NOTES for Isa 9:2

Speaking about the birth of the Messiah, Isaiah indicates the place where He will spend His childhood. But why the prophet speaks of Galilee “of nations"? There are two reasons for that.

In the time of Isaiah of Jerusalem, when the kingdom of the North had already stop its existence after the Assyrian conquest, there were almost no more Jews in the territory (including Galilee and the North of Samaria), they were partially deported to other regions of the vast Assyrian Empire, and partially ran away southward, to Judea.

The Assyrian authorities moved to these places others, heathen peoples mixed with the rest of the Jewish local population. But there is a different explanation, comprehensible rather in the latest context, the evangelic history, than in the context of Assyrian history. At the evangelic time, Jewish educational centers were Jerusalem and Babylon.

Particularly there, were the best theological academies, known by Jews all over the world. People having received education in Jerusalem and Babylon were rather often looked by the inhabitants of other cities from above; even if it was about their fellow compatriots and coreligionists, and Galilee in their eyes was a profoundly spiritual province, where by definition could be nothing interesting.

But Jesus however begins his ministry especially there, in Galilee, at the places, where He spent His childhood. And in the first that listen to His word are not the students and professors of the theological academies, but simple artisans, farmers and fishermen. And not because they were probably more educated than those who learnt and taught in academies, but because it was easier for them to leave everything and follow the One who brings Kingdom into the world.