Isa. 61. Christ and his blessed office, Isa. 61:1–3. The church’s repair and increase, Isa. 61:4–6 and joy, Isa. 61:7–11.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, as it were, to accomplish that which is foretold and promised in the foregoing chapter, whereby this appears to be either the Holy Ghost; See Poole “1 Kings 18:12”; or the Spirit of prophecy, i.e.

To proclaim; to declare, as it respects the Jews, that their liberty is at hand. The acceptable year, viz. the happy age of God’s grace, either which will be grateful and welcome news to them, or acceptable to God, a time wherein it pleaseth him to favour them; but this must be understood of a…

To appoint; supply it, viz. comfort or joy; or else it may refer to those accusative cases following, beauty, oil, garments. In Zion; put by a metonymy for the Jews; q.d. among the Jews; and they for the church of God, or, according to the Hebrew, for Zion.

See Isa. 58:12. As it is applied to gospel times, the meaning may be, that Gentilism, which was as a wilderness overgrown with briers and thorns, shall be cultivated; and those cities and provinces of the Gentiles that lay as it were waste, void of all true religion, shall now by the ministry of…

Strangers, viz. Gentiles, such as are not of, the natural race of the Jews, but Gentile converts. Or such as shall have no more than an outward profession, strangers to tho true work of grace. Shall stand; ready to be at thy service; a like expression Isa. 48:13.

But ye shall be named the Priests; for your part, ye emphatically shall be as priests; either, 1. For maintenance; as the priests of old were plentifully provided for without their labour, so shall you by the labour of strangers. Or, 2.

For your shame ye shall have double: See Poole “Isa. 40:2”. Supply honour. Though you have been little accounted of among your enemies, yet now you shall be greatly in their esteem, Zech. 9:12; you shall have double damages. In their portion, viz.

For I the Lord love judgment: q.d. They have suffered a great deal of hardship under their enemies, and I will do them right; for I love justice in myself, and in them that practise it. Or he gives a reason why he will recompense those strangers that did so freely minister to his people.

Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles i.e. eminently; a promise of the increase of the church; such shall be their prosperity and multiplying, that they shall be known abroad by their great increase.

I will greatly rejoice: this by a prosopopoeia is spoken in the person of the church, wherein she doth thankfully acknowledge God’s kindness to her in the forementioned promise, expressed here in the greatness of her affection, with reference both to her present deliverance from Babylon, and to the…

As the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth: by this and the other metaphor he shows not only the reviving of the blessings of the church after they had been as it were dead in the winter of affliction, but the great plenty and abundance of blessings that should break…