October 12–18, 2026 · Come, Follow Me
"The Redeemer Shall Come to Zion" · the Church's lesson page
Nathan and Eli open the last week of Isaiah with the panel's honest questioner: why most scholars date these chapters after the exile, the true fast and the Sabbath as delight, and why Jesus stopped reading before “the day of vengeance.” Then the hard verses: the blood-red warrior, “filthy rags,” and a closing verse the synagogue won't end on.
This is the last week in Isaiah, and the block begins with people who are doing everything right. They "seek me daily, and delight to know my ways" (58:2). They fast. And they complain that God does not notice: "Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not?" (58:3). The book ends 160 verses later on a sight nobody wants to finish with, the carcases of the rebels, "for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched" (66:24). Between those two verses are some of the most loved lines in scripture: "Arise, shine; for thy light is come" (60:1), "beauty for ashes" (61:3), "the wolf and the lamb shall feed together" (65:25). There is also a warrior coming up from Edom with his clothes soaked red, a lament that calls human goodness "filthy rags," and a God who asks what house anyone could build for him.
The lesson opens in a synagogue in Nazareth, where Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1–2 and says, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21). The manual calls that "one of the Savior's most straightforward declarations that He was the Anointed One," and says the prophecy "is also being fulfilled in our day." The doctrinal connector says this block is the best place to watch how Restoration scripture handles Isaiah: it divides his prophecies among different times and places, and sometimes it quietly changes what he says. The LDS scholar names the other pressure this week brings: no week of the Isaiah block puts the authorship question to a Latter-day Saint as sharply as this one. The academic scholar places the chapters after the return from Babylon, when the confident announcement of 40–55 ("Comfort ye") has given way to complaint.
The rabbi brings something no other reader on the panel can. Most Jews have never read these chapters through as a book, yet they know them well, because Jews meet them in the calendar, not as a book: chapter 58 on Yom Kippur morning, 59 every weekday, 60 every Friday night, 66 when the new moon falls on a Sabbath. The honest questioner lists what a careful reader will hit, from the blood on God's robe to a last verse the synagogue will not end on, and promises a method. This essay takes the hard questions one at a time. The practical disciple starts where the block starts, with tired churchgoers who did the work and felt unheard. They keep the schedule. They skip the meals. And they feel ignored.
The five sessions follow the shape of the block. Scholars have noticed that chapters 56–66 are built as a ring, with complaint and lament on both sides, a divine warrior scene on each flank, and the radiant vision of 60–62 at the center. Session 1 (chapters 58–59) reads the true fast and the Sabbath delight, then follows the slide into a society where "truth is fallen in the street," ending with the first warrior scene and the verse that names the lesson. Session 2 (chapter 60) stands at the center of the ring with "Arise, shine," and holds a Wrestle on the nations bowing at Zion's feet. Session 3 (chapters 61–62) gives Isaiah 61 the room it needs: who the anointed "me" is, the jubilee behind "liberty to the captives," what Jesus read and did not read at Nazareth, and a capstone that reads 61:1–3 six ways. Session 4 (chapters 63–64) meets the warrior from Bozrah, wrestles with his bloody garments, and sits with a lament that ends in clay and a potter. Session 5 (chapters 65–66) faces the authorship question and the community's quarrels, walks through the new heavens and the new earth, and ends with the worm, the fire, and the new moon.
The questions at the end of each session are not a quiz. Most have more than one defensible answer, and several ask about your own week rather than the text.
The chapter opens with a trumpet: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression" (58:1). The next verse is surprising. These are not lapsed people. They "seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness... they take delight in approaching to God" (58:2). The academic scholar stresses that the complainers are diligent, and that God's rebuttal goes after fasting combined with exploitation, not fasting itself: "in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours" (58:3). He sets the chapter in its likely economy. Nehemiah 5 describes this very economy in the same period, with Judeans pledging fields and selling children to pay debts to fellow Judeans. A fast held by creditors over debtors, with the workers still driven on the fast day, is the scene Isaiah attacks.
The practical disciple reads 58:3–4 as a portrait of a household. The fasters are hungry, irritable, and fighting, "ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness" (58:4). The ritual is intact; the week around it is not. He notes that Latter-day Saints have a monthly version of that day and the same risk. Fast Sunday can be the most short-tempered day of the month in a household, with a parent snapping at children in the car or quiet resentment toward a spouse who "isn't really fasting."
The LDS scholar heads off a misreading. God's answer does not abolish the fast. He redefines what it is for. Verse 5 mocks a fast that is only posture, a head bowed "as a bulrush" over sackcloth and ashes, and asks, "wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?" Hold on to the phrase "acceptable day." It comes back in chapter 61 as "the acceptable year of the LORD."
The rabbi explains why Jews hear this chapter differently from anyone else. The Talmud assigns Isaiah 57:14–58:14 as the haftarah, the reading from the Prophets, for Yom Kippur morning (Megillah 31a). A congregation that has gone without food and water since sundown hears its own complaint chanted back: "Wherefore have we fasted?" The rabbis did not conclude that fasting should stop. We read it as a warning that the fast is worth nothing by itself. He cites the Mishnah's account of the public fasts held in drought, when the eldest stood up to remind the people that Scripture says of Nineveh not that God saw their sackcloth but that "God saw their deeds" (Jonah 3:10; Mishnah Taʻanit 2:1). And in the Talmud, Mar Zutra puts it more bluntly: the real reward of a fast day is the charity given on it (Berakhot 6b).
The honest questioner uses that liturgical fact to answer a real objection. Read alone, 58:5–6 can sound like prophetic contempt for ritual as such. The synagogue reads it in the middle of a total fast, which suggests the point is that fasting alone "is not enough," as My Jewish Learning puts it, not that fasting is worthless. He does not let the tension go slack, though. The charge of 58:3 is aimed at observant people, not lax ones.
"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?" (58:6–7). The practical disciple calls this a list of verbs with objects, and he stops on the last phrase, the one most easily skipped. "Thine own flesh" is kin. Isaiah does not let the generous helper of strangers off the hook for the relative he avoids: the brother whose calls go to voicemail, the aging parent visited less often than the ministering assignment.
Latter-day Saints have given 58:7 an institutional form. President Henry B. Eyring's April 2015 talk "Is Not This the Fast That I Have Chosen?" quoted 58:6–11 in full and then described the monthly fast and "a generous fast offering through our bishop or branch president for the benefit of the poor and the needy." The doctrinal connector points out what that arrangement fixes. Nothing in Isaiah's complaint suggests the fasters' abstention fed anyone. The fast offering is built so that the skipped meals become bread dealt to the hungry, which answers 58:7 literally rather than as a metaphor.
The practical disciple then asks you to look at the number. He quotes President Spencer W. Kimball's 1974 welfare session: "I think we should be very generous and give, instead of the amount we saved by our two meals of fasting, perhaps much, much more—ten times more where we are in a position to do it." The qualifier matters. It is a question for the comfortable household, not a guilt instrument for the family already counting coins. He also draws a lesson from a story in Eyring's talk, about a grandson who found long fasts hard and kept fasting when a school friend lost a cousin: a fast with a named purpose holds up better than a fast with only a duration. Before the next one, name a person.
The promises that follow are lavish: "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning... the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am" (58:8–9). The academic scholar notes that "the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward" adapts 52:12, one of many places where this part of Isaiah quotes the earlier chapters. The promises are conditional, though: "If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity" (58:9).
The practical disciple explains the finger. In the ancient Near East, pointing was the gesture of formal accusation; Hammurabi's laws (§127) punish anyone who points the finger at a priestess or another man's wife and cannot prove the charge, and John Walton's background commentary reads Isaiah's phrase against that law as malicious slander. The yoke is economic oppression; the finger and "speaking vanity" are social oppression. Isaiah treats a reputation destroyed by talk as the same kind of burden as a debt that cannot be paid. The modern finger is often typed, in the ward group chat or the side conversation after a meeting.
Then the title: "thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in" (58:12). The academic scholar counts this verse among the signs that the audience lives in a Jerusalem still partly in ruins, alongside 60:10 and 61:4. A breach is a hole in a wall, the place where the enemy gets in. In a family, the practical disciple says, it usually has a date: the funeral where something was said, the loan never repaid. Isaiah gives the name not to the person who was right but to the one who repairs.
"If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD" (58:13–14). The Hebrew word for "delight" is ʻoneg, and the rabbi shows how much weight it came to bear. On this one word the rabbis built a whole category of Sabbath law.
The Talmud reads verse 13 phrase by phrase (Shabbat 113a–b). "Shalt honour him" means your Sabbath clothes should differ from your weekday clothes. "Not doing thine own ways" means you should not walk on Shabbat as you walk on weekdays, with rushing and long strides. "Nor speaking thine own words" rules out business talk. The rabbi enjoys the fine print. Only speaking about business is forbidden; thinking about it is allowed, a merciful concession to human nature. How does one delight? With a dish of beets, large fish, and heads of garlic (Shabbat 118b). The same page promises "a boundless portion" to whoever delights in the Sabbath, because verse 14 promises "the heritage of Jacob thy father," and Jacob, unlike Abraham and Isaac, was promised he would spread out in every direction (Genesis 28:14).
The rabbi notes that Christian discussion of the Sabbath often gets stuck on what is not allowed. The rabbis' Isaiah asks what is so good about the day that you would not want to spoil it with errands. Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath (1951) put that question at the center of modern Jewish thinking, calling the day "a palace in time." In Isaiah the prohibitions are there to protect the pleasure.
Latter-day Saints arrived at something close to that. In April 2015, the same conference as Eyring's fast talk, then-Elder Russell M. Nelson's "The Sabbath Is a Delight" described giving up lists of Sabbath dos and don'ts for a single question: "What sign do I want to give to God?" The doctrinal connector thinks that is faithful to the chapter. That is a fair reading of Isaiah, which is short on rules. The practical disciple agrees. The question moves the decision from rules to relationship, which is what Isaiah's word "delight" does. He gives "speaking thine own words" a modern edge: the Sunday afternoon spent rehearsing Monday's problems aloud, the dinner conversation that is really a staff meeting, the email that is technically permitted but is really Monday leaking backward.
The doctrinal connector then shows a Restoration text that fuses the chapter's two halves. D&C 59, given in Missouri in 1831, sends the Saints to "offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day" and redefines fasting itself: "Verily, this is fasting and prayer, or in other words, rejoicing and prayer" (D&C 59:9, 14). Isaiah set the fast, an affliction of soul, beside the Sabbath, a delight. D&C 59 erases the line between them: rightly done, fasting is rejoicing. Fast Sunday is where both halves of Isaiah 58 land.
The rabbi points out that the haftarah's order makes the same argument. The Torah calls Yom Kippur shabbat shabbaton, a Sabbath of complete rest (Leviticus 16:31), so on the strictest day of the year the last word from the Prophets is about delight. His reading of the order: first you open your hand to your neighbor, then you can enjoy God's day.
Chapter 59 answers the complaint of 58:3 directly: "the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save... But your iniquities have separated between you and your God" (59:1–2). After an indictment of bloody hands and lying lips, the voice shifts at verse 9 to "we": "we wait for light, but behold obscurity... We grope for the wall like the blind" (59:9–10).
The practical disciple reads 59:14–15 as a description of a culture: "justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." He calls the last clause the honest part. Isaiah does not promise that honesty will pay at work. He says it may cost you. Most workplace dishonesty, he says, is small accommodation: the timesheet that rounds up, the status report that says "on track," the meeting where you nod at a claim you know is false. Verse 13's "conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood" describes the lie rehearsed before it is spoken.
"And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him" (59:16). The practical disciple stops on the word "intercessor." The scandal is not only that people lied but that no one stood in the gap. The lesson asks what impresses you about this intercessor and how the Savior overcomes the conditions of verses 9–15.
God then dresses for battle: "he put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak" (59:17). The academic scholar traces where that armor went. That armor later passes to the believer in Wisdom of Solomon 5:17–20 and Ephesians 6:14–17. He also flags a structural clue. The wording of 59:16 returns almost exactly in 63:5, "I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me." Two nearly identical warrior scenes bracket chapters 60–62. You are standing at the edge of the ring's center. Session 4 will bring you out the other side.
Then the verse that names the lesson: "And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD" (59:20). For the rabbi this is a daily prayer. Near the end of the weekday morning service observant Jews recite Uva le-Tsiyyon, which opens with 59:20–21 and contains the angels' "Holy, holy, holy." He asks you to look at the Hebrew grammar. The redeemer comes le-Tsiyyon, to Zion, and to shavei feshaʻ, those in Jacob who turn from transgression. Repentance is how you get to the redemption, not something that happens after it. Paul quotes the verse in Romans 11:26 from the Greek, "There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." In Paul the redeemer goes out from Zion and does the turning; in the Hebrew the people turn. Rashi's comment on 59:20 is short and blunt: "As long as Zion is in ruins, the redeemer has not yet come." The rabbi is plain about its weight. That sentence sums up why Jews did not accept the announcement that the redeemer had come.
Verse 21 explains why Jews say this every day: the covenant is "my words which I have put in thy mouth," which "shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed."
Think deeply.
Before you read chapter 60, it helps to see where it sits. The academic scholar lays out the concentric plan that many readers find in chapters 56–66. Foreigners brought to the holy mountain frame the whole (56:1–8 and 66:18–24). Harsh polemic against rival groups sits inside that (56:9–57:21 and 65:1–66:17). Inside that is the community's complaint and lament (58:1–59:15a and 63:7–64:12), then the two divine-warrior scenes (59:15b–21 and 63:1–6). At the center, chapters 60–62 give the vision of a glorified Zion. Andrew Abernethy reads that center as God enthroned in Zion.
The academic adds a historical twist. Many redaction critics think 60–62 is the oldest layer, the part closest in tone to Second Isaiah, with the angrier material growing up around it as hopes went unmet. Either way, the radiant chapters this week's lesson highlights sit inside a frame of conflict. The light of chapter 60 is spoken into a dark room.
"Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee" (60:1). The command is addressed to Zion, a woman sitting in darkness, while "gross darkness" covers the peoples (60:2). The lesson asks you to watch the words for light and dark, eyes and seeing, in 60:1–5 and 19–20, and to ponder how God is gathering his children out of darkness and what your role in it is.
For the rabbi, these verses are songs. Lekha Dodi, the sixteenth-century Sabbath hymn by Solomon Alkabetz, sings 60:1 to Jerusalem every Friday night: kumi ori, "arise, shine." And the whole of Isaiah 60 is the sixth of the seven haftarot of consolation read after the fast of the Ninth of Av, which mourns the destroyed Temples. It falls on the Sabbath of the Torah portion Ki Tavo, the next-to-last of the series, and the seventh (61:10–63:9) follows. So these chapters are, quite literally, the last thing Jews hear from the Prophets before the new year.
What follows is a procession. Zion's sons "come from far" (60:4); camels of Midian and Ephah bring "gold and incense" from Sheba (60:6); ships of Tarshish carry her children home with "their silver and their gold" (60:9). The poet stops to marvel at the sails: "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?" (60:8). The gates "shall not be shut day nor night" (60:11), and the once-hated city will "know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer" (60:16).
Read the same procession again and the tone changes. "The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee" (60:10). "The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted" (60:12). "The sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet" (60:14). In the next chapter, "strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen" (61:5). The honest questioner says plainly that, read in a world shaped by colonialism and by modern Zionist and anti-Zionist arguments, these lines can sound like a charter for domination.
Who wrote it, and from where. His strongest counterweight comes from inside the book. These lines were most likely written by a small, poor, subject people under Persian rule, and a fantasy of reversal is what the powerless write, not the powerful. A reader who has never been conquered should notice whose dream this is before judging it.
The other half of the book. The same collection opens its doors in a startling way. At its end God says of those gathered from the nations, "I will also take of them for priests and for Levites" (66:21). The honest questioner notes that commentators divide over whether "them" means the nations or the returning Israelite brethren of 66:20. If it means the nations, foreigners would serve at the altar, which the Torah never allowed. A Latter-day Saint will recognize the motif from Isaiah 49:23, which the Book of Mormon quotes, where kings become "nursing fathers" (1 Nephi 21:23).
What the reader chooses. Nationalist triumph and radical inclusion are both in the text. Choosing one and ignoring the other is a decision made by the reader, not the text. The lesson's own question, how God is gathering his children out of darkness and what your role is, sits right on that line. Gathering can be done as a procession of tribute or as an open gate. Chapter 60 contains both.
The chapter ends with a reversal of everything cheap and harsh. "For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver... I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness" (60:17). The word "exactors" should ring a bell from 58:3, "ye... exact all your labours." In the new Zion the bosses themselves become righteousness. "Violence shall no more be heard in thy land... thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise" (60:18).
Then the light itself changes: "The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light" (60:19). Two scholars point to a small textual case here. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, the Greek Septuagint, and the Aramaic Targum add "by night," which completes the parallel with "by day," and some modern translations adopt it. The LDS scholar points to Donald Parry's verse-by-verse catalog of the Isaiah scroll variants (Brill, 2019) and says of it, it is the place to check before building doctrine on a single English phrase.
The academic also follows the light forward. Revelation 21 describes a city with no need of sun or moon (21:23, echoing 60:19), with gates never shut (21:25, echoing 60:11). The doctrinal connector reads the same verses through Restoration teaching, which separates the paradisiacal earth of the Millennium from a later celestial one that "shall be crowned with glory, even with the presence of God the Father" (D&C 88:19). On that reading, 60:19–20 looks past the Millennium to the earth's final state.
"Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands" (60:21). The rabbi shows what Jewish tradition did with this verse. The Mishnah uses it to teach that "all Israel has a share in the World to Come," sinners included (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1), and that line is recited before each chapter of Pirkei Avot. A promise about land became a promise about every Jew's soul.
The last verse ends quietly: "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the LORD will hasten it in his time" (60:22). The doctrinal connector notes this is one of only two places in the block where the Church's footnotes record a Joseph Smith Translation reading, and it is a small one: "my" for the pronoun, "in my time."
Think deeply.
"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 the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound" (61:1). Every reader on the panel stops at the first person. The LDS scholar lists the candidates: the prophet himself, the servant of chapters 42 and 49, or a royal or priestly figure. The verb "anointed" is the root of mashiaḥ, which explains why later readers heard a messiah.
The academic scholar and the six-outlooks essay both note an echo and an absence. The speaker sounds like the servant who receives the spirit (42:1) and opens prisons (42:7), yet the speaker acts as the servant without the title; "servant" never appears in chapter 61. Many critical scholars take the "me" to be the prophet himself, claiming the earlier servant's commission, with "anointed" used metaphorically. The six-outlooks writer adds that in Israel kings and priests were anointed, and a prophet only rarely (Elijah is told to anoint Elisha, 1 Kings 19:16), so the near-view reading is a prophet claiming a royal-priestly commission and promising the community that they themselves "shall be named the Priests of the LORD" (61:6).
The rabbi brings the medieval Jewish commentators. Ibn Ezra says the first person "refers to the prophet," noting that prophets are called anointed in Psalm 105:15. Radak calls these "the words of the prophet about himself," with "anointed" meaning appointed. Rashi says the anointing "is nothing but an expression of nobility and greatness." Then the rabbi offers a midrash he reads "with real tenderness" (Vayikra Rabbah 10:2; Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 16:4). God asks "Whom shall I send?" (6:8) and warns Isaiah that a prophet sent to these people will be struck and insulted. Isaiah accepts, quoting "I gave my back to the smiters" (50:6). Because he loves to vindicate Israel and hates to condemn them, God anoints him above his fellows, and he receives the spirit directly rather than secondhand. In this midrash, the anointing of 61:1 is the reward for a prophet who would not speak badly of his people.
The academic scholar finds the decisive phrase in the Hebrew: liqrōʼ lišbûyîm dĕrôr, "to proclaim liberty to the captives." Dĕrôr is the technical term of the jubilee law, "proclaim liberty throughout all the land" (Leviticus 25:10), and Jeremiah 34:8 uses it for a release of debt-slaves that was later revoked. Isaiah 61, with its "acceptable year," is a jubilee proclamation for an economy of debt. The six-outlooks writer adds that to a community where debt and mortgaged land were live problems (Nehemiah 5:1–5), "the acceptable year of the LORD" would have sounded like a year of release.
Later readers noticed. Three of the panel describe the Qumran Melchizedek text (11Q13), from about 100 BC, which reads the jubilee of Leviticus 25 and the release of Deuteronomy 15 together with Isaiah 61, and gives the proclamation of liberty to a heavenly Melchizedek who fights Belial. The academic adds 4Q521, which combines Psalm 146 with Isaiah 61:1: when God's anointed comes, the Lord will heal the wounded, revive the dead, and bring good news to the poor. Luke 7:22 lists nearly the same signs. The honest questioner draws the conclusion: Jews were reading this passage as end-time hope before Jesus did.
The lesson's anchor text is Luke 4:16–21. Jesus stands in the synagogue where he grew up, is handed the scroll of Isaiah, reads, closes the book, sits down, and says, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." Three essays look closely at what Luke actually prints, and they agree on the details.
First, Luke follows the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew. "Recovering of sight to the blind" is the Greek of 61:1. The Hebrew has peqaḥ-qoaḥ, a rare word for "opening," normally used of opening the eyes, which the King James translators rendered "the opening of the prison." Second, Luke splices in a line that is not in Isaiah 61 at all. "To set at liberty them that are bruised" is the Greek of 58:6, the true-fast chapter you read in Session 1. Third, Jesus stops reading in the middle of 61:2. He reads "the acceptable year of the Lord" and closes the book before "and the day of vengeance of our God." The LDS scholar draws a careful line. The stop is in the text; its reason is a matter of interpretation.
The academic scholar sees design either way: whether the shaping is Jesus's or Luke's, it binds the jubilee of chapter 61 to the true fast of chapter 58 and leaves vengeance out, though the block itself returns to "the day of vengeance" in 63:4. The six-outlooks writer puts the meaning of the stop most simply. Whatever else the pause means, it means that on that Sabbath the anointing was announced as release, not as reckoning.
The lesson takes a clear position: Luke 4 is one of the Savior's plainest declarations that he was the Anointed One. The honest questioner thinks Latter-day Saints should also hear what this scene has meant to others. Jewish readers often experience this history differently, and their objection deserves to be stated at full strength. When "this day is this scripture fulfilled" becomes a claim that the Jewish reading was always a misreading, a text that belonged to a community in ruins is taken from it and handed back as evidence against it. He points to Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington's commentary on Luke, the first major one co-written by a Jew and a Christian, as a model of reading such passages together. His conclusion leaves the confession intact. Christians can confess Jesus as the Anointed One. The honest move is not to pretend that 61:1 meant only that in its own setting.
The rabbi offers a view from the other side of the synagogue. Luke 4 is a very Jewish scene: a young man on the Sabbath, in a Galilean synagogue, reading from the Prophets. Christians hear a claim about his identity. Jews hear a description of what a prophet is called to do, and in the midrash, the reward for refusing to condemn. Both sides could take that seriously. Notice how near the two readings come. In the midrash, Isaiah is anointed because he would not speak badly of his people. At Nazareth, Jesus reads the release and leaves the vengeance unread.
The rest of chapter 61 rebuilds the "old wastes" (61:4), renames the mourners "the Priests of the LORD" (61:6), and promises "an everlasting covenant" (61:8). Then the voice turns to joy: "I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels" (61:10).
The rabbi notes that this verse opens the seventh and last haftarah of consolation, for the portion Nitzavim, which runs from 61:10 to 63:9 and is read on the Sabbath before Rosh Hashanah. The doctrinal connector hears a temple verse, though no temple is mentioned, and pairs it with the Kirtland Temple dedicatory prayer: "that our garments may be pure, that we may be clothed upon with robes of righteousness" (D&C 109:76). In both places the point is being clothed by God rather than clothing oneself. In 59:17 God dressed himself in righteousness and salvation; in 61:10 he dresses his people in the same fabric, as wedding clothes.
The LDS scholar adds a curious fact about that phrase. "Robe of righteousness" appears in the King James Version only at Isaiah 61:10, and it shows up in 2 Nephi 4:33 and 2 Nephi 9:14; "mighty to save" (63:1) appears in 2 Nephi 31:19, Alma 7:14, and Alma 34:18. Colby Townsend has shown that the Book of Mormon contains short phrasal echoes of these chapters even where it has no block quotations. Townsend reads them as evidence of a nineteenth-century English Bible shaping the text; a believing reader can explain them as translation language drawn from familiar King James phrasing. Session 5 takes up what that does and does not mean.
Chapter 62 opens with a vow: "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest" (62:1). Then come the names. "Thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name... Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married" (62:2, 4). The verse glosses its own names: Hephzibah answers to "the LORD delighteth in thee," Beulah to "thy land shall be married." The chapter ends with more: "The holy people, The redeemed of the LORD... Sought out, A city not forsaken" (62:12).
The doctrinal connector follows the new name into modern revelation. D&C 130:11 promises a white stone to each person who enters the celestial kingdom, "whereon is a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it." Isaiah renames a city; the Restoration renames persons. The rabbi hears 62:5 every Friday night, since Lekha Dodi uses it for the Sabbath bride: "as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."
The watchmen come next: "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the LORD, keep not silence, And give him no rest, till he establish" (62:6–7). The practical disciple reads the job description closely. The watchmen are there to keep reminding God. That is permission for persistent, repetitive prayer for the same person or need, long after it feels redundant.
The academic scholar points out that this chapter also quotes the earlier Isaiah. "Prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway" (62:10) reworks 40:3 and 57:14, and "his reward is with him, and his work before him" (62:11) is word for word from 40:10. That habit of quotation matters in Session 5.
The six-outlooks essay takes Isaiah 61:1–3 as its test case. Its framework comes from Donald W. Parry of BYU, whose chapter in Search Diligently the Words of Isaiah (2023) lays out "six outlooks, or six ways to read Isaiah": the historical near view, the distant view, dual or multiple fulfillment, likening, personal reading, and reading for doctrine. Parry claims a passage read all six ways yields what he calls "layer upon layer of truth and knowledge." The essayist explains the choice. Isaiah 61:1–3 gives every one of the six outlooks a real object to work on.
1. The near view. Parry's advice is to begin with the immediate context. Whether one reads chapters 56–66 as a later prophet's work after the return or, as many Latter-day Saint scholars do, as Isaiah of Jerusalem speaking ahead to that time, the text describes the same audience. Verse 4 promises that "they shall build the old wastes"; 64:10–11 describes "Zion... a wilderness" and a burned temple. The mourners in 61:3 are people living among the ash heaps of a ruined city. The near view also explains the jubilee word deror. The good news is first a year of release for people with mortgaged land.
2. The distant view. Parry's second outlook reads Isaiah's words as aimed at events "centuries or even millennia" later. At Nazareth, the verb carries the claim: the one the LORD "hath anointed" is the Messiah, the Anointed One, which is what the Greek title Christ means. The Septuagint wording and the stop in the middle of 61:2 belong to this outlook too.
3. Multiple fulfillment. Parry allows that a prophecy can be "fulfilled two or more times," and cites the "layer-cake" image from Madsen and Hopkin's Opening Isaiah: A Harmony. Here scripture records the layers itself. The first is a ruined Jerusalem promised rebuilding. The second is Nazareth. The third is D&C 138, where President Joseph F. Smith sees the Son of God among the righteous dead "declaring liberty to the captives who had been faithful" (138:18), and sees messengers sent "to declare the acceptable day of the Lord and proclaim liberty to the captives who were bound" (138:31). The vision even names Isaiah among the assembled prophets as the one "who declared by prophecy that the Redeemer was anointed to bind up the broken-hearted" (138:42). The doctrinal connector notices that 138:31, like Jesus at Nazareth, stops at "the acceptable day," and that the prison of 61:1 has become the spirit prison, opened by preaching and by ordinances such as "vicarious baptism for the remission of sins" (138:33).
The fourth layer lies inside Isaiah. The half-verse Jesus did not read comes back in 63:4 from the warrior in red: "For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." D&C 133 applies that scene to the Second Coming. Read as multiple fulfillment, the pause in Luke 4 marks a gap between comings. The doctrinal connector arrives at the same pattern from Restoration scripture. Read through the Restoration, then, Isaiah 61:1–2 has three fulfillments: at Nazareth in mortality, in the spirit world after death, and at the Second Coming. In D&C 133:50–52 the returning Lord says, "this was the day of vengeance which was in my heart. And now the year of my redeemed is come." The words Jesus left unread in Nazareth are finally spoken, by him.
The LDS scholar adds a question the doctrinal reading raises for a reader who also takes critical scholarship seriously. D&C 138:42 credits 61:1 to Isaiah by name, while most critics assign the chapter to a later voice. He offers two faithful options. One option, open to the faithful reader, is that "Isaiah" names the book and its tradition, the way the New Testament cites "Esaias" for chapter 40 (Matthew 3:3) and for chapter 53 (Acts 8:28–33). The other is to treat the attribution as historically exact. The text of D&C 138 does not settle it.
4. Likening. Parry grounds this outlook in Nephi, who likened Isaiah "unto my people" and invited his readers to "liken them unto you and unto all men" (2 Nephi 11:2, 8). The essayist sets Nephi beside Qumran. 11QMelchizedek reads Isaiah 61 as describing its own sect: the captives are the faithful of the community, freed from their iniquities by a heavenly Melchizedek. That is pesher, after the Hebrew word Qumran commentators used for "interpretation." The comparison is the essayist's own, not Parry's, and it sharpens the difference. Pesher claims that the text's real meaning is about us. Likening, as Nephi describes it, admits the words belong first to the house of Israel and applies them because we stand in a similar place. Then the questions Parry models: Where am I living among old wastes? Who around me is one of "them that are bound"? Am I someone who mourns in Zion, or someone sent to comfort them?
5. Personal reading. Parry's fifth outlook reads "for personal instruction, spiritual guidance, devotionalistic purposes, or to receive personal revelation," and he cites President Dallin H. Oaks on revelation "on whatever else the Lord wishes to communicate to the reader at that time." This outlook frees a reading from the passage's original subject: "beauty for ashes" can speak to a widow or to someone grieving a lost career. Parry's own sample list of verses for particular needs includes three from this week: "Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer" (58:9) for unanswered prayer, "we are the clay, and thou our potter" (64:8) for times we feel too self-important, and "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you" (66:13). The lesson asks the personal question directly: "How has He given beauty in place of ashes?"
The practical disciple takes the personal reading toward other people. Every exchange in 61:3 is physical: a head covering, oil, a garment. Isaiah's comfort comes with objects, not explanations. The Savior does the deep work of binding up the brokenhearted, but the people around a mourner can bring the meal, do the laundry, sit at the funeral, and remember that the ashes are still on the head long after the casseroles stop.
6. Doctrine. Parry counts the Hebrew roots of redemption in Isaiah and argues that careful study of each passage "will yield significant gospel understanding." Several fall in this block: "the Redeemer shall come to Zion" (59:20), "I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer" (60:16), "the year of my redeemed" (63:4), "our father, our redeemer" (63:16). Isaiah 61:1–3 uses none of those words, yet the essayist thinks it may picture them best. The doctrine lies in a small preposition repeated three times. The Hebrew tachat means "instead of": beauty for ashes, oil of joy for mourning, garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. "Beauty" is peʼer, a festive headdress, and "ashes" is ʼefer, nearly the same letters, so the ashes on the mourner's head are replaced by a turban that sounds almost the same. Oil, the substance of the speaker's own anointing, is now poured on the mourners. The one anointed in verse 1 passes his anointing on in verse 3.
This is the doctrine of redemption in its simplest form: something ruined is taken away, and something given is put in its place. Under the jubilee, a person who lost land does not earn it back; it is returned because the year has come. And the mourners become "trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD" (61:3), a righteousness planted by God and not grown by the mourners. The essayist sets this beside the lament you will read in Session 4, "all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" (64:6). The two are not in contradiction. The garment of 61:3 and the rags of 64:6 are both cloth. What differs is who provides the clothing, as 61:10 confirms: "he hath clothed me."
Even the proportions carry doctrine. The text proclaims a "year" of favor and a "day" of vengeance (61:2), and the same pairing returns at 63:4. Isaiah does not deny judgment. But in both places he gives mercy the longer measure of time, and at Nazareth Jesus read only the year.
The outlooks are not a ranking, the essayist says, and Parry would begin with the near view to keep the passage from becoming a mere proof text. Isaiah 61 was good news for people sitting in real ashes before it was anything else. Every later layer carries the same exchange into a new setting.
Think deeply.
The chapter opens as a dialogue on a road. A watcher calls out, "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah?" The figure answers, "I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." Asked why his clothes are red like a grape-treader's, he says: "I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment" (63:1–3).
The scene is built on puns. The academic scholar and the LDS scholar both note that Edom (ʼĕdôm) sounds like "red" (ʼādōm), the same pun Genesis 25:30 makes over Esau's red pottage, and the academic adds that Bozrah (boṣrāh) sounds like "grape-gatherer" (bôṣēr). The place is real. The LDS scholar identifies Bozrah as modern Busayra in southern Jordan, the Edomite capital, excavated by Crystal-M. Bennett between 1971 and 1980, at its height in the seventh century BC. Edom's part in Judah's fall left a lasting bitterness (Psalm 137:7; Obadiah 10–14). The academic adds that earlier in the book, Edom, accused of exploiting Jerusalem's fall (Obadiah 10–14; Psalm 137:7), is already the LORD's "sacrifice" at Bozrah in 34:5–6.
The divine warrior is among Israel's oldest motifs. Frank Moore Cross traced how the storm-god warrior of Ugaritic myth entered Yahwistic poetry and came back in late prophecy and apocalyptic. The academic offers a vivid Ugaritic parallel to 63:3, the goddess Anat in the Baal Cycle wading knee-deep in warriors' blood, and he is careful to call it a parallel, not a source. Then he gives a hard reading from Gili Kugler's 2026 article, which reads 63:1–6 with the lament that follows: vengeance here works as "a rhetorical substitute for actual redemption." A community that cannot see its restoration is given a vision of its enemies trampled. Whether or not one accepts it, it explains why the song of blood is followed at once by "I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the LORD" (63:7).
The rabbi reminds Christian readers that this passage is part of the last haftarah of consolation, read the Sabbath before Rosh Hashanah, and that Jewish commentators did not look away from it. Rashi says the prophet speaks of God "in the expression of the wars of human beings," because Scripture describes the Divine Presence in human terms "to convey to the ear what it can hear."
Then he raises a history Christians almost never know. In the Talmud, Reish Lakish says "the angel of Rome" will make three mistakes fleeing to Bozrah, mistaking it for Bezer, a city of refuge (Makkot 12a). For the rabbis, Edom was Rome: the empire that burned the Second Temple. In the Middle Ages, as the historian Gerson D. Cohen showed, Esau and Edom became standard Hebrew code names for Christian Rome and for Christendom as a whole. For centuries Jews under Christian rule read 63:1–6 as God's promise of justice against Christendom, a hope of rescue from the people who read the same verses as a portrait of their savior. He grants that the Latter-day Saint reading is beautiful on its own terms. I offer that as history, not accusation.
Doctrine and Covenants 133:46–53 reworks Isaiah 63:1–9 almost line by line, and the doctrinal connector reads the two side by side. Isaiah asks, "Who is this that cometh from Edom?" D&C 133:46 asks, "Who is this that cometh down from God in heaven with dyed garments; yea, from the regions which are not known." The geography is gone. The Restoration had already decoded the name, when the Lord comes "down in judgment upon Idumea, or the world" (D&C 1:36). The LDS scholar sums it up: Edom and Bozrah are gone, and an Iron Age grudge has become a cosmic Second Coming.
The tense shifts too. Isaiah's warrior speaks of the future, "I will tread them"; in D&C 133 the deed is done: "I have trodden the wine-press alone, and have brought judgment upon all people... their blood have I sprinkled upon my garments" (133:50–51). And D&C 133 runs straight on into Isaiah 63:7–9 without a break, "In all their afflictions he was afflicted" (133:53). The bloodied warrior and the God who suffers with his people are one figure in one speech. The connector insists that this does not remove the violence of 63:1–6, but it does not let the winepress stand without the compassion of 63:9.
The phrase "trodden the winepress alone" also gets a second life, shifted toward the Atonement. D&C 76:107 and 88:106 describe the Lamb who "hath overcome and trodden the wine-press alone, even the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God." Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's April 2009 talk "None Were with Him" built on 63:3 and 63:5 to speak of Gethsemane and Calvary, concluding "because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so." The doctrinal connector is careful about what kind of reading that is. This is a Christological application, not a claim about Isaiah's original setting. In both Isaiah and D&C 133:51 the blood on the garments is the enemies'. A reader following Holland will still hear Mosiah 3:7, "blood cometh from every pore," which the lesson pairs with these chapters.
The honest questioner states the problem without cushioning. The speaker is God. He says outright that "the day of vengeance is in mine heart" (63:4). Christian art and preaching have often turned the scene into the Passion, with the blood as Christ's own. The text doesn't support that reading. The blood belongs to the trampled peoples: "I will tread them in mine anger" (63:3).
No easy exit. Latter-day Saints can't use the Passion reading to soften the scene, because modern revelation repeats the violence. D&C 133:51 keeps the blood, and 133:50 widens the scope to "judgment upon all people." The LDS scholar says the same: section 133 keeps the blood, and current readers should not soften it.
Justice for victims. One end of the spectrum of responses treats the image as poetry of last-resort justice. The same God "wondered that there was none to uphold" (63:5; compare 59:16), and three verses later is afflicted "in all their affliction" (63:9). The rabbi's Rashi belongs here too: a God described in the language of human wars so that human ears can hear.
The textual God and the actual God. Eric Seibert's Disturbing Divine Behavior argues that readers must distinguish "the textual God" from "the actual God," judging violent portraits by the character of God revealed in Jesus. Ken Esau's critique replies that the distinction costs traditional views of inspiration and biblical authority.
What the panel offers. The honest questioner does not resolve it. A believer who is troubled by Isaiah 63 has company on both sides of that argument. The academic's Kugler reading, the rabbi's history of who was being trampled, and the doctrinal connector's insistence on reading 63:1–6 with 63:9 are three different ways of keeping the passage in view without letting it stand alone.
The tone changes abruptly: "I will mention the lovingkindnesses of the LORD" (63:7). The lesson asks what lovingkindnesses you can "mention." Then: "In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old" (63:9).
This is one of the best-loved verses in the block, and three essays explain why it is also one of the hardest. The written Hebrew (the ketiv) has loʼ ṣar, with an aleph: "he was not afflicted." The marginal reading the Masoretes said to pronounce (the qere) has a vav, lo ṣar, "to him there was affliction." The King James Version follows the qere. The Septuagint read the consonants differently again, as "envoy," and translated "not an ambassador, nor a messenger, but himself saved them"; the NRSVUE follows that line. The LDS scholar calls the KJV reading a real ancient option, not an error, though not the only one, and adds a sobering sentence. A Latter-day Saint should know that the verse best loved for its picture of a God who suffers with his people rests on a single disputed letter.
The rabbi shows the tradition choosing. The Talmud raises exactly this question and decides from the rest of the verse that God shared their suffering (Sotah 31a). Reish Lakish explains the ashes put on the ark during a public fast by this verse, as if God himself sat in the ashes with his people (Taʻanit 16a). Rashi follows the written form: God did not punish them as harshly as they deserved. Both readings belong to the tradition. I preach the one where God suffers with us. The doctrinal connector follows the KJV reading into the Book of Mormon, to Alma 7:12, where Christ takes on his people's infirmities "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people," which is 63:9 worked out as doctrine.
The lament goes on to remember the Exodus. "Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? where is he that put his holy Spirit within him?" (63:11). The poem's question is not whether God acted then but where he is now: "Look down from heaven... where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained?" (63:15).
Then a startling line: "Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our father, our redeemer" (63:16). The academic scholar notes how unusual that address is. Addressing God this directly as "father" is rare in the Hebrew Bible; here it is the plea of people whose ancestors no longer seem to know them.
The lament then accuses God: "O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear?" (63:17). The doctrinal connector notes the second JST reading in the block, which has "why hast thou suffered us to err from thy ways, and to harden our heart." God permits rather than causes, in line with the agency doctrine of 2 Nephi 2. He calls it a theological correction of the lament, not a recovered manuscript reading, and points out what the JST leaves alone: nothing in it softens the warrior, the filthy rags, the death at a hundred, or the undying worm. Whatever modern revelation does with those passages, it does elsewhere.
"Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence" (64:1). The practical disciple reads chapters 63 and 64 as a record of what persistent prayer actually sounds like, and notes that it is not polite: "are they restrained?" (63:15), "rend the heavens" (64:1), "wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?" (64:12). These are tired people, and scripture keeps their prayers. Someone who has prayed for years for a wayward child or a chronic illness does not need to tidy the prayer before offering it.
Verse 4 has a long afterlife: "since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him." The LDS scholar notes that Paul loosely quotes it in 1 Corinthians 2:9, and D&C 133:45 quotes it again, with "how great things" in place of the King James "what."
"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away" (64:6). Every scholarly reader on the panel slows down here. The Hebrew beged ʻiddim means a garment of menstruation, a cloth that made its wearer ritually unclean; the honest questioner notes that the NET Bible translates it frankly as "a menstrual rag," and the LDS scholar notes the UBS translators' observation that the simile was meant to shock. The rabbi adds that the Aramaic Targum, followed by Rashi, softens it to "a discarded garment," and that in Hebrew Bibles the verse is 64:5.
The honest questioner names two controversies. One concerns gender: a holy book uses the female body as its figure for defilement. The other concerns doctrine. In Protestant and Latter-day Saint arguments online, the verse is often quoted to show that human works contribute nothing to salvation. Context complicates both. The lament is spoken by people whose temple is burned (64:11), and its subject is uncleanness, not a lack of merit. The academic calls it a lament's cry of collective unworthiness, not a doctrine of human nature. The rabbi, following Rashi on "we are all as an unclean thing" ("since the righteous have departed from us"), reads it as grief. It is grief over a community emptied of righteous people, not a theory that human goodness is worthless. The honest questioner keeps room for discomfort: readers who wince at the image are not wrong to wince.
The next verses turn at once: "But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" (64:8). The LDS scholar reads the turn as the key to the rags. The lament is a plea for God to keep working the clay, not a claim that the clay is worthless. The practical disciple adds that the clay line is not calm. The clay verse is not spoken from serenity. It is the turn a tired person makes while still asking where God is.
The chapter ends among ruins. "Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire" (64:10–11). Then a question without an answer: "Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD? wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?" (64:12). Notice that the lament ends without a reply. Chapter 65 opens with God speaking, but not in the voice the lamenters asked for.
Think deeply.
Chapter 65 answers the lament, but not as the lamenters hoped. "I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name. I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people" (65:1–2). God has not been silent; he has been ignored.
The rebellious people are described in vivid detail: they sacrifice "in gardens," burn incense "upon altars of brick," "remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments," and eat "swine's flesh" (65:3–4). Later they "prepare a table for that troop, and... furnish the drink offering unto that number" (65:11). The academic scholar explains the odd phrases. Those last two phrases are the Hebrew divine names Gad (Fortune) and Meni (Destiny). These are worshipers of the LORD who are also hedging with other gods.
And they are proud: "Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day" (65:5). The LDS scholar notes the "holier than thou" of 65:5, now an English idiom, comes from this argument. The practical disciple sets it next to 66:5, where the faithful are told that "your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, Let the LORD be glorified." The excluders were religious and used pious language while they did it. He asks you to check both seats: have you been cast out by someone saying "Let the LORD be glorified," and have you done the casting?
This is the week the authorship question bites hardest, and the evidence is now behind you. The panel agrees on the facts and differs on what to make of them.
The critical case. Since Bernhard Duhm's 1892 commentary, most critical scholars have divided Isaiah into three blocks, with chapters 56–66 set in Judah after the return, in the Persian period. The honest questioner insists on fairness to that view. The case for that date doesn't rest only on a refusal to believe in prophecy, though that is how it is sometimes described. It rests on what the chapters assume. The temple is in ruins (64:11). Foreigners will rebuild the walls (60:10) and the people will "raise up the former desolations" (61:4). The LDS scholar makes the same observation about the poems themselves: these are the words of people standing in the rubble of 586 BC, and a believer can say a prophet saw this in vision, but the poems are not written as predictions. They are prayers spoken from inside the loss.
Not one critical view. The academic scholar shows that the critics disagree among themselves. Westermann and Blenkinsopp treat 56–66 as a collection that grew over time; Jacob Stromberg argues that Third Isaiah's main author also helped edit the whole book; Brevard Childs reads 56–66 as an intentional continuation; and Shalom Paul treats all of 40–66 as one sixth-century prophet's work, so even among critical scholars "Third Isaiah" is not unanimous. Outside critical scholarship, conservative Christian and Jewish interpreters and many Latter-day Saint scholars reject the division outright. The LDS scholar adds a physical fact. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, about 125 BC, preserves all sixty-six chapters, split into two halves at chapters 33/34, not at 39/40 or 55/56. The ancient copyists marked no seam where modern critics place one. He also notes that the scroll cannot settle the authorship debate, because by its date the book had long been assembled.
What the Book of Mormon does and doesn't do. Here, three essays agree on a fact many members miss. The Book of Mormon quotes long stretches of Isaiah 2–14 and 48–54. It does not quote any of 56–66 at length. Kent P. Jackson, who defends single authorship, draws the consequence that the Book of Mormon "cannot tell us anything about the history and authorship of those chapters." The phrasal echoes from Session 3, "robe of righteousness" and "mighty to save," complicate any claim that the Book of Mormon never touches these chapters, but they do not show that Nephi had them on the brass plates. The real pressure lies elsewhere, in the block quotations of 48–54, which most critics date after Lehi left. This week's chapters, which it never quotes in blocks, add nothing to that problem.
So what is the question? The honest questioner reframes it. Since Nephi's brass plates are not at issue, the live question in 58–66 is not whether Nephi could have read it. It's what kind of prophecy this is. One answer says a single eighth-century prophet foresaw the burned temple. Another says later inspired voices carried Isaiah's tradition into a new crisis with no less authority, and some faithful readers hold that view. The text gives evidence both ways. Isaiah 65:25 condenses 11:6–9 and ends on the same line, "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain." That echo can be read as one author's signature, or as a disciple quoting his master.
Who were the factions? If the chapters come from after the return, whose quarrel is 66:5? Paul Hanson's The Dawn of Apocalyptic (1975) read 56–66 as the protest literature of "visionary" disciples of Second Isaiah pushed out by a Zadokite priesthood controlling the rebuilt temple. Brooks Schramm rejected that split and argued the polemic targets syncretistic worship, and the gardens, graves, swine, Gad, and Meni of 65:3–11 support him. Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer reads these chapters as criticism of the priesthood that still hopes for a more righteous one. The academic sums up. The current consensus: the conflict was real, but Hanson's neat sociology outruns the evidence.
Nothing here needs to be settled today. It does change how you hear 65:13: "my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry." That is a community sorting itself into the faithful and the rest.
God will not destroy everyone. "As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants' sakes" (65:8). The academic scholar notices a change in that word. In Second Isaiah, "my servant" is usually a single figure, whether Israel or an individual (42:1; 49:3; 52:13). In 65:8–15 and 66:14 the word has become plural, "my servants," set against "ye that forsake the LORD." Most scholars read the shift as a sign that the community has split. The servants will eat and rejoice while the others go hungry and howl (65:13–14), and the servants will be called "by another name" (65:15), the renaming of chapter 62 now drawing a line inside Israel.
"For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind" (65:17). The academic notes that "create" is bārāʼ, the verb of Genesis 1:1. The lesson points to Articles of Faith 1:10 and invites you to notice how often these chapters say "rejoice." God himself rejoices: "I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her" (65:19).
Then the details turn surprisingly ordinary. "There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old" (65:20). "They shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit" (65:21–22). The academic shows that these lines reverse, almost phrase for phrase, the futility curse of Deuteronomy 28:30: "thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein." This is not a world without death; it is Jerusalem without early death or dispossession. The LDS scholar agrees. The new creation in Isaiah 65 is a repaired Judah, not a world without death.
The honest questioner presses the point. A new creation that still has death, curses, and sinners looks like a this-worldly restoration of Jerusalem, not a cosmic end state. Revelation 21:4 ("there shall be no more death") has to go further than Isaiah to reach its picture. The rabbi says Jewish tradition has always read it that way. Maimonides, in the Guide of the Perplexed, argues that Isaiah describes a kingdom's restoration as a new creation and explains the phrase in the next verse himself: "I create Jerusalem a rejoicing." In his law code he says that in the messianic age "the world will continue according to its pattern," and the wolf and the lamb are "a metaphor and a parable." For a Jew, "new heavens" means this earth repaired, not this earth replaced.
Restoration scripture does something distinctive with 65:20. The doctrinal connector shows D&C 101:30 borrowing Isaiah's image from 65:22, "an infant shall not die until he is old; and his life shall be as the age of a tree," and then adding what Isaiah lacks: "when he dies he shall not sleep, that is to say in the earth, but shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye" (101:31). D&C 63:51 says "old men shall die; but they shall not sleep in the dust." There is still death in the Millennium; there is no burial. The honest questioner calls this a revelation reinterpreting Isaiah 65:20 to fit the Millennium, and leaves it to the reader whether to see it as fulfillment or harmonization.
The practical disciple brings the vision home. The details are domestic, and the curse being reversed is working hard while someone else enjoys the result: "They shall not labour in vain" (65:23). The promise is not endless life but a full one, in which your work stays yours. That speaks to the parent whose work at home is invisible and the employee whose project was cancelled. It also asks whose labor in your own household you enjoy without acknowledging it.
Then the peaceable kingdom: "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain" (65:25). The academic calls it a compressed citation of 11:6–9, with one inserted clause, "dust shall be the serpent's meat," from Genesis 3:14. The peaceable kingdom returns, and Eden's serpent stays under sentence. Just before it is a promise worth slowing down for: "before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear" (65:24). Compare that to the complaint that opened the block.
"The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me?... but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word" (66:1–2). The academic scholar notes that this stands right next to texts that glorify the sanctuary (60:7, 13), and that scholars still debate whether it rejects the Second Temple itself (Hanson) or one group's worship there (Schramm, Tiemeyer). Verse 3 is fierce: "He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck."
Stephen quotes 66:1–2 against the temple establishment in Acts 7:49–50, and the honest questioner calls that an uncomfortable fact for a temple-building church. The LDS scholar reads 66:1 with 66:2 and finds that it moves God's attention from buildings to the contrite person rather than condemning temples outright. The doctrinal connector shows Restoration scripture doing the same in its own terms. Modern revelation commands temples, but makes God's presence conditional: "all the pure in heart that shall come into it shall see God. But if it be defiled I will not come into it" (D&C 97:16–17). The house is commanded, but what God looks to is the contrite person inside it.
The academic adds that "ye that tremble at his word" (66:5) is Hebrew ḥărēdîm, a rare label also used of a rigorist group in Ezra 9:4 and 10:3 and later taken up by ultra-Orthodox Jews. The practical disciple reads the trembling as a way of reading. To tremble at a word is to expect it to change something.
The images shift to childbirth: "shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children" (66:8). Then Jerusalem nurses her children, and the image turns once more, so that God is the mother: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem" (66:13). Donald Parry, in the six-outlooks essay, lists this verse for anyone who needs divine comfort. It is worth reading slowly, since a book that ends in judgment says this just before it does.
The fire comes next: "the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind... by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh" (66:15–16). The honest questioner admits that the rite of 66:17, purification "in the gardens behind one tree in the midst," eating "swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse," is obscure, and that the KJV supplies "tree." No one knows what the rite was.
Then the gathering. Survivors are sent "to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame" (66:19), and they bring "all your brethren for an offering unto the LORD out of all nations" (66:20). And: "I will also take of them for priests and for Levites" (66:21). The academic sees the end of the book closing its own ring. This matches the welcome of the foreigner and the eunuch in 56:1–8, and it closes the outer ring. The doctrinal connector adds 61:6, "ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD," and sees in the block a priesthood not bound to a hereditary line. The worship becomes universal: "from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me" (66:23).
Then the last verse. "And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh" (66:24). The academic scholar traces its afterlife. The word for "abhorring," dērāʼôn, appears only one other time in the Hebrew Bible: Daniel 12:2, the first clear biblical text about resurrection to "everlasting contempt." The image of unburied, unconsumed corpses outside Jerusalem became the raw material for Gehenna, and Mark 9:48 places the line in Jesus' mouth as a description of hell. The honest questioner notes that in Isaiah these are corpses, not souls in torment, but the line went on to shape centuries of teaching about eternal hell.
The synagogue answers with a liturgical refusal. When the new moon falls on a Sabbath, the Talmud assigns Isaiah 66 as the haftarah, because 66:23 mentions both "new moon" and "sabbath" (Megillah 31a). After verse 24, the reader repeats verse 23, so the reading ends, as the Orthodox Union's guide puts it, "on an uplifting note." The academic notes the same is done at the end of Malachi, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes. The rabbi adds two older moves. The Mishnah uses 66:23, "from one new moon to another," to teach that the judgment of the wicked in Gehinnom lasts twelve months (Mishnah ʻEduyot 2:10). In the rabbis' reading the calendar puts a limit on the fire. And Rashi reports that the Targum reads the book's last word, deraʼon, as two words meaning "enough seeing": the righteous will say, we have seen enough. The rabbi ends there. We read it, we say "enough," and we turn back to the new moon and the Sabbath.
Latter-day Saint scripture answers the verse twice, and the honest questioner notes the two answers sit in tension. D&C 76:44 applies "their worm dieth not" to the sons of perdition. D&C 19:6–12 says "endless torment" names God's punishment ("Endless is my name"), not a punishment without end. The doctrinal connector stresses how sharply D&C 76 narrows the verse: the Son "saves all the works of his hands, except those sons of perdition," and of their end "no man knows" (76:43, 45). The Restoration does not erase Isaiah's last verse, but it confines it to a small group and declines to describe it further. The Church's King James edition, the LDS scholar notes, simply ends at verse 24.
The academic sees in the two endings a summary of the whole block. The book's final editors ended on judgment, and its liturgical readers chose to end on worship. The honest questioner sees a posture worth copying. Neither the synagogue nor the Doctrine and Covenants deletes the verse. They put something next to it.
The panel ends in several places, and they fit together. The LDS scholar holds the book and its readers in one sentence. An honest reader holds both: a book that ends in judgment, and a tradition that would not let judgment have the last word. The doctrinal connector sets D&C 138 beside D&C 76: the prison of 61:1 opens, and the fire of 66:24 is kept for those who reject the light knowingly. Between them lies the long middle of the plan of salvation, which is where these chapters keep putting the reader: fasting for the poor, keeping the Sabbath as a delight, and waiting for the one who comes "mighty to save" (63:1).
The practical disciple ends with the verse that describes how to read all nine chapters, "to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word" (66:2). These chapters hold many words that would change Monday if taken seriously: what you give, what you say about people, what goes on the timesheet, whom you call, whom you pray for. His closing question is not how much of Isaiah you understood, but which verse you let make you tremble, and what you did about it.
Think deeply.