Msgr. Beaulieu – Jesus Reads from Isaiah

The Citation of Isaiah in Today’s Gospel

Jesus speaks in the synagogue in Nazareth after having read from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. The importance of the reading of Isaiah in this Gospel can scarcely be exaggerated. For Luke it proclaimed the fulfillment of Scripture and embodied the hopes of Israel through Jesus’ ministry as the Son of God. The citation stated the social concern that guided Jesus’ work and allows those who hear this Gospel proclaimed to understand all that Jesus did as the fulfillment of His anointing by the Spirit.

What Jesus understood by these verses, however, differed sharply from what those gathered in the synagogue assumed them to mean. When Isaiah first penned these words some 700 years earlier, they were meant as consolation for a future hope, for the day when the Messiah would come to save the people of Israel. Now, with Jesus as the Messiah on the scene, in His inaugural appearance, He came to deliver Isaiah’s message and grace this synagogue crowd with His presence. Salvation has entered the room, and yet, they don’t understand.

Isaiah 61:1–2 also deals with imagery relating to the Jubilee year, a time set apart in the law of Moses for debts to be forgiven and slaves to be set free (Lev 25:8–24). This passage may have had special significance for the people to whom Jesus read the passage, since, on that particular Sabbath, scholars believe a Jubilee year had likely ended shortly before Jesus began preaching publicly. Some even theorize that this Jubilee year would have occurred in AD 26–27.

Brief Commentary

The New Testament use of the prophecy of Isaiah requires some textual analysis. The term used for captives (Gk. αἰχμαλώτοι) appears nowhere else in the NT. The term release (Gk ἄφεσις) means “forgiveness, release or remission.”  Luke uses aphesis in another place for forgiveness of sins (Lk 5:17-32). However, various events later in the Lord’s public life come to be understood as illustrating the fulfillment of  letting “the oppressed go free.” The word for “release” recurs in the line from Is 58:6, inserted here by Luke: for the oppressed to be released or to go free. Jesus freed people from various forms of bondage and oppression: economic (the poor), physical (the lame, the crippled), political (the condemned), and demonic. Forgiveness of sins, therefore, can also be seen as a form of release from the bondage to iniquity.

The restoration of sight to the blind was closely associated with the prophetic vision of the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel elsewhere in Isaiah. When Jesus restores sight to the blind, He is figuratively fulfilling God’s work of salvation as foreseen by Isaiah. Jesus is dramatically fulfilling the role of the one who would be a “light for the nations.” Like Jesus, as His disciples, we are meant to be light for others.

After Jesus proclaims these prophetic words, He sits down in the teacher’s seat or the “seat of the chair of Moses” (Gk. Mōuseōs kathedras) and all eyes are on Him. (see Mt 23:2). Then, simply, but profoundly, He says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus would demonstrate the messianic nature of this Isaian prophecy by connecting what Isaiah had prophesied centuries before and applying it to Himself through that final verse of this passage.

Excerpted from http://www.friarmusings.com. “Fulfilled in your hearing.” 21 January 2022.

Reference: R. Alan Culpepper. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible.