Isaiah 61:4–6

Isaiah 61:4 — "They will rebuild the old ruins"

The "they" of verse 4 refers to the anointed herald's community described in the opening verses of Isaiah 61 — those upon whom the Spirit rests (v. 1), who have received good news, liberty, and the year of the Lord's favour (vv. 1–3). The rebuilding language is not incidental: the Hebrew bānāh (to build) and the noun ḥorbôt (ruins, desolations) carry a specific freight throughout Second Isaiah. The ruins evoke the catastrophe of 587 BC — the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the entire infrastructure of Israelite covenantal life. The promise is therefore cosmically serious: what was broken by sin and exile will be made whole again.

The triple intensification in the Hebrew is significant — "ruins," "former desolations," and "waste cities" (in the fuller MT text) — signalling that this is not a partial or merely material restoration but a comprehensive renewal. Patristic readers, including Origen (Homilies on Isaiah), consistently understood this rebuilding as a figure for the reconstitution of the human soul ruined by sin: the "ancient ruins" are the divine image (imago Dei) shattered by the Fall, being restored through the Spirit's anointing in Christ. The verse thus operates on at least two levels simultaneously — historical restoration of exilic Judah, and the deeper eschatological restoration of humanity.

Isaiah 61:5 — "Strangers will stand and feed your flocks"

This verse introduces a remarkable reversal. In the exilic and post-exilic context, Israel had been subjected to foreign powers; now foreigners (zārîm, "strangers" or "aliens") will serve the renewed community. This is not triumphalism at the expense of other nations but rather an inclusion of the Gentiles into the economy of salvation in a supporting — even liturgical — role. The image of feeding flocks and tending vineyards is pastoral and agricultural, evoking the material sustenance that frees the covenant people for their higher calling.

Crucially, the logic of the verse is one of ordered service: the nations are not displaced or destroyed but are incorporated into God's purposes, their labour enabling Israel to fulfil a spiritual vocation. This anticipates the great Isaianic vision of the nations streaming to Zion (Is. 2:2–4; 60:3–7), not as vassals but as participants. Jerome, in his Commentary on Isaiah, reads the "strangers" as a figure for Gentile Christians whose faith and labour — their tithes, their service in the Church's corporal works — sustain the proclamation of the Gospel.

Isaiah 61:6 — "But you will be called Yahweh's priests"

This is the theological summit of the passage. The adversative wə'attem ("but you") marks a sharp contrast with the preceding verse: while strangers feed the flocks, Israel is elevated beyond all material occupations to the dignity of priesthood itself. The title "priests of Yahweh" (kōhănê YHWH) echoes the foundational covenant language of Exodus 19:6 — "You shall be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" — confirming that Isaiah 61 is not innovating but reactivating the deepest stratum of Israel's covenantal identity.

The priestly office entails standing before God on behalf of others, mediating blessing, offering sacrifice, and consecrating the ordinary to the holy. In the eschatological context of Isaiah 61, this priestly dignity is universal — not reserved for the tribe of Levi — and is premised entirely on the Spirit's anointing described in verse 1. Typologically, this verse is one of the most direct Old Testament anticipations of what the New Testament will call the "royal priesthood" (basileion hierateuma) of the baptised (1 Pet. 2:9), a reality the Catholic Church understands as the common priesthood of the faithful, distinct from but ordered toward the ministerial priesthood.

Catholic tradition brings distinctive depth to these verses through its developed theology of priesthood, the sensus plenior of Scripture, and the doctrine of the Church as the New Israel.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1268) teaches that "the baptized have become a 'living stone' … built into a 'spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood'" — drawing on 1 Peter 2:5, itself a direct echo of Isaiah 61:6. The CCC (§784) further states that "the whole People of God participates in [Christ's] priestly office," meaning that verse 6 finds its fulfilment not in the abolition of Levitical priesthood but in its elevation and universalisation through the High Priesthood of Christ (Heb. 7–9). Every baptised Catholic shares, by virtue of baptism and confirmation, in the munus sacerdotale — the priestly mission — of Christ himself.

Vatican II's Lumen Gentium §10–11 elaborates this directly, distinguishing the common priesthood of the faithful from the ordained ministerial priesthood while insisting both "participate, each in its own special way, in the one priesthood of Christ." Isaiah 61:6 is thus the Old Testament ground from which both forms of priesthood ultimately grow.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on Isaiah) saw in the "strangers feeding the flocks" a figure for the way the Gentile Church, once brought into covenant through Christ, now serves the proclamation of the Word — the catechists, deacons, and lay faithful who enable the ordained to stand before God in liturgical prayer. Pope St. John Paul II, in Christifideles Laici §14, cites precisely this dynamic: the lay faithful are not passive but are constitutively priestly, prophetic, and kingly by virtue of their anointing in baptism — a direct structural parallel to Isaiah 61:1–6's movement from anointing (v.1) to priestly identity (v.6). The "ruins rebuilt" of verse 4 find their fullest Catholic resonance in the Church's ongoing mission of cultural and spiritual renewal — what John Paul II termed the "new evangelisation."

For the contemporary Catholic, these verses challenge a privatised faith. The image of rebuilding "ancient ruins" is not merely comforting — it is a vocation. In a culture marked by the collapse of family structures, the erosion of shared moral life, and the spiritual desolation of many once-Christian communities, the baptised are called to be, quite literally, rebuilders. This is not the work only of bishops and priests; the common priesthood of verse 6 means that the Catholic parent catechising children, the teacher forming consciences, the professional who brings integrity to a corrupt field — all are performing priestly restoration.

Verse 5's image of ordered service is a corrective to clericalism and lay passivity alike: the Church's life requires differentiated gifts all ordered toward one goal. Most concretely, Catholics might ask: Where are the "ancient ruins" in my own parish, neighbourhood, or family? What does it mean, this week, for me to exercise my baptismal priesthood — to intercede, to consecrate the ordinary, to mediate God's mercy to someone in desolation? Isaiah 61 insists these are not metaphors but callings as concrete as rebuilding stone walls.