³ “Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David. ⁴ Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.” (Isaiah 55:3–4)

Messianic overtones drench the context of this passage. The reader will recall chapter 53, where the “tender shoot” who “has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him,” portrays in advance the suffering Messiah (Is 53:2, see also Is 11:1-2). This is the One to whom God’s people should listen.

To put this passage in its historical context, God gave the people of Israel warning, but also hope. Israel, situated between two “super-powers” (Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south), at times was like a small bit player in worldly affairs. Its armies were overmatched in size, wealth and weaponry. The glory days of King David’s military prowess were long past.

In the midst of their spiritual dryness, God, through Isaiah, invites the people back to drink at the eternal cistern of God, so to speak. The chapter begins like this: “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Is 55:1). Some commentators hear in this invitation an echo of a water vendor’s cry, which was a common part of the ancient world economy. But the promise rings through to us today. God still provides for us a source of “living water.” Remember when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14, see also John 6:35).

According to our passage in Isaiah, God makes “an everlasting covenant” with those who respond to this invitation. One who is associated with David—the Messiah, a descendant in the Davidic dynasty—will be “a leader and commander.” What good is it to have water to stave off a drought yet live in a defeated and suppressed nation? The Messiah will not only satisfy His people personally, He will give them victory over all others, including the super-powers of Assyria and Egypt—all the nations of the earth. We are reminded of what the apostle John taught Christians, “Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). He is our Leader and Commander. It is in His army we serve.

My Leader and Commander, I am awaiting Your orders, Sir!