What Does Isaiah 61:2 Mean?
To proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of our God's vengeance; to comfort all who mourn.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;THE KEY
God names favor, vengeance, and comfort together, so the mourner’s grief is met with tenderness while the wrong around it remains visible.
THE MEANING
God’s favor and day of vengeance stand beside comfort for all who mourn. The verse speaks to your grief now as something seen and answered, holding consolation and divine reckoning together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that comfort requires forgetting what caused grief; the verse places comfort beside God’s vengeance.
THE ROOT
לְנַחֵם
lenaḥēm
GROWS FROM
נ־ח־ם
n-ḥ-m
The root’s biblical range includes comforting or consoling, and, in another Hebrew stem, relenting or regretting.
The same root can name consolation given to mourners and a turning in response to what is happening. Here, comfort stands beside God’s decisive response to wrong.
ALSO GROWS
niḥēm: Comforted or consoled; the Piel stem.
נִחֵם
This is the form behind the verse’s promise to comfort those who mourn.
niḥam: Relented or regretted; the Niphal stem.
נִחַם
This branch shows the root also describing a change in response, giving the promise of comfort a sense of active response to grief.
נָקָם
nāqām
GROWS FROM
נ־ק־ם
n-q-m
To avenge or exact retribution for a wrong.
The verse names this vengeance as belonging to God and places it beside comfort for mourners. The word keeps reckoning with harm within the promised future.
ALSO GROWS
nāqam: To avenge or take vengeance; the verb.
נָקַם
It names the action behind the ‘day of vengeance.’
nōqēm: An avenger; one who takes vengeance.
נֹקֵם
This form makes explicit the agent implied in the verse: the vengeance belongs to God.
רָצוֹן
rāṣōn
GROWS FROM
ר־צ־ה
r-ṣ-h
To be pleased with or accept; the root’s noun forms also convey favor or goodwill.
The Hebrew phrase can be heard as ‘year of favor,’ aligning with the root’s sense of acceptance and goodwill. The year is marked by the LORD’s welcome toward the reader.
ALSO GROWS
rāṣāh: To be pleased with or accept.
רָצָה
This verb gives the ‘acceptable year’ its root sense of being received with favor.
rāṣûy: Accepted or pleasing.
רָצוּי
This related form echoes the verse’s language of acceptance and favor.
THE PATTERN
Scripture holds consolation together with God’s answer to suffering and sorrow.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.And will God not set his own chosen straight, the ones who cry out to him day and night, though he is slow to heat with them? I tell you that he will set them straight swiftly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find anyone leaning their full weight on the ground?And God wipes away every tear from their eyes, and there is no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the first things have gone away.THE THREAD
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.Both verses use the Hebrew root נ־ח־ם (naḥam), meaning comfort or console. The repeated imperative in Isaiah 40 turns consolation into a direct declaration to the mourner.
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