“He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:16-21(NIV)
This well-known account of our Lord Jesus identifying Himself as the One whom Isaiah prophesied about, is very specific in its description of our Lord’s use of the Old Testament. He doesn’t identify chapter and verse before He read the passage He was looking for, but our bibles have a text note that links back to Isaiah 61:1,2.
There are two questions that come to mind as we lay our English translations of Isaiah 61:1,2 and Luke 4:18,19 beside each other;
Our first question is - why would the scroll our Lord read have “recovery of sight for the blind” when it doesn’t appear in our English translations of the Hebrew text? The answer is simple, for the scroll our Lord read from is the Greek translation of the Hebrew called the Septuagint or the LXX (the 70). If you Google “Septuagint Isaiah 61:1,2” you will find an English translation, and this question is answered.
Our second question is - why would our Lord stop His recitation of Isaiah 61:2 mid sentence? Our Lord was proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor” and yet the Isaiah text has 3 parallel statements of the proclamation;
the year of the Lord’s favour
the day of vengeance of our God (day of recompence in the LXX)
the comfort of all who mourn.
Why would our Lord not quote the entire verse?
This second question is a little harder to answer, for it requires us to think theologically and consider the wider teaching of Scripture about our God.
I believe Nahum 1 sheds some light for us, for we see two descriptions of God in Nahum 1 that many people think are contradictory, for how can God be both avenging and good at the same time? God is good to those who take refuge in Him, who trust in Him, and yet He pursues His foes into the realm of darkness. He is both because people take two different positions with God - some draw near to Him through Christ Jesus and yet more refuse to bow their knee and are His foe.
According to Nahum 1 God is also slow to anger and mighty in power. This age or year that we are in right now - the year of the Lord’s favour - will end with a day of vengeance, but only when God comes to the end of His patience. On that day only those who have taken refuge in Christ will be spared, all others will be utterly and completely destroyed. Christ came to usher in this age of grace in which we live, when all who call on the Lord will saved, for the Spirit is poured on all who believe.
Our Lord will come back in power and when He comes back He will finish the sentence of Isaiah 61:2.
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