Week 29 Isaiah 61
The opening verses of Isaiah 61 sound familiar. I check the cross-reference in the margin: Luke 4. In the gospel story Jesus publicly reads this passage from Isaiah while he’s in a synagogue in Galilee.
I looked at the paragraph in Luke then flipped-back and reread Isaiah. They’re very similar. I copied the two sections phrase-by-phrase. Isaiah’s original…then Luke’s version:
Isaiah: the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me
Luke: the Spirit of the Lord is on me
Isaiah: the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor
Luke: he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor
Isaiah: he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners
Luke: he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed
Isaiah: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
Luke: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
The discrepancy is in that third phrase and I wonder what to make of it. Luke skipped the brokenhearted phrase and added recovery-of-sight.
I don’t figure that Luke was just jerking his reader’s around. And I’m not sure a secretary made a copying error. It’s more likely that Luke’s version was a paraphrase that was – for Luke’s purposes – close-enough.
Note: quotes from Isaiah 61:1-2 & Luke 4:18-19 (NIV)