Shabbat Nachamu: Comfort for Israel, Hope for Jerusalem, and the Nations’ Prophetic Calling

Shabbat Nachamu — The First of Seven Special Sabbaths

The Shabbat of Parashat Va'etchanan has a special name: Shabbat Nachamu — the Shabbat of "Comfort Ye My People." It falls at the beginning of seven special Sabbaths leading up to the High Holidays, and it comes usually just a few days after the 9th of Av — the most catastrophic date in the Jewish calendar, the day on which the Temple was destroyed twice, the day of the expulsion from Spain, some sixteen calamities in Jewish history falling on the same date. The people have mourned. Now God turns through His prophet and says: comfort.

When my faith in God is a little bit shaken because of bewildering events in Israel, I hear in my mind the oratorio Handel's Messiah, composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The opening words from Isaiah 40:1-3:

I shall never forget when Marcia, and many other disciples of Yeshua in the land of Israel, performed Handel's Messiah in the big national concert hall of Jerusalem. David Loden was the organizer and the conductor. Hearing it for the first time, hearing the singers — most of whom are disciples of Yeshua — singing "nachamu, nachamu, ami," the tears just welled up in my eyes. Even my left eye that is blind teared up, and water started to flow down my face. Especially for my generation — the generation after the Nazi Holocaust that lives in Israel and enjoys the land of Israel and the blessings of the State — Isaiah 40 carries a weight that no other generation can fully understand.

And then Isaiah 40:3-5, which describes John the Baptist:

Often when I hear these verses sung in Handel's Messiah, tears come to my eyes from the power of these words.

"Nachamu" Is Addressed to You

The Nachamu is a request — and a command — for the Gentiles to comfort Israel. I don't believe it is addressed to pagans. It is addressed to those Gentiles, like Christians, who honor the Bible as God's Word, believe in the God of Israel and in Yeshua the Messiah. These Gentiles, who have received the grace of God and the forgiveness of sins from Yeshua the King of the Jews, ought to now comfort the people of God — the brothers and cousins of Yeshua — and encourage the Jewish people to do good and live and develop and farm and build the land of Israel.

Isaiah 62:1-7 carries the same mandate even further:

Those Christians today who think that they are absolved from standing with Israel need to re-read their Bible from the beginning to the end with a fresh look — delivered from the Pagan-Christian interpretations of the church fathers, who were almost without exception anti-Torah and anti-Jews and preferred to keep the people in darkness until Martin Luther translated the Bible to German so that poor farmers could understand what they believe. There is still much translating to be done — not of language, but of understanding.

The pilgrimage of the nations to Jerusalem was prophesied in Zechariah chapter 14, in Isaiah chapter 66, in the Psalms, and in the last chapter of Revelation. Where do you think that the New Jerusalem — the city foursquare with the twelve gates and the names of the Tribes of Israel on their gates, accompanied by the names of the 12 Apostles — will be? God is calling the nations in Isaiah 40 to comfort His people. This prophetic mandate is still valid, still urgent, still a divine program that needs to be put in priority before the coming of the Son of Man.