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Isaiah 55

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

An invitation to the thirsty

1 Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your labor for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in rich food. 3 Incline your ear and come to Me; hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David. 4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5 See, you will call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you will run to you, because of Yahweh your Elohim, and for the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you.

Seek Yahweh while He may be found

6 Seek Yahweh while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the man of iniquity his thoughts; let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him, and to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon. 8 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, declares Yahweh. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth and make it bring forth and sprout, and give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall My word be that goes out from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. 12 For you shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush shall come up the cypress, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to Yahweh for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Notes

  • 55:1 The verse opens with hoy, the word Isaiah usually uses for "Ah" or "Woe to," here a loud call like a seller's in the market, yet what is offered costs nothing. Wisdom gives the same invitation in Proverbs 9:5: "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed." On the last day of Sukkot Yeshua called the thirsty to come to Him and drink (John 7:37), and Revelation 22:17 ends the Bible with the same free offer.
  • 55:3 "The sure mercies of David" (chasde David hanne'emanim) are the faithful lovingkindnesses Yahweh promised to David and his house forever (2 Samuel 7:15-16), which Solomon asked Yahweh to remember: "remember the lovingkindnesses of David Your servant" (2 Chronicles 6:42). Here that promise is opened to everyone who comes and listens. In the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch Paul quoted the Greek of this verse to show that Elohim raised Yeshua, never to return to decay (Acts 13:34).
  • 55:8 These words are often quoted for the mystery of God's ways in general, and that is true; but in context they explain verse 7. People hold grudges, but Yahweh "will abundantly pardon" the wicked man who turns back: His thoughts toward the repentant are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth (verse 9; compare Psalm 103:11-12).
  • 55:11 Rain does not go back to the sky until it has made the ground fruitful; so Yahweh's word (davar, a word that is also a deed) does what He sends it to do. The promise of verses 1-7, mercy for whoever comes, will not fail, any more than "the word of our Elohim," which "stands forever" (40:8). Paul borrows verse 10's "seed to the sower and bread" in 2 Corinthians 9:10.
  • 55:13 Thornbushes and briers, the marks of a ruined land (5:6; 7:23-25), give way to evergreen trees. The myrtle was one of the branches Israel gathered for the booths of Sukkot: "myrtle branches, palm branches and branches of leafy trees" (Nehemiah 8:15); later Jewish tradition counts the myrtle among the four species waved at the feast. The renewed land itself becomes "a name" for Yahweh, a lasting sign of what He has done.

Isaiah 54 · Isaiah 56

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