Isaiah 42

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¹“Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. ✦ ²He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, Nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. ✦ ³A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth. ✦ ⁴He will not fail nor be discouraged, Till He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands shall wait for His law.” ✦ ⁵Thus says God the Lord, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, Who gives breath to the people on it, And spirit to those who walk on it: ✦ ⁶“I,the Lord, have called You in righteousness, And will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, As a light to the Gentiles, ✦ ⁷To open blind eyes, To bring out prisoners from the prison, Those who sit in darkness from the prison house. ✦ ⁸I am the Lord, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, Nor My praise to carved images. ✦ ⁹Behold, the former things have come to pass, And new things I declare; Before they spring forth I tell you of them.” ✦ ¹⁰Sing to the Lord a new song, And His praise from the ends of the earth, You who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, You coastlands and you inhabitants of them! ✦ ¹¹Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voice, The villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing, Let them shout from the top of the mountains. ✦ ¹²Let them give glory to the Lord, And declare His praise in the coastlands. ✦ ¹³The Lord shall go forth like a mighty man; He shall stir up His zeal like a man of war. He shall cry out, yes, shout aloud; He shall prevail against His enemies. ✦ ¹⁴“I have held My peace a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will cry like a woman in labor, I will pant and gasp at once. ✦ ¹⁵I will lay waste the mountains and hills, And dry up all their vegetation; I will make the rivers coastlands, And I will dry up the pools. ✦ ¹⁶I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, And crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, And not forsake them. ✦ ¹⁷They shall be turned back, They shall be greatly ashamed, Who trust in carved images, Who say to the molded images, ‘You are our gods.’ ✦ ¹⁸“Hear, you deaf; And look, you blind, that you may see. ✦ ¹⁹Who is blind but My servant, Or deaf as My messenger whom I send? Who is blind as he who is perfect, And blind as the Lord’s servant? ✦ ²⁰Seeing many things, but you do not observe; Opening the ears, but he does not hear.” ✦ ²¹The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake; He will exalt the law and make it honorable. ✦ ²²But this is a people robbed and plundered; All of them are snared in holes, And they are hidden in prison houses; They are for prey, and no one delivers; For plunder, and no one says, “Restore!” ✦ ²³Who among you will give ear to this? Who will listen and hear for the time to come? ✦ ²⁴Who gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel to the robbers? Was it not the Lord, He against whom we have sinned? For they would not walk in His ways, Nor were they obedient to His law. ✦ ²⁵Therefore He has poured on him the fury of His anger And the strength of battle; It has set him on fire all around, Yet he did not know; And it burned him, Yet he did not take it to heart. ✦

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Where this chapter connects

Isa 49 ·10 Isa 42 ·8 Isa 35 ·7 Isa 45 ·7 Isa 41 ·7 Isa 40 ·7 Isa 44 ·7 Isa 29 ·6

Christ at the center

Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).

How Isaiah 42 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereVideoBibleProject — video overviews & word studiesBibleProject · 5–10 min · Free · evangelical
Free animated overviews of every book of the Bible, plus themes and Hebrew/Greek word studies — the best visual on-ramp to any book. (Biblical-theology, broadly evangelical, not distinctly Reformed.)
★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.

Pastoral

SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.

Seminary

★ Start hereCommentaryThe Book of Isaiah (NICOT)John N. Oswalt · Paid · evangelical
The standard evangelical commentary on Isaiah — thorough and devotionally warm.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Isaiah videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Isaiah 42YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Isaiah 42David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on IsaiahMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Isaiah 42Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

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