Isaiah 35:4
“Tell those who have a fearful heart, “Be strong. Don’t be afraid. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, God’s retribution. He will come and save you.”
Where this sits
From a chapter describing the desert blossoming and a highway called the Way of Holiness. It sits between long stretches of judgment on the nations.
Reflection
The verse begins with an instruction to somebody else. Tell those who have a fearful heart. Before God addresses the frightened, he addresses the people standing near them, and gives them something to say.
That is easy to skip and worth keeping. Isaiah does not assume the fearful will find this on their own. The message is routed through a person, which is how most comfort actually travels.
The phrase rendered fearful heart is, in Hebrew, closer to hasty heart — a heart racing ahead, running fast. It is a physical image, and it fits: fear is not usually experienced as weakness but as speed, the mind moving faster than the situation warrants.
Against that, the first word is be strong, and the Hebrew is about firmness, being made solid. Not go faster. Not calm down. Set.
Then the reason, and it is more startling than most comfort. Your God will come with vengeance, God's retribution. He will come and save you. The two are one sentence. What reassures the frightened here is not that nothing is wrong but that something will be done about it — that the wrong has been noticed by someone with the standing to act, and that the same arrival which settles accounts is the arrival which rescues.
- Theme:
- Anxiety
- Book:
- Isaiah