Isaiah 40:9 - meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 40:9
O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!
a mountain or range of hills (sometimes used figurative… · noun, common masculine singular absolute
Jerusalem
יְרוּשָׁלִָ֑םye.ru.sha.Lim
H3389
Jerushalaim or Jerushalem · proper noun, a place name
tidings
מְבַשֶּׂ֖רֶתme.va.Se.ret
H1319
properly · verb, piel active participle, feminine singular construct
up
הָרִ֤ימִיha.Ri.mi
H7311
to be high actively · verb, hiphil imperative, 2nd person feminine singular
voice
קוֹלֵ֔ךְko.Lekh
H6963
a voice or sound · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person feminine singular
strength
בַכֹּ֙חַ֙va.Ko.ach
H3581
vigor · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
up
הָרִ֙ימִי֙ha.Ri.mi
H7311
to be high actively · verb, hiphil imperative, 2nd person feminine singular
afraid
תִּירָ֔אִיti.Ra.'i
H3372
to fear · verb, qal jussive, 2nd person feminine singular
say
אִמְרִי֙'im.Ri
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person feminine singular
cities
לְעָרֵ֣יle.'a.Rei
H5892
a city (a place guarded by waking or a watch) in the wi… · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct
Judah
יְהוּדָ֔הye.hu.Dah
H3063
Jehudah (or Judah) · proper noun, a place name
God
אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם'e.lo.hei.Khem
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 52:7-8 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good,…
Isaiah 12:2 Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvatio…
Ephesians 6:19 And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,
Isaiah 25:9 And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the LORD; we have waited for him…
Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up th…
Acts 2:14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judæa, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be thi…
Judges 9:7 And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hear…
1 Samuel 26:13-14 Then David went over to the other side, and stood on the top of an hill afar off; a great space being between them:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 40:9-11
It was promised (Isa 40:5) that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed; that is it with the hopes of which God's people must be comforted. Now here we are told,
I. How it shall be revealed, Isa 40:9. 1. It shall be revealed to Zion and Jerusalem; notice shall be given of it to the remnant that are left in Zion and Jerusalem, the poor of the land, who were vine-dressers and husbandmen; it shall be told them that their brethren shall return to them. This shall be told also to the captives who belonged to Zion and Jerusalem, and retained their affection for them. Zion is said to dwell with the daughter of Babylon (Zac 2:7); and there she receives notice of Cyrus's gracious proclamation; and so…
Rather, "Oh, thou that bringest good things to Zion; thou that bringest good tidings to Jerusalem." "Thou" is thus the collective personification of the messengers who announce God's gracious purpose to Zion (see on Isa 40:1); Isa 52:7 confirms this [Vulgate and GESENIUS]. If English Version be retained, the sense will be the glad message was first to be proclaimed to Jerusalem, and then from it as the center to all "Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth" (Luk 24:47, Luk 24:49; Act 1:8) [VITRINGA and HENGSTENBERG].
mountain--It was customary for those who were about to promulgate any great thing, to ascend a hill from which they could be seen and heard by all (Jdg 9:7; Mat 5…
O Zion, that bringest good tidings,.... Or, "O thou that bringest good tidings to Zion (n)"; which rendering of the words is more agreeable to the latter part of the verse,
say unto the cities of Judah, &c. and to some parallel places, Isaiah 41:27 and to the type, the deliverance of the Jews from Babylon; the tidings of which came from Babylon to Zion, or Jerusalem; and to the Targum which paraphrases the words thus,
"O ye prophets, that bring good tidings to Zion;''
and so may be applied to Gospel ministers, who bring the good tidings of the good will, grace, and favour of God, to men, through Christ; of the grace of Christ, in his suretyship engagements and performances; in his incarna…
The Church Fathers
Therefore, let us transcend the works of the world, so that we may be able to see God face to face. Ascend to the mountain that proclaims Zion. If the one who proclaims Zion ascends to the mountain, how much more the one who proclaims Christ and the risen Christ? Perhaps many will see him in the body; for we have known Christ according to the flesh: but now we no longer know him.
For in the power of the Holy Spirit, by the will of the Father and the Son, Peter stood with the Eleven and, lifting up his voice (according to the text, "Lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings to Jerusalem"), captured in the spiritual net of his words about three thousand souls. So great was the grace that worked in all the apostles together, that, out of the Jews … this great number believed, were baptized in the name of Christ and continued steadfast in the apostles' doctrine and in the prayers.
It is the chorus of the apostles that the prophetic text raises here. It is precisely for this reason that after expressing this exhortation in the singular the text shifts into the plural and says, "Lift up [the voice], do not fear." In the same way, in his turn, Christ our Master said to the apostles, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." And again, after bringing them out from the prison, he bade them to proclaim quite freely the words of this life. Moreover, he calls "mountain" the summit of the knowledge of God.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Isaiah, The Book of — Consists of prophecies delivered (Isa. 1) in the reign of Uzziah (1-5), (2) of Jotham (6), (3) Ahaz (7-14:28), (4) the first half of Hezekiah’s reign (14:28-35), (5) the second half of Hezekiah’s…
Gentiles · PROPHECIES OF THE CONVERSION OF — PROPHECIES OF THE CONVERSION OF
Jerusalem · Prophecies respecting: The gospel to go forth from — Prophecies respecting: The gospel to go forth from
Mountains · Proclamations often made from — Proclamations often made from
Proclamation · Imperial — Imperial
Titles And Names Of Christ · God — God
Zion · worship — worship
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Ascend on the high mountain. He proceeds with the same subject; for the Lord, having formerly promised that he would give prophets who should soothe the grief and fear of the people by promises, now commands that this consolation shall be more widely spread; because it is his pleasure to diffuse his grace throughout the whole of Judea.
Lift up thy voice aloud, O Jerusalem. Formerly he had given to Jerusalem, and Zion the hope of this joyful message; now he commands that the same voice shall be spread and shall be heard through other cities, and, for this reason, gives orders that the loud voice shall be lifted up, and proclaimed from a lofty place. Although by the words "Zion" and "Jerusale…
The prophet accordingly now takes, as his standpoint, the time when Jehovah will already have come. "Upon a high mountain get thee up, O evangelistess Zion; lift up they voice with strength, evangelistess Jerusalem: lift up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God." Knobel and others follow the lxx and Targum, and regard Zion and Jerusalem as accusatives of the object, viz., "preacher of salvation (i.e., a chorus of preachers) to Zion-Jerusalem;" but such parallels as Isa 52:7 and Isa 62:11 are misleading here. The words are in apposition (A. S. Th. εὐαγγελιζομένη Σιών). Zion-Jerusalem herself is called an evangelistess: the personification as a female renders this prob…
God is the good news. Although he comes like a warrior to rescue his people with power, he also holds them tenderly as a shepherd.
40:9 God is coming to save and restore human beings (see also 35:4; Rev 22:12).
Rashi on Isaiah 40:9
O herald of Zion Heb. מְבַשֶּׂרֶת. The prophets who herald Zion. [This is the feminine form.] Elsewhere (infra 52:7), he says, “the feet of the herald (מְבַשֵּׂר).” [This is the masculine form.] This denotes that if they are worthy, he will be as swift as a male. If they are not worthy, he will be as weak as a female and will delay his steps until the end.
