ," and that from this anointing "he hath also the name of Messiah among the Hebrews, and of Christ among the Greeks" Wesley. Matthew Henry: "The poor are commonly best disposed to receive the gospel" Matthew Henry, and "His doctrine contains glad tidings indeed to those who are humbled before God" Matthew Henry. In the Catena on Luke, Origen gives the poor a wider reach: "By the poor He means the Gentile nations, for they were poor, possessing nothing at all, having neither God, nor Law, nor Prophets" Origen. He also offers a reading of "the acceptable year of the Lord" as "the whole time of the Church" Origen.

What Jesus was handed in Nazareth was "the scroll of the prophet Isaiah" (Luke 4:17). The great Isaiah scroll found at Qumran, copied around the second century BC, contains the whole book and agrees in substance with the Masoretic text of a thousand years later, with many small differences, mostly of spelling Dead Sea Scrolls, 1QIsa^a. The Isaiah read in synagogues in Jesus' day was, in substance, the Isaiah we read. Jesus stopped at "the year of the Lord’s favor," rolled up the scroll, sat down, and said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). He did not go on to the day of vengeance.

If the year of favor is, as Origen read it, the whole time of the Church, the "today" Jesus spoke in Nazareth has not yet closed. The news still comes to bind up what is broken and to open what is locked.