Bible Notes

Isaiah 55:10-11 My Word Never Fails

Isaiah 55:10-11 is from the conclusion of Isaiah's Book of Consolation (Isaiah 55:1-13). Here the keyword is DABAR which the Septuagint translates as logoV. Our modern English translations simply render it as "Word." But this somehow limits the concept that both the Hebrew original and the Greek translation containt. In both those languages, the original idea can be rendered as "Word-Event." God's "Word" is not simply an idea that is pronounced or written, it is a "happening"; and because it "happens", it can change, transform, create. The powerful imagery that Isaiah employs in these two verses compares God's Word with water that becomes either snow or rain that irrigates the land and makes it produce the food that one brings at table and from which one is nourished. From water, to snow, to irrigated land, to vegetation, to bread that one eats -- God's Word operates the same way once it leaves God's mouth. It brings about a happening, or like the water, a "life-cycle."

my word shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it (Isa. 55:11)

The liturgy for the 15th Sunday of Ordinary time pairs this passage with the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-23. By doing this, the Church is helping us understand the connection between the words of Jesus and God's Word. In Matthew's parable, the words of Jesus -- symbolized by the seed of the sower -- can grow and bear fruit in a heart that is "fertile." The parables that Jesus use to teach the crowd already "select" those meant to benefit from them: "they shall look but will not see and listen but will not hear or understand." Only to the disciples has it been given that Jesus' words are understood. And it is for them that the Word of God becomes life.

There is another passage from the Gospel of John which echoes Isaiah 55:10-11. The echo is faint, but it is there. "My Word ... shall do my will ... (shall do ) the purpose for which I sent it" has an echo in "My food is to do the will of God who sent me to finish His work" (Jn. 4:34). The context of this latter passage is Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman. It was an encounter where He, the Word of God made flesh (cf. Jn. 1:1-18) presents himself as the source of the water that gurgles unto eternal life (Jn. 4:14). The encounter ends with the woman going back into town and calling her townsmates to where Jesus was so that they too may encounter Him. The evangelist John composed the story in such a way that Jesus' talk about food and harvest in v. 34-38 should point to the coming of "many Samaritans" (v.30). Thus, by sending God's Word to this town of Samaria, a woman who sought water helped a whole town recognize "the Savior of the world. (v. 42)"