Isaiah’s Song of Salvation

We have read the name Yeshua letter by letter and found that it means “The LORD is salvation,” or “The LORD saves.” We have seen that Shua stands as a word of its own, and that the name the Messiah received is the four-letter form, whatever its relation to the name Joshua. Now we turn from the name to the word that stands behind it, the word yeshuah יְשׁוּעָה yesh-oo'-aw, “salvation,” and ask to whom that salvation points in the Old Testament.

Isaiah answers in a song. He does not simply set the LORD and salvation side by side, as if one were the giver and the other the gift. He says that they are one.

Isaiah’s Song

The song is short, and it belongs to “that day.”

Isaiah 12:1-3 And you shall say in that day: "I will thank you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turns away, and you comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation (yeshuah); I will trust and not be afraid; for Yah the LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation (yeshuah)." And you shall draw water with joy from the wells of salvation (yeshuah).

The word translated “salvation” three times here is yeshuah (H3444), the word we first met in Chapter 5. It is the noun that ends with the letter heh, and it is not the personal name Yeshua (H3442) without the heh. Both come from the same root, yasha ישע yeh'-shah, “save.”

Notice first who is singing. Verse 1 is the voice of someone who knows what it is to have been under God’s anger: “I will thank you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turns away, and you comfort me.” The song does not begin with a person who never needed saving. It begins with thanks from one whom the LORD has comforted after His anger turned away. Salvation in this song is the answer to that need.

Verse 2 makes the same statement twice.

The first time: “Behold, God is my salvation (yeshuah).” In Hebrew this is very short. The word for God, El, stands beside yeshuah with the ending “my,” and nothing comes between them. God is my yeshuah.

The second time: “for Yah the LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation (yeshuah).” Here the divine name itself is the subject. Yah, the short form of the name, which we will look at more closely in Chapter 10, stands together with the LORD, and of Him the verse says, “he has become my salvation.” The LORD has become my yeshuah.

So Isaiah 12:2 says it twice: God is my yeshuah; the LORD is my yeshuah. The salvation the prophet sings of is not something the LORD hands over from a distance. It is the LORD Himself.

What This Means for the Name

Put this beside what we have already seen. The name Yeshua is made of yod, pointing to the LORD, and Shua, salvation. It says “The LORD is salvation.” Isaiah’s word yeshuah, from the same root, says in his song that the LORD has become the singer’s salvation. The name and the word point to one and the same reality. The One the Old Testament calls “my salvation” is none other than the LORD Himself, and the Child the angel named was given a name that says the same thing.

This is the equation at the center of this part of the book: the LORD is my yeshuah. Everything after this chapter builds on it.

The Heh at the End

Here we must say plainly where this study parts from the standard lexicons. Strong’s and the other standard dictionaries classify yeshuah as a feminine noun. In their account, the heh at the end of the word is the ordinary feminine ending that many Hebrew nouns carry. That is the common understanding, and it should be stated fairly.

This study reads that final heh differently. It observes that the word yeshuah never once refers to a woman or to anything feminine, and that in a verse like Isaiah 12:2 it stands as one with the LORD Himself. So it reads the heh at the end of yeshuah not as a mark of the feminine, but as a mark of honor that points to God, a final heh like the one that ends Yah, the short form of His name. That is this study’s own view, and it stands against every standard lexicon. For that reason it has to be tested against the text itself, letter by letter, and Chapter 10 begins that test.

The Salvation Simeon Held

If the LORD is salvation, then salvation is not an idea. It has a face. Luke tells of a man in Jerusalem who was “looking for the paraklesis παράκλησις par-ak'-lay-sis(consolation, encouragement) of Israel.”

Luke 2:25-30 And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the paraklesis(consolation, encouragement) of Israel, and hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the hagio(holy) pneuma(spirit) that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. And he came in the pneuma(spirit) into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Yeshua to carry out for Him the custom of the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law), he received Him into his arms and blessed God and said, "Now You release Your servant, Master, according to Your rhema ῥήμα hray'-mah(spoken-word), in eirene εἰρήνη i-ray'-nay(peace), for my eyes have seen Your Salvation,

Simeon “received Him into his arms and blessed God,” and with the Child in his arms he said, “for my eyes have seen Your Salvation.” He was not looking at an event, or at a plan, or at a doctrine. He was holding a baby.

Luke writes Simeon’s word in Greek as soterion σωτήριον, G4992 so-tay'-ree-on, a word meaning “salvation,” “that which saves.” It is the ordinary Greek word, not a spelling of the Hebrew name, and the YLV prints it here with a capital: “Your Salvation.” What the verse records is plain: Simeon spoke those words with the Child in his arms.

The same chapter of Luke tells what the angel had said to the shepherds on the night of His birth.

Luke 2:11 For today in the city of David there has been born to you a Savior, who is Messiah the Lord.

“For today in the city of David there has been born to you a Savior,” the angel said. He gave the shepherds a sign to look for, a baby lying in a manger, and that same Child was the one Simeon later held. The salvation of Isaiah’s song, the yeshuah that the LORD Himself has become, is here a person who can be seen and held.

The Wells of Salvation

Isaiah’s song ends with a picture: “And you shall draw water with joy from the wells of salvation (yeshuah).” The same word comes back once more. Salvation is something from which water is drawn with joy.

Set Isaiah’s two statements in verse 2 beside Simeon’s words in the temple. In Isaiah, the salvation is the LORD Himself. In Luke, the salvation Simeon’s eyes had seen was the Child in his arms.

One letter remains that we have noticed but not yet examined. The word yeshuah ends with a heh, and that same letter ends the shortest form of God’s own name. To see what that one letter does, we have to look at every kind of heh that stands at the end of a Hebrew word.