Encouragement for the Fearful

4. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you.

The “fearful of heart” are the hasty who cannot wait patiently for the apparently slow movements of God; who are impatient with his long delay in fulfilling his promises. Say to all such, “Be strong in heart; fear not. Behold your God! Vengeance shall come, the recompenses of God; he himself will come and save you.” This construction of the verse conforms more closely to the original than the English version and is more expressive. Let the saints have patience and never fear lest God should forget his words of promise, or the interests of his people and kingdom. He will vindicate himself as true to his words, both of threatening against his foes and of promise in behalf of his friends.

5. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

6. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

The figures change, but the general sense remains the same. The precious deliverance wrought by the Lord for his people is analogous to that of the blind restored to sight; the deaf to hearing; the dumb to singing, and the lame to their powers of leaping and walking. It is remarkable how closely the actual life of the Lord Jesus on earth corresponds to these figures. For the double purpose of giving scope to the gushing benevolence of his heart, and of illustrating his power to save souls from sin, he heard the prayer of the blind for sight, and of the deaf for their lost hearing, and thus made his miracles perpetual illustrations of what his grace was ready and mighty to do in giving spiritual sight to spiritually blind eyes and spiritual life to spiritually dead souls.—In the last clause of v. 6, the tense of the original is better expressed thus: “For in the wilderness waters have broken out (not “shall break out”). Because fountains have broken out there, verdure will ensue. This verse recalls the figure of the desert, virtually blending it with the new one—the restored senses of sight and hearing.

Cowles, H. (1869). Isaiah; With Notes, Critical, Explanatory and Practical (pp. 263–264). D. Appleton & Company. (Public Domain)