Isaiah 40:3

The voice of him that crieth The word "voice" here and often has the force of an interjection; render accordingly: Hark! one crying. The voice is not that of God (on account of the following "our God"), neither is it a human voice; it comes from one of the angelic ministers of Jehovah and is addressed to beings of the same order. The words in the wildernessshould be joined with prepare yeetc., in accordance with the accents (R.V.). A.V. agrees with LXX. and Vulg. and the N.T. citations (Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4); but sense and parallelism alike shew that the Heb. accentuation is right.

Prepare strictly "clear of obstacles" (see Genesis 24:31; Leviticus 14:36; Psalms 80:9; cf. ch. Isaiah 57:14; Isaiah 62:10; Malachi 3:1). The figure is taken from the well-known Eastern practice of repairing the roads for a royal journey. It may be difficult to say how far the representation is ideal. Allusions to the march through the desert are too constant a feature of the prophecy (ch. Isaiah 40:10 f., Isaiah 41:18 f., Isaiah 42:16; Isaiah 43:19 f., Isaiah 48:21; Isaiah 49:9 ff., Isaiah 55:12 f.) to be treated as merely figurative; the prophet seems to have expected the deliverance to issue in a triumphal progress of Jehovah with His people through the desert between Babylonia and Palestine, after the analogy of the exodus from Egypt. But all such passages probably look beyond the material fulfilment and include the removal of political and other hindrances to the restoration of Israel.