At various points in the second part of the book of Isaiah, we have the appearance of the Servant of the Lord; these passages are usually referred to as the Servant Songs. The Servant is the one who will bring about God’s justice on the earth, and carry his salvation not only to Israel, but beyond, to the whole world; and in Isaiah 53, we see that the Servant will accomplish this through his suffering. Now, here in Isaiah 61, we have I believe the last appearance of the Servant, promising the day when God will make everything right. The Servant speaks both as a prophet—that’s the meaning of “the Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me”—and as a king—that’s the significance of “the LORD has anointed me”—so he has power both from God and on earth to bring this about. He has been given, as God’s chosen prophet and king, the mission to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set captives and prisoners free, to comfort those who mourn, and to raise up the oppressed so that they may restore all that has been lost and rebuild all that has been destroyed.
The keystone of this passage comes in verse 2: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me . . . to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.” In our day and age, we think we can control time—we have atomic clocks, and we do business at all hours of the day and night, and we have computer calendars that keep our schedules months into the future—and so we use time words very precisely, because for us, time is about precision. For the ancient Hebrews, it wasn’t, and so we shouldn’t take this “year” and “day” language in that way; rather, this is typical Hebrew parallelism, pairing a time of God’s favor with a time of his vengeance. The significance of this is that they’re not two separate times—they’re the same time. The year of the LORD’s favor is the day of vengeance of our God. There are folks who think that’s strange, that there must be something wrong with that; but if you’ve ever been oppressed, if you’ve ever been done unjustly, you know better. To bring good news to the oppressed means bringing vengeance on their oppressors; healing the brokenhearted means judging those who broke their hearts; setting the captives free means breaking the power of those who hold them captive. These two things go together; the world cannot be put right until those who put it wrong have been judged.
Which is the interesting thing about Jesus’ reading of this passage: he gets as far as “proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,” and then he stops. He takes these two things that go together, and he splits them; and then he says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” This is an incredible thing, because it opens an incredible opportunity: in Jesus, you can miss out on the vengeance of God. We all need God’s vengeance on others, because we’ve all been done wrong; but we all have it coming on ourselves, because we’ve all done others wrong, too. We have been victims of injustice, but we’ve also done injustice, when we’ve gotten the chance. As much as we need the year of God’s favor, the day of his vengeance is a perilous time for us—and so Jesus came to create a space between them. In Jesus, the year of the LORD’s favor has already begun, but his vengeance is held off, to give us a chance to respond to his offer and escape judgment; this is God’s grace. That’s why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6, “Now is the favorable time; now is the day of salvation.”