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LXX Isaiah

Septuagint

About this book
Chapter 61

1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach glad news to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind;⁠ 2 to declare the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution; to comfort all that mourn; 3 that there should be given to those who mourn in Zion glory instead of ashes, the oil of joy to the mourners, the garment of glory for the spirit of heaviness: and they shall be called generations of righteousness, the planting of the Lord for glory. 4 And they shall build the old waste places, they shall raise up those that were before made desolate, and shall renew the desert cities, even those that had been desolate for many generations. 5 And strangers shall come and feed your flocks, and aliens shall be your plowmen and vine-dressers. 6 But you shall be called priests of the Lord, the ministers of God: you shall eat the strength of nations,⁠ and shall be admired because of their wealth. 7 Thus they will inherit the land a second time, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head.⁠ 8 For I am the Lord who love righteousness, and hate robberies of injustice; and I will give their labor to the just, and will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9 And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring in the midst of peoples: every one that sees them shall take notice of them, that they are a seed blessed of God; 10 and they shall greatly rejoice in the Lord. Let my soul rejoice in the Lord; for he has clothed me with the robe of salvation, and the garment of joy: he has put a turban on me as on a bridegroom, and adorned me with ornaments as a bride. 11 And as the earth putting forth her flowers, and as a garden its seed; so the Lord will cause righteousness to spring forth, and exultation before all nations.

Texts in conversation

The Two Passages of Isaiah Behind Jesus' Sermon

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

In Luke, Jesus draws on Isaiah 58 and 61, blending their language to emphasize release for the oppressed. These are the only places in the Hebrew Bible to use the phrase “the Lord’s favor,” and both focus on easing burdens and freeing captives.

Passages

LXX Isaiah 58:6

Septuagint
5 I have not chosen this fast, nor such a day for a man to afflict his soul; neither though you should bend down your neck as a ring, and spread under you sackcloth and ashes, neither thus shall you call a fast acceptable. 6 I have not chosen such a fast, says the Lord; but loose every burden of iniquity, untie the knots of hard bargains, set the bruised free, and cancel every unjust account.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

LXX Isaiah 61:1

Septuagint
1 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach glad news to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; 2 to declare the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution; to comfort all that mourn;
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

Luke 4:18

New Testament
17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
75–85 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Luke

References

"... Luke’s record of Jesus’ citation from Isaiah 61:1-2 clearly does not follow the Hebrew Bible. The common scholarly assumption that Luke has drawn his biblical passages from the LXX obscures the exegetical ingenuity evident in the account. Further, as we noted, the report’s preservation of non-Septuagintal Hebraisms belies the simplistic explanation that the variants upon the Masoretic tradition resulted from the Evangelist’s dependence on the LXX ... scant attention has been given to a rare Hebrew verbal link between the two Isaianic passages. There are only two places in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible where the phrase “the Lord’s favor” occurs, Isaiah 61:2 and 58:5 - precisely the contexts from which Jesus drew his reading for our pericope. The Lukan narrative provides an example of Jesus’ adept use of gezerah shavah, a hermeneutical approach first associated with Hillel the Elder and described to be one of his seven exegetical rules ..."
R. Steven Notley and Jeffrey P. Garcia, “The Hebrew Scriptures in the Third Gospel,” in Searching the Scriptures: Studies in Context and Intertextuality, ed. Craig A. Evans and Jeremiah J. Johnston, LNTS 543 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 128–147.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Isaiah 58:6 and LXX Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18

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