Isaiah 40
Isaiah 40 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Isaiah 40 opens with a voice breaking a long silence: "Comfort, comfort my people," says your God. The words are addressed to Jerusalem after catastrophe — the city destroyed, the people carried off to Babylon, every visible sign of God's presence gone. Into that devastation comes an announcement: the hard service is over, the debt is paid, and God himself is coming back.
That is the heart of the chapter. A herald cries out to "prepare the way of Yahweh" — to build a highway through the wilderness, as if for a returning king. The valleys will be lifted, the mountains flattened, and "the glory of Yahweh shall be revealed." This isn't a promise that circumstances will slowly improve. It's the announcement of an arrival. The exiles' deepest fear was not just that they had lost their home, but that God had abandoned them for good. Isaiah 40 answers that fear directly: he is on his way.
The rest of the chapter builds the case for believing it. Human power is "like grass" that withers, but God's word "stands forever." The nations that seemed so overwhelming are "like a drop in a bucket" next to the Creator who measures the oceans in his hand and calls every star by name. And this immense God is not distant: he comes "like a shepherd," gathering the lambs in his arms.
What makes the chapter so powerful is who it's spoken to. These are people with every reason to believe comfort will never come — the book of Lamentations, written from the same disaster, repeats over and over that Jerusalem has no comforter. Isaiah 40 doesn't deny that grief. It answers it. The famous closing promise — that those who wait for Yahweh will "mount up with wings like eagles" — is hope offered precisely to the exhausted.
What scholars say
These two excerpts show Isaiah 40 from opposite ends of its story: N. T. Wright traces how its message of hope echoed for hundreds of years until John the Baptist announced it was finally coming true, while John Goldingay reads it against Lamentations' repeated cry that there is no comforter — the honest grief that Isaiah 40 would one day answer.
“That message had echoed through the life of the Jewish people for hundreds of years by the time of John the Baptist , ever since it was first uttered in Isaiah 40. It was part of the great message of hope, of forgiveness, of healing for the nation after the horror of exile . God would at last come back, bringing comfort and rescue. Yes, John is saying; that’s what’s happening now. It’s time to get ready! The king, God himself, is coming back! Get ready for God’s kingdom ! And John’s striking message made everyone sit up and take notice. In today’s language, they saw the blue flashing lights and stopped what they were doing to get ready.”
“The people who pray this poem don’t know, but for later readers like us, its fivefold reference to there being no comforter offers paradoxical reassurance. During the decades when the poem is being used in Jerusalem, Yahweh will give the order, “Comfort, comfort my people” (Isaiah 40). “There’s no comforter” is the truth about the situation at the moment, but things won’t be that way forever.”
What it means for you
Isaiah 40 speaks to the seasons when comfort feels impossible — when a loss is real, the silence is long, and hope sounds naive. The chapter never asks its hearers to pretend things are fine. It lets the exile be an exile. What it insists is that the present truth is not the final truth: the God who seems absent is actually on the road.
For a reader today, that reframes waiting. "Those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength" is not advice to try harder; it's an invitation to keep watching for a God who keeps his word. Comfort, in this chapter, isn't a feeling you generate. It's an arrival you get ready for.
Isaiah 40 in context
Isaiah 40 marks the great hinge of the book. Chapters 1–39 largely deal with judgment — warnings to Judah and the nations, culminating in the prediction of Babylonian exile at the end of chapter 39. Then chapter 40 turns, opening a new section (chapters 40–55) addressed to a people already in exile, generations later. Its themes — the herald's cry, the highway in the wilderness, God as incomparable Creator and gentle shepherd — set the agenda for everything that follows, including the promised return home and the servant songs.
Passages we cover in this chapter