Good news to the poor: the anointed one and the year of the LORD's favor

Isaiah 61 belongs to the last section of the book, chapters 56 to 66. This section addresses a community back in or around Jerusalem, with a city in ruins (61:4), a temple that is not yet what it should be, and promises that have not been fully realized. Many scholars date these chapters to the Persian period, after the return from exile in 538 BC, often in the time of Haggai and Zechariah, around 520 BC, and attribute them to a prophet or school sometimes called Third Isaiah. Others, holding to a single Isaiah, take the chapters as a prophetic vision of the same later situation. The chapter reads in the same way on either view.

The hearers are people who had returned with high hopes after the words of Isaiah 40 to 55 and met disappointment: poor harvests, small numbers, neighbours who opposed them, and the old city still broken (compare Ezra 4 and Haggai 1). They are described in the chapter as the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives and the mourners in Zion. The prophet's reply is that the LORD has not forgotten the promise and has sent someone to deliver it.

The chapter picks up themes from the earlier chapters. The Spirit upon the speaker recalls the Servant in 42:1 and the Branch in 11:2. The mention of the ruins rebuilt and the nations serving recalls chapters 49 and 60. Chapter 60 describes Zion's glory, and chapter 61 introduces the person who brings it.

Isaiah 61 is poetry, written in the first person. Verses 1 to 3 are the voice of an unnamed figure who says 'me'. In verse 4 the speech moves to the third person and then addresses Zion ('you' in verses 5 to 7); verse 8 is spoken by the LORD, and verse 10 returns to a first-person voice of rejoicing. The chapter therefore needs to be read with attention to who speaks. The identity of the speaker in verse 1 is the central question.

Three answers have been given. The speaker may be the prophet himself, commissioned in the manner of earlier prophets. He may be a Servant figure like the one in chapters 42, 49 and 50, as the language of Spirit and sending in 42:1 and 48:16 suggests. Or he may be a messianic figure, the anointed one of God. These need not be exclusive: the prophet speaks as one who bears the Servant's mission, and the figure is more than any single prophet. The text speaks of anointing by the LORD without mentioning oil, and it is linked to the Spirit. In Hebrew the verb is mashach, the root of 'messiah'.

A second principle: the chapter draws on the vocabulary of Israel's law. The word for 'liberty' (deror) is used in Leviticus 25:10 for the Jubilee, the fiftieth year in which slaves were freed and land returned to families. The 'year of the LORD's favor' therefore evokes that institution, with its idea of a great reversal of debt and bondage. Reading the chapter without Leviticus 25 in mind loses the allusion.

Verse 1

'The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me.' The anointing is the reason for the Spirit's presence and the basis for what follows. The first task is 'to preach good news to the poor'. The word for good news (basar) was heard in 40:9 and 52:7. The poor (anawim) are the afflicted and humble who depend on God. Next, he is 'to bind up the brokenhearted', the work of a healer. Then 'to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners', using the Jubilee word. The Hebrew of the last phrase speaks of an opening for the prisoners, and the Greek Old Testament reads it as recovery of sight for the blind, which is the form Luke gives it.

Verse 2

'To proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of our God's vengeance, to comfort all who mourn.' The year of favor is the time of grace, the Jubilee that sets people free. The day of vengeance is the judgment on the oppressors, the reverse side of the same act, as elsewhere in Isaiah (34:8; 63:4). In the Hebrew line the year is long and the day is a single day, so the vengeance is brief compared with the favor. The last phrase returns to comfort, the theme of chapter 40.

Verse 3

The mourners in Zion are given 'a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair'. In Hebrew the first exchange is a wordplay: pe'er for efer, a headdress for ashes. Ashes were put on the head in grief; now a turban is worn at a festival. They will be called 'oaks of righteousness', the planting of the LORD, 'that He may be glorified'. The sturdy tree is the image of a people rooted in God's justice, and the last clause states the goal.

Verse 4

'They will rebuild the ancient ruins.' The people who were broken become builders. The 'desolations of many generations' echoes the long ruin of Jerusalem and the old cities of Judah.

Verses 5–7

Foreigners will tend the flocks and work the fields, so that Israel is freed for a higher calling and given the status of priests: 'you will be called the priests of the LORD, ministers of our God'. This recalls Exodus 19:6, where Israel was called a kingdom of priests. The exchange of shame for a double portion alludes to the double inheritance of a firstborn son (Deuteronomy 21:17), which here means a full share and everlasting joy.

Verses 8–9

The LORD himself speaks: he loves justice and hates robbery and iniquity. Because of this, he will give them their recompense in faithfulness and make an 'everlasting covenant' with them. Their descendants will be known among the nations, who will recognize that they are a people the LORD has blessed.

Verses 10–11

A voice sings: 'I will rejoice greatly in the LORD.' Who sings is debated. It could be the anointed one speaking again, or it could be Zion or the community personified. The garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness are compared to the dress of a bridegroom with a priestly headdress and a bride adorned with jewels. Salvation is something worn, a gift received. The chapter ends with a garden: as the earth brings forth its growth and a garden makes seed spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations.

Isaiah 61 states the shape of God's salvation in Isaiah: good news for the poor, healing for the broken, release for the bound, comfort for the grieving and the rebuilding of ruined places. The Bible's idea of salvation is not narrow. It includes forgiveness but also restoration of body, community and land. The reference to the Jubilee gives a legal and social shape to it: debts cancelled, slaves freed, land returned.

The chapter also shows the Spirit and the Messiah together. The anointing by the Spirit, introduced at 11:2 and 42:1, is the mark of God's agent. The pattern in which God's deliverer is empowered by the Spirit runs through the Old Testament and finds its focus in Jesus. A second teaching is the priestly vocation of God's people (verse 6), which the New Testament sees extended to all believers (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10). A third is God's righteousness as gift: the garments of salvation are put on, not earned, which is how Paul talks of righteousness from God in Romans 3 and 4, and how Revelation 19:8 describes the bride's clothing.

The pairing of 'year of favor' and 'day of vengeance' in verse 2 shows that salvation and judgment belong together in the Bible's account of God's justice.

Luke 4:16-21 is the clearest connection. In the synagogue at Nazareth, at the start of his public ministry, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61. He reads that the Spirit of the Lord is on him because he has anointed him to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. The wording partly follows the Greek Old Testament and includes a phrase from Isaiah 58:6. Jesus then stops, closes the scroll, and says that today this Scripture has been fulfilled in their hearing. He stops before 'the day of vengeance': the reading of the favor is for the present, and the judgment is left for later. This is fulfillment, announced by Jesus himself. The word 'Christ' means the Anointed One, and Luke has already shown the Spirit descending on Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:21-22).

In Matthew 11:2-6, when John the Baptist in prison asks whether Jesus is the one who is to come, Jesus answers by pointing to the blind who see, the lame who walk, and the poor who have good news preached to them, wording that draws on Isaiah 61:1 together with 35:5-6. Some texts found at Qumran also link this passage to a coming anointed figure at the end of days, which fits the way Jesus speaks of it.

The garment of salvation and bridal imagery in verse 10 is an echo in Revelation 21:2, where the new Jerusalem is prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. The priestly people of verse 6 is fulfilled according to 1 Peter 2:9 and Revelation 1:6.