The scripture for today is from the portion of Isaiah which scholars know as Deutero-Isaiah, or Second Isaiah - chapters 40 to 55. Those chapters certainly were not written by the eighth century B.C.E. prophet whose name it bears, but rather by an anonymous observer of the events in the closing years of Babylonian rule, and who interpreted the meaning of those events to the Jewish exiles in Babylonia. A momentous event stirred him to prophesy to the captives, and that event was the rise to power of Cyrus, who this prophet saw as the Jews’ ticket to freedom. Even more than that, he saw Cyrus as the instrument of God, for he granted the Jews freedom to return to their homeland. However, the people had become dispirited in their captivity and had lost the hope of ever returning. In fact the p…