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“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem; And call out to her, that her warfare has ended, That her iniquity has been removed, That she has received of the LORD’S hand Double for all her sins.”” (Isaiah 40:1–2 NASB)
This Shabbat is referred to in Jewish tradition as the Shabbat of Comfort or Shabbat Nachamu (שבת נחמו) in Hebrew and Isaiah 40:1-26 is the first of seven parallel readings on comfort traditionally read leading up to Yom Teruah (Rosh haShanah). It coincides with the Torah reading ואתחנן Va’etchanan (“and I pleaded,” Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11).
Isaiah is encouraging and comforting the Jewish exiles who have just started to experience exile in Babylon after suffering from the Babylonian siege and capture of Jerusalem.
If you think that things are not going well in America and most of the Western world right now, just read the accounts by Josephus and some other historians of his time record about the siege of Jerusalem leading up to its destruction in A.D. 70. What they record was horrific.
They had run out of food, water and other necessities in short order due to intense infighting between different Jewish sects. The worse carnage in Jerusalem was not inflicted by the Romans, but by other Jews. There was no safe harbor for anybody.
The “abomination of desolation” that Daniel warned about happened in 165 B.C. with banning of Temple services by Seleucid king Antiochus IV, in A.D. 70 with the destruction of Yerushalayim by Rome, and it will happen again before the end of days. Things will get worse before they get better.
We are going through difficulties and trials right now, and there will be a time when the trials we suffer will be similar to what the people suffered in the siege of Jerusalem, but we are still told not to give up.
No matter what we are facing or how bad we think our situation is, we are to depend on God, not on ourselves. There is something worse than death.
Many in our country have forgotten that there are things worse than death. They have willingly given up basic freedoms such as freedom of speech, religion and assembly and their natural rights for the false hope that they might extend their lives on earth by doing so.
When we think about living in a tumultuous time, where things are coming apart in the seems, either nationally or personally, God’s people have experience all sorts of challengers and God carried His people through all sorts of terrible things.
Believers in North Korea, Iran, China, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Middle East are all going through various inconveniences and active persecution. They would rather follow the instructions of our Savior, even if it means death. They remember Yeshua’s warning that if the Master suffers, His servants will suffer, too.
We are called to “speak kindly” to the heart of our fellow man, when people’s hearts are in anguish.
Isaiah is speaking to first generation of the Babylonian exile, something that Jeremiah had predicted years before. This was the Lord’s judgement and discipline on the people. What Isaiah spoke to this generation has insights that are relevant for us today. One of the Isaiah’s main points of encouragement is that God will remove their iniquity.
Isaiah encouraged them with several prophesies about the coming Messiah, who God will send to His people in the future.
One of the nicknames for the Messiah is “The Comforter” which is a very important title. The Messiah is the One who will bring comfort to the nations, not only spiritually but physically. The comfort that we receive inside, can help us navigate difficulties and terror that we experience on the outside. Every trial that we experience builds us up so that when worse time times, we have the training needed to overcome. With any task in life, we have to practice it and prepare ourselves.
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” (John 14:15–17 NASB)
What are Yeshua’s commandments? His commandments are in the Torah.
Guard the mezuzot of your heart (Isaiah 40:13–14)
“Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has informed Him?
With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge And informed Him of the way of understanding?” (Isaiah 40:13–14 NASB)
The fact that God has given us rules and guidelines to follow and that we are not left to our own devises to sort out right and wrong is very comforting. The word of God guards, sustains, protects and guards us from the temptations of the evil one.
We are warned to guard our gates, to guard our borders, not only the gates and borders of our nation, but also those around our hearts and minds.
Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) once told a parable about an exorcism performed on a man, who after he was liberated from the demonic influence, was left empty. The evicted demon found seven other demons stronger than himself and return to the man, who was clean but empty, and possessed him again. At the end, the man was worse off than before.
This parable teaches us a very important lesson about guarding our own doorposts and to fill ourselves with the word of God.
Just like in today’s generation, to use a crude analogy, it would be crazy to not have a virus checker or firewall on your computer, because there are all sorts of criminals who want access to the financial and personal secrets we store on our computers. We should have a “virus checker” or firewall on our own spirit, to protect our thoughts and bring them all to obedience to the Messiah.
The Apostle Paul exhorts us to take every thought captive, not to dwell and gloat over evil thoughts, but to know what thoughts are good and what thoughts are evil, which thoughts should be stored and which ones should be discarded.
The Messiah, as the Ambassador of God, did not speak anything that God did not tell Him to say, and He did not do anything God did not tell Him to do. He spoke every word that comes from the mouth of God. That is how He defended Himself against the temptations of Ha Satan.
Isaiah also prophesied the forerunner of the Messiah who will prepare the people to meet the Messiah. The Apostle Matthew brings this to mind when he introduces his readers to John the Baptist for the first time.
“Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, “THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!’” Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.” (Matthew 3:1–6 NASB)
When the Lord harvests us as His crop, His silo will be full of good wheat, while the chaff, will be outside the gate. We have to leave behind the chaff and let it removed from us so that we will be ready to be brought into fellowship with the Messiah.
We are shown here that the role of God’s Spirit as the conduit of understanding. He also tells Isaiah to give his audience a dressing down similar to what God gave to Job at the end of the book of Job. God’s ways are not like our ways, His ways are better, always better.
The Scriptures are God’s “condescension” (synkatabasis) to our human weakness. He lowers Himself down to our level. The Bible is written with human language and concepts so that we can understand it, but we must not think of God in human terms, nor should we expect to understand His ways by the application of human reasoning.
Dr. Eugenia Constantinou, “Thinking Orthodox”
Humans are the pinnacle of creation (Isaiah 40:2)
“Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.” (Isaiah 40:26 NASB)
Human beings, as the pinnacle of creation, are fearfully and wonderfully made. God can take care of us, no matter what kind of distress we are experiencing. We are not the products of trial and error, but of profound design.
One way we know this is how He gave human beings the unique ability of language and speech. For communication to be successful, both the sender and the receiver must have the same codex. If the sender and the receiver do not have the same codex, there will not be a successful transmission or exchange of ideas.
This is a great message of hope for people who’s legacy was forsaking the Lord and being forsaken for a time, but it is also a foretaste of the message of home the Messiah brought to His lost sheep of Israel.
This word can go out into all the earth by various means, whether it’s memorized for oral transmission, printed on pages of paper or electronically transmitted over the internet. As long as the sender and the receiver both speak the same language, the word of God can touch the mind and heart and do its work.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. “I and the Father are one.”” (John 10:27–30 NASB)
Whether it’s Isaiah speaking to the generation in exile or Yeshua, speaking with the generation who had returned from exile and were now experiencing the oppression of the Romans, they both could be comforted by the words of scripture.
Do your traditions uphold Torah or tear it down?
Going back to the Torah portion, we see that Moses reminds the second generation of where they came from and where they were going. They were called to remember why they left their way of life in Egypt, outside God’s kingdom.
We belong in the hand of God, no matter where we are. We are to guard our hearts and minds with the gates protected by God. We need to cling to God with all hearts, lives and resources. When we do this, we are not corrupting God’s reputation in the process.
“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” (Deuteronomy 4:2 NASB)
We see this warning again in Deuteronomy 12:32. We have to ask ourselves if Messiah ended the law? If so, how did he “end” it. If not, why do people who call themselves Christians neglect to keep it?
We aren’t to add to or take away from God’s words. If people tamper with God’s word, we can’t know who God actually is or lead others to Him. Yeshua tells us in Mark 7 that Traditions are not necessarily bad but if they contradict the word of God, then those traditions need to be set aside. The Sages say a teaching or tradition that makes the Torah stand up is fruitful while a tradition that makes the law fall down is not fruitful.
For example, praying before one eats is tradition, while praying after one eats is from Torah. It’s not wrong to pray before one eats just because it’s not in the Torah, it actually enhances our spiritual life with the reminder to acknowledge that all our food comes from God.
We have also seen battles in recent years about what defines a new moon. Is the New Moon when it’s hidden from view or at the point where the sliver reappears? People argue about how large of a sliver is large enough for a new moon. How many witnesses are needed to make a sighting official, etc. The point is that we need a clear definition of what it is, just so that the New Moon can be observed and acknowledged by the entire community.
It’s the same reason that we have conventions regarding time. We have Universal Mean Time, that used to be called Greenwich Mean Time. The reason the world came together and came up with the convention of Greenwich Mean Time was so the world would could function together. The point of making a decision on these matters is so we can meet together.
We are warned in the Torah, that there are certain nations, certain generations, who can be so twisted and corrupted that the only way to protect the righteous from them is to push them out. Human beings are experts at killing, and perhaps we can prevent some from dying but once they are too far gone, we can’t resurrect them to life. Resurrection is only in the hands of God. But do we really believe that God can and will resurrect those who have died?
“And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.
‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’ “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.” (Mark 7:6–9 NASB)
‘You have heard it said … but I tell you …’
Yeshua, at the beginning of His discourses on the Torah in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7; cp. Sermon on the Plain, Luke 6:17–49), clearly state that taking away from the Torah wasn’t His mission (Matt. 5:17–19; Luke 16:16–17).
A preamble to a book explains why the author wrote the book and should not be skipped over. If we skip the preamble of the book and just read the book, we will not understand the purpose or relevance of the book. If we read the New Testament without reading His preamble, we also miss out on so much of Yeshua’s teachings and can easily misunderstand Him.
““Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17–20 NASB)
The intention of tradition is very important, but there is also lattitude in tradition.
For example, when it comes to prayer, we have the example of Solomon when he prayed at the dedication of the Temple and the example of Hannah when she prayed privately for a son.
Solomon’s prayer was very public, and the text of it was recorded word for word by royal scribes for us today.
Hannah’s prayer, on the other hand, was so quiet that only a priest who was right next to her, could barely hear her and presumed she was drunk and babbling to herself. So in both of those expressions, we look at what was their intention in the process? Were they drawing attention to themselves or were they simply longing to establish a connection and communication with God?
Unfortunately, it’s easy to tip over into legalism and it’s also easy to tip over into extreme emotionalism. One can either live too much in their head or too much in their heart. How do you balance these extremes. Psalm 119 may be the answer. When you read Psalm 119, you will see a love for the law but you also see someone having an ecstatic experience with the Torah.
Rabbi Kimchi speaks of the advantages of fences around the Torah, but when the Sages of the second temple period made those fences too high, Solomon’s prayer that the Temple would be a place of prayer for all nations, was impeded. Their fences were contradicting God’s plan, not helping it.
Every thought, every idea that comes into your door needs to be measured to the word of God. Just as HaSatan challenged Yeshua saying, “Did God really say….?” so too we need to do the same examination in the reverse to make sure that we are only studying, practicing and doing what is true and right.
We see that many in this generation are being swept away by immorality and lies. We, as the priesthood of believers, are called upon to pass on the truth to the next generation and to protect it from error.
The word of God does not need to be blended in with the world to be relevant to people. We don’t need a blend of yin and yang to save the world. The Creator is fully able to save His own. When we blend the things of God with the things of the word, we create confusion, not enlightenment.
Summary: Tammy