Isaiah...

...has been my obsessively-favorite book of the Bible since my freshman year of college.

I started reading a Walter Brueggemann* commentary on its second half a few months ago but put it down for Lenten reading. Going back through my notes on the first few chapters this week. A few quotes which stand out from the introduction...

"This single assertion, that Yahweh has defeated Babylon and Judah is free to depart exile, is the primary theme of all of Isaiah 40-55."

"Emancipation is perhaps for a larger purpose than simply the gift of homecoming."

"The text gives 'comfort' from the God of all comfort, but not easily and not obviously- perhaps only hiddenly (see 45:15)."

"Yahweh has planned comfort for the exiles, and none can prevent it." (emphasis is text's)

"The ministry of Jesus is a glad and public homecoming for all those alienated and dislocated."

"The 'good news' is summarized: "Behold your God". Or we might say, "Look, here is your God.""

"Yahweh is present, powerful, active; Yahweh's presence changes everything."

"Yahweh is strong enough to emancipate, gentle enough to attend to wants and needs."

"On both counts of strength and attentiveness, it is asserted that Yahweh is incomparable."


So good to be comforted by learning about His character.



*Walter Brueggemann has decades of Old Testament scholarship and is widely respected as a hugely influential theologian...
And he writes prayers of praise which contain "...deep awareness of all the places where your newness is not yet visible, and has not yet come."
Learned and respected theologians... who praise simultaneously with acknowledging deeply fallow places... are just like so totally my favorites.