Chapter study · Isaiah
Isaiah 40
Comfort my people
Isaiah of Jerusalem · c. 700 BC, speaking to exiles 150 years in the future · about 9 min
Before you read
The chapter opens the second half of Isaiah, addressed to people who will lose everything — temple, land, king — and live as exiles in Babylon. It is a letter mailed ahead of time to arrive exactly when it would be needed.
Isaiah 39 ends with a prediction: everything will be carried to Babylon. Isaiah 40 opens with one word from God: 'Comfort.' Before the exile even happens, the comfort is already written.
The chapter asks one question three ways: have you forgotten how big your God is? And it ends with the Bible's most famous promise about tired people.
Verse by verse
Isaiah 40:1–2
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.”
The comfort is doubled — 'comfort, comfort' — the Hebrew way of saying 'with everything you have.' 'Speak tenderly' is literally 'speak to the heart,' the phrase a man uses when wooing.
Isaiah 40:3
“A voice cries: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.”
Highways in the ancient world were built for visiting kings. God is coming to the exiles, through the desert between Babylon and home. All four gospels hear John the Baptist's voice in this verse.
Isaiah 40:8
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
To people about to watch an empire take everything, Isaiah says: empires are grass. One thing survives, and you are holding it.
Isaiah 40:11
“He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms… and gently lead those that are with young.”
The God who measures the oceans in His palm (v.12) is introduced first as a shepherd carrying lambs. Power and gentleness are not opposites in this chapter — the gentleness is the point of the power.
Isaiah 40:15
“Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales.”
Babylon — the superpower that erased Jerusalem — is condensation on a bucket's rim. This is not denial of the exile's pain; it is perspective from above it.
Isaiah 40:26
“Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name.”
Babylonians worshipped the stars. Isaiah says the stars are livestock — God calls them out each night by name, like a shepherd. The thing exiles feared is somebody's flock.
Isaiah 40:28–29
“The Lord is the everlasting God… He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.”
The contrast is deliberate: the unwearied God spends His strength on the weary. The economy of heaven runs downhill toward tired people.
Isaiah 40:31
“But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
'Wait' is qavah — to hope with tension, like a stretched cord; also the word for the twisting of rope. Waiting on God is not idleness; it is the braiding of your weakness with His strength. Note the order: soaring first, then running, then walking — because some days the miracle is just not fainting.
A word in the original Hebrew
nacham · נָחַם
comfort — but its root is about breathing deeply, the exhale after holding your breath. God's first word to the exiles is permission to breathe again.
Carry these with you
God wrote the comfort before the exile happened. He is never improvising your rescue.
The measureless God (oceans in His palm) is the same God who carries lambs.
Waiting is not empty time — it is how strength gets braided in.
Questions to sit with
- 1.
What 'Babylon' in your life needs to be re-measured as a drop in a bucket?
- 2.
Which do you need today: wings, legs, or just enough to keep walking?
- 3.
What would speaking 'to the heart' of yourself sound like, the way God speaks to Jerusalem?