Bible Commentaries
Isaiah 42

Verse 16

THE SPIRITUALLY BLESSED

‘And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.’

Isaiah 42:16

I. When the prophet Isaiah uses such language as this, ‘I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not,’ he just illustrates the language of Paul, ‘I am what I am by the grace of God that is in me.’— I will do it. It is the Lord who begins and consummates the work: ‘I will bring’—‘I will lead’—‘I will make darkness light’—‘These things will I do.’ It is thus that our thoughts are ever turned to the great First Cause—the Origin as well as the Finisher of all that is good in man.

II. Moreover, they are the blind who are thus brought, and this is one of the wonders of salvation by grace.—It is written, ‘Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see’; but is not that only to trifle with the diseased? Is it not to mock their helplessness, or sport with their infirmity? No; when it is omnipotent love which bids the blind to look. The fact that Jehovah gives the command is proof enough that He means to give power to obey it, would man but listen to the words.

III. And, further, the way is an unknown one.—Reason could not discover it. Man’s ingenuity could not invent it. His fancied righteousness would only have blocked it up. Indeed, the efforts made by man for more than four thousand years had all been baffled, and the result of his sagest devices had only been an increase of sorrow. But the Lord points to His way; He leads the blind into it; and then they find it to be one of pleasantness and peace. It is, indeed, the way of life.

IV. And still more, it is written, ‘I will not forsake them.’—Having begun the work He will carry it on, for He is the Lord and changes not. The fabric which grace has founded, grace will rear, till the copestone be put on with shoutings of ‘Grace, grace unto it!’ As surely as rivers run down to the sea, or as light spreads, nay, as surely as God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, the soul which grace has visited will be guided to glory.

Verses 19-20

MERCY BLIND

‘Who is blind, but My servant? or deaf, as My messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord’s servant? Seeing many things, but thou observest not; opening the ears, but he heareth not.’

Isaiah 42:19-20

I. As Mediator, ‘the Man Christ Jesus’ came to be God’s ‘Servant,’ ‘to finish the work which He gave Him to do,’ and to be His ‘ messenger,’ speaking ‘not His own words but the words of Him that sent Him.’ It is of Christ, then, in His character as Mediator, that the prophet is here speaking. How is He blind and deaf? He is blind, not because He does not see, but because He will not ‘observe’ what He sees. He is deaf, not because He does not hear, but because He will not ‘be extreme to mark’ and impute what He hears.

II. Oh! if He had been only man, or like one of us, where should any one of us have now been?—Surely like Judas, ‘in our own place.’ But the Blessed Jesus, Himself ‘perfect,’ ‘for Whose righteousness’ sake the Lord is well pleased,’ Who (by His sinless obedience) ‘has magnified the law and made it honourable’—is ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmities,’ and while He opens our ears to hear His voice, closes His own to our sinful, careless, cold, idle words, and shuts His eyes to the failings of His poor brethren, for whom He shed His blood, and pleads the merits of that blood-shedding continually before the throne of God.

Canon Champneys.