Isaiah 61:1 “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;”
Luke 4:17 “And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Before we delve into my recent study, it is important to highlight that the Lord Jesus Christ closed the book (Luke 4:20) before “…and the day of vengeance of our God…” (Isaiah 61:2). That action is a message in itself.
The main study in this article is to clear up what appears on the veneer to be a discrepancy between between Old Testament (OT) & New Testament verses. The majority of the items between the verses can be easily correlated:
Isaiah 61:1 Luke 4:18
preach good tidings unto the meek preach the gospel to the poor
bind up the brokenhearted heal the brokenhearted
proclaim liberty to the captives preach deliverance to the captives
the opening of the prison recovering of sight to the blind
to them that are bound set at liberty to them that are bruised
How can we correlate opening of the prison to recovering of sight to the blind?
Isaiah 42:7 “To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.”
In the verse we can connect opening blind eyes with bringing out prisoners who sit in darkness. Thus, God shows us–interpretations belong to God (Gen 40:8) and we used the word of God to understand the word of God. There are no contradictions in the word of God. If you encounter a situation like that, pray with faith & God will clear it up.
I love the King James Bible, not only because I know it is the inerrant, infallible word of God, but for a multitude of other reasons to include formal equivalence. The King James translators didn’t tamper with the OT verses in order to exactly, literally align them with the NT verses. They faithfully translated the Hebrew in Isaiah & the Greek in Luke–no need for dynamic equivalence. Compare scripture to scripture to scriptures…
Again, faithfully translated & interpretations belong to God.
Romans 3:4 “…yea, let God be true, but every man a liar…”
THE EXILE OBSERVER 