Isaiah 55 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Prophecy set in the Babylonian exile, roughly 550 to 539 BC, closing the message of return
Location
Babylon, using the language of a public marketplace and of rain falling on farmland
Audience
Judean exiles invited to accept the offer of return, and anyone thirsty enough to come
Situation
An open invitation calls everyone who is thirsty to come and buy wine and milk without money, and asks why they spend wages on what does not satisfy. God promises to extend to the people the lasting commitments once made to David, and says his word will not come back empty.
Key Background
Street vendors in an ancient city called out their goods to passers by, and this poem hijacks that sales cry to advertise something with no price attached. The permanent promises made to King David, that his line would rule, are here widened out to the whole community rather than one royal family, which was a striking adjustment for a people with no king left. The closing picture of rain and snow watering the ground before returning to the sky reflects a Mediterranean farming year in which the winter rains decided whether anyone ate.
"Come, everyone who is — come to the water! You who have no money — come, buy and eat! Come, buy and milk without money, without cost."
Why spend money on what isn't bread? Why work so hard for what never satisfies? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is truly good — let your whole being on
Turn your ear and come to me; listen, and you will live. I will make an with you — the same I promised David.
Look — I made him a to the peoples, a and of nations.
Look, you will call out to nations you don't know, and nations that don't know you will come running to you, because of your God, the No Other in Israel, because he has made you
Yahweh while he can be found; call out to him while he is
Let the abandon their way of life, and the destructive person their schemes. Let them to Yahweh — he will have compassion on them — and to our God, because he and and
"My are nothing like your thoughts, and your are nothing like my ways," declares Yahweh.
"As high as the is above the earth — that's how far my ways are above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts."
Rain and snow fall from the sky and don't return there without first soaking the earth, making it sprout and bloom, giving seed to the farmer and to the hungry.
That's exactly how my works — when it goes out from my mouth it doesn't come back to me empty. It accomplishes what I want and succeeds in what I sent it to do.
You will go out with joy and be led forward in wholeness. The mountains and hills will burst into singing in front of you, and all the trees in the open country will their
Instead of will grow. Instead of nettles, will rise. This will stand as a for Yahweh, an that will never be erased.