Deeper Reflection
Isaiah’s prophecy of Cyrus gave Israel hope of deliverance from exile. But Isaiah also prophesied an even greater hope — the Messiah, who would deliver not just the Jews but all people, and deliver not just from Babylon, but from the Kingdom of Darkness. He would be the Hope of the nations!In the Old Testament, the Lord declares that His Chosen Servant will “bring forth justice to the nations (Hebrew: goy)” and be “a light for the nations (goy)” (vv.1,6). Matthew’s Gospel quotes this prophecy, identifying Jesus as God’s Chosen Servant. “He will proclaim justice to the Gentiles (Greek: ethnos)” and “in His name the Gentiles (ethnos) will have hope” (Matt 12:18,21). In the New Testament, the Greek word ethnos is most often translated as “Gentiles”, describing “all the individuals who do not belong to the chosen people (as distinct from the Jews or Christians).”²⁴ Jesus is the hope of the Gentiles!Jesus is the hope of all nations ― both Jews and Gentiles (Isa 49:6). Luke’s Gospel makes this explicit, identifying Jesus as the Lord’s salvation, that the Lord had prepared in the presence of “all peoples”; He was to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles (ethnos) and for glory to your people Israel” (Lk 2:30-32, emphasis mine; cf. Acts 26:23).Indeed, ethnos is also frequently translated in the New Testament as “nation(s)”, referring to “the people of the world…divided based on their constitution of a socio-political community”²⁵ (e.g. Matt 24:14; Matt 28:19, Jn 11:50, etc.). Jesus is Hope of the nations, because all nations — all peoples Jews and Gentiles — are held in God’s hand.

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²⁴ Georg Bertram and Karl Ludwig Schmidt, “Eθνος, Ἐθνικός,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 370 ²⁵ Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 129.