Isaiah 40:1-11 — Sermon Prep & Expository Preaching Guide

The Babylonian Exile: Setting the Stage

Isaiah 40 opens one of the most intensely debated sections in all of biblical scholarship. Most critical scholars today identify chapters 40–55 as the work of an anonymous prophet writing during the Babylonian exile — often called Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah — though the canonical book presents itself as a unified composition under the name of the eighth-century Judean prophet. What is beyond dispute is the historical horizon the text presupposes: a community in crisis, displaced from their land, their Temple destroyed, their monarchy extinguished.