Shabbat Nachamu: “Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye My People”

The Seven Haftarot of Consolation

Shabbat Nachamu opens a cycle of seven haftarot, all from the second half of Isaiah, read on the seven Sabbaths from Tisha B’Av to Rosh Hashanah. In Aramaic they are called shiva denechemta, “the seven of consolation.” They follow the three haftarot of rebuke read during the Three Weeks (see Shabbat Chazon). The sequence is:

1. Isaiah 40:1–26, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” (Va’etchanan)
2. Isaiah 49:14–51:3, “But Zion said, Hashem hath forsaken me” (Ekev)
3. Isaiah 54:11–55:5, “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted” (Re’eh)
4. Isaiah 51:12–52:12, “I, even I, am he that comforteth you” (Shoftim)
5. Isaiah 54:1–10, “Sing, O barren” (Ki Teitzei)
6. Isaiah 60:1–22, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come” (Ki Tavo)
7. Isaiah 61:10–63:9, “I will greatly rejoice in Hashem” (Nitzavim)

This cycle of ten, three of rebuke and seven of comfort, is reflected in the homiletical midrash Pesikta deRav Kahana, which contains a sermon on each of these readings, and the medieval Tosafot treat it as the established order.¹ Later commentators ask why the readings are not in the order of the book; a common answer is that they are arranged so that the consolations grow progressively greater.²

A popular homiletical reading, repeated in many sermons, hears in the first lines of the second and third haftarot a dialogue. Hashem calls the prophets to comfort Israel (40:1), but Zion answers, “Hashem hath forsaken me” (49:14). The prophets’ comfort is not enough; she remains “afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted” (54:11). Finally Hashem says, “I, even I, am he that comforteth you” (51:12). Whether or not the order was meant to carry that meaning,³ it expresses a truth of the season: there are griefs that only Hashem Himself can comfort.

Isaiah 40: The Voice in the Wilderness

The first haftarah moves through several voices. First the command: speak tenderly to Jerusalem. The Aramaic Targum understands the double “comfort ye” as addressed to the prophets: Hashem commands them to prophesy consolation to His people.⁴ Rabbinic tradition also noticed the doubling. A midrash teaches that Israel sinned doubly, was punished doubly, and is comforted doubly, linking Lamentations 1:8 (“Jerusalem hath grievously sinned,” literally “sinned a sin”), Isaiah 40:2 (“double for all her sins”), and the double “comfort ye” of 40:1.⁵

Then a voice cries out:

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Hashem, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low… And the glory of Hashem shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of Hashem hath spoken it.

In its first setting this is the road home from Babylon, a highway through the desert on which Hashem leads His exiles back to Zion as He once led Israel out of Egypt. A third voice reminds the prophet of human frailty: “All flesh is grass… The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (40:6–8). Then Zion herself is sent up a high mountain as a herald of good news:

O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain… say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!… He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.

The haftarah closes with the majesty of the Creator, who measures the waters in His hand and calls the stars by name: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things” (40:26). The comfort of Israel rests on the power of the One who made the heavens. Hashem who numbers the stars has not forgotten Jerusalem.

Va’etchanan: The Shema and the Ten Words

The Torah portion read on this Shabbat, Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11, is one of the richest in the Torah. It opens with Moshe’s plea: “I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan” (3:25). Hashem refuses, and Moshe must see the land only from the top of Pisgah. The greatest of the prophets also knew what it was to long for the land and be denied. On Shabbat Nachamu, Israel hears his longing together with Isaiah’s promise that the exiles will come home.

Chapter 4 includes the passage read on the morning of Tisha B’Av, Moshe’s warning that Israel would be scattered among the nations. Yet that warning ends with comfort: “When thou art in tribulation… in the latter days, if thou turn to Hashem thy God… he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers” (4:30–31).

Chapter 5 repeats the Ten Commandments. Many communities chant them in a special melody, and in many synagogues the congregation stands to hear them, though some authorities discouraged standing lest the Ten Commandments be treated as more important than the rest of the Torah.⁶ Chapter 6 contains the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our God, Hashem is One. And thou shalt love Hashem thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

It is fitting that the Shema is read on the Shabbat of comfort. After the destruction, what remains is the covenant and its confession: Hashem is one, and Israel is called to love Him with everything. Yeshua named this as the first of all the commandments (Mark 12:29–30). Benei Avraham confesses it as the foundation of its faith: Hashem is One, and to Him alone belongs worship.

The Voice in the Wilderness and Yochanan the Immerser

Isaiah 40:3 had a long life in Second Temple Judaism. The community of the Dead Sea Scrolls applied it to themselves. Their Community Rule says that members will separate from the dwelling of unrighteous men and go into the wilderness to prepare the way of Hashem, as it is written, “In the wilderness prepare the way,” and it explains this “way” as the study of the Torah that Hashem commanded through Moshe.⁷ For them, the voice in the wilderness meant a life of Torah, purity and waiting.

All four Gospels apply the same verse to Yochanan the Immerser (John the Baptist). Mark begins his Gospel with it:

As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of Hashem, make his paths straight.

Mark joins Malachi 3:1 to Isaiah 40:3. Yochanan preached repentance by the Jordan, and in John’s Gospel he identifies himself directly: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (John 1:23). Luke extends the quotation to include “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6).⁸ In Isaiah the way is prepared for Hashem Himself. The Gospels see Hashem’s coming to His people in the coming of the Messiah He sent, who comes “in the name of Hashem” (Psalm 118:26), as His appointed king and representative. The Qumran community and the Gospel writers drew on the same verse in different ways, which shows how alive Isaiah’s consolation was in the Jewish world of the first century.

Waiting for the Consolation of Israel

Luke’s account of Yeshua’s infancy is filled with the language of Isaiah’s consolations. When Yosef and Miriam brought the child to the Temple, they met an old man:

And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Shimon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Ruach HaKodesh was upon him.

“The consolation of Israel” is the hope of Isaiah 40. Shimon took the child in his arms and blessed God, quoting Isaiah’s words about “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32; Isaiah 49:6). The prophetess Anna, in the same scene, spoke of him “to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). These faithful Jews in the Temple courts lived in the spirit of Shabbat Nachamu: they had not stopped waiting for Hashem to comfort Zion.

The rabbinic tradition also connects the consolation with the Messiah. Among the names of the Messiah listed in the Talmud is Menachem, “Comforter,” drawn from Lamentations 1:16: “the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me.”⁹ The Jerusalem Talmud tells that the redeemer named Menachem was born on the day the Temple was destroyed.¹⁰ The comfort is personal: it comes through a person Hashem sends.

The Comforter the Father Sends

On the night before his death, Yeshua promised his disciples comfort in his absence:

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth… I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

The Greek word paraklētos means one called alongside: a helper, advocate, or comforter. The Comforter is given by the Father in answer to Yeshua’s prayer; it is the Spirit of truth, the Ruach HaKodesh, Hashem’s own presence with His people, which the prophets promised would be poured out “upon all flesh” (Joel 2:28). The link between the Greek paraklētos and the Hebrew menachem is a natural one to draw, and Franz Delitzsch’s classic Hebrew translation of the Brit Hadashah renders it menachem,¹¹ but it is a theme the reader notices rather than something John states.

Paul gives the clearest picture of how comfort works among Hashem’s people:

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Master Yeshua the Messiah, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

The source of all comfort is the Father. Those who receive it become comforters in turn. That is the call of Isaiah 40:1 extended to every believer: “Comfort ye My people.” After Tisha B’Av, it is not enough to be comforted; we are sent to comfort others.

The Shepherd-King and the Glory All Flesh Will See

Isaiah 40 looks forward to a day when “the glory of Hashem shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (40:5). This is more than the return from Babylon. The later consolations of Isaiah widen the picture: Zion’s children gathered from every direction (49:12, 18), Jerusalem’s ruins singing together (52:9), and the covenant of peace that cannot be removed:

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith Hashem that hath mercy on thee.

The image of the shepherd who gathers the lambs (40:11) is taken up by Ezekiel, who promises that Hashem will set over His flock “one shepherd… even my servant David” (Ezekiel 34:23). Yeshua called himself “the good shepherd” (John 10:11), and Benei Avraham understands his return as the revelation of Mashiach ben David, who will gather Israel, rebuild what was destroyed, and reign in righteousness. In his first coming he walked the path of Mashiach ben Yosef: suffering, rejected, and raised by Hashem. The full consolation of Isaiah still awaits the second.

The Brit Hadashah ends with Isaiah’s comfort fulfilled:

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

That is the destination of the seven weeks of consolation. They carry Israel from the ruins of Tisha B’Av to the shofar of Rosh Hashanah, the day of Hashem’s kingship. They do not tell us when the final comfort will come; no one knows the day or the hour. They tell us that it will come, and that the mouth of Hashem has spoken it.

Keeping Shabbat Nachamu

• Let the joy return. After the Three Weeks, keep this Shabbat with special gladness: a festive table, songs, and guests.
• Read Isaiah 40 aloud at the table, and follow the seven haftarot of consolation week by week until Rosh Hashanah.
• Say the Shema with intention. Read Deuteronomy 6:4–9 slowly and listen to the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5.
• Become a comforter. Choose someone who is grieving, lonely or discouraged, and bring them comfort during the week, as 2 Corinthians 1:4 describes.
• Look ahead to Tu B’Av, the joyful fifteenth of Av, and to the month of Elul. See our calendar for the dates in any given year.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.