Isaiah 40:6
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A voice says, “Cry out!” And I asked, “What should I cry out?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
The prophet now hears a second voice, and then a third, entering into conversation with it. "Hark, one speaking, Cry! And he answers, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty as the flower of the field. Grass is withered, flower faded: for the breath of Jehovah has blown upon it. Surely grass is the people; grass withereth, flower fadeth: yet the word of our God will stand for ever." A second voice celebrates the divine word of promise in the face of the approaching fulfilment, and appoints a preacher of its eternal duration. The verb is not ואמר (et dixi, lxx, Vulg.), but ואמר; so that the person asking the question is not the prophet himself, but an ideal person, whom he has before him in visionary objectiveness. The appointed theme of his proclamation is the perishable nature of all flesh (Isa 40:5 πᾶσα σάρξ, here πᾶσα ἡ σάρξ), and, on the other hand, the imperishable nature of the word of God. Men living in the flesh are universally impotent, perishing, limited; God, on the contrary (Isa 31:3), is the omnipotent, eternal, all-determining; and like Himself, so is His word, which, regarded as the vehicle and utterance of His willing and thinking, is not something separate from Himself, and therefore is the same as He. Chasdō is the charm or gracefulness of the outward appearance (lxx; Pe1 1:24, δόξα: see Schott on the passage, Jam 1:11, εὐπρέπεια). The comparison instituted with grass and flower recals Isa 37:27 and Job 8:12, and still more Psa 90:5-6, and Job 14:2. Isa 40:7 describes what happens to the grass and flower. The preterites, like the Greek aoristus gnomicus (cf., Isa 26:10), express a fact of experience sustained by innumerable examples: exaruit gramen, emarcuit flos; (Note: נבל has munach here and in Isa 40:8 attached to the penu…
Open source ↗40:6-8 All humanity is mortal and fleeting. By contrast, God persists in his plans and succeeds. Time does not limit him from carrying out his will (see 14:24). 40:6 Shout: So that all can hear. • People are not worthy of the revelation of God’s glory because they are mortal.
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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My days are like lengthening shadows, and I wither away like grass.
Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
“Cry aloud, do not hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Declare to My people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins.
that though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed.
Therefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are like plants in the field, tender green shoots, grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown.
For there will be a day when watchmen will call out on the hills of Ephraim, ‘Arise, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God!’”
“Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem that this is what the LORD says: ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.
A voice of one calling: “Prepare the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.
Cry out and sing, O citizen of Zion, for great among you is the Holy One of Israel.”
Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah; raise the battle cry in Beth-aven: Lead on, O Benjamin!