When Every Prophet Failed to Comfort Jerusalem

"Comfort, oh comfort My people" (Isaiah 40:1). It is one of the most beloved verses in all of Scripture — the opening of the great consolation, the turn from darkness to hope, the moment when the book of Isaiah shifts from warning to promise. But a text from the Midrash Aggadah collection (4,331 texts), drawn from Yalkut Shimoni on Nach (a major anthology of midrashim compiled c. 13th century CE), refuses to let the verse sound easy. Before God could comfort Jerusalem, every prophet in Israel tried. And every single one of them was sent away.

This is the story of a grief so deep that ordinary comfort could not reach it — and of a God who eventually had to admit that the only one who could offer real consolation was the one who had caused the wound.

Why Jerusalem Refused the Prophets

The midrash opens with a legal and emotional puzzle. Who needs comforting? It is always the one who suffered the loss. A man whose wife died. A father whose children were taken captive. An owner whose house burned down. A farmer whose vineyard was destroyed. A shepherd whose flock was ravaged. In every analogy, the answer is the same: go to the one who lost, and offer comfort there.

But something is unusual in Jerusalem's case. She has been stripped of her children ("My children have gone forth from me and are no more," Jeremiah 10:20). Her house has been burned ("He burned the House of the LORD," Kings II 25:9). Her vineyard has been cut down ("For the vineyard of the LORD of Hosts is the House of Israel," Isaiah 5:7). Her flock has been scattered ("My people were lost sheep," Jeremiah 50:6). The losses are total. So God sends the prophets to comfort her — Hosea, Joel, Amos, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, one after another. And one after another, Jerusalem drives them away.

The reason she gives is devastating in its precision. Each prophet arrives with a promise of future restoration. And each time, Jerusalem responds: "Yesterday you told me something different. Yesterday you said I was withered, cursed, fallen, devoured. Now you say mountains will drip with wine and nations will call me happy. Which should I believe — the first or the second?" The prophets who warned her are now the prophets trying to console her. She cannot trust the same mouth that issued the condemnations to now issue the comforts. Their credibility is destroyed by their own prior words.

What the Patriarchs Could Not Give

When the prophets fail, God turns to the patriarchs. Abraham is sent. He was the one who first called Jerusalem "the mount of God" (Genesis 22:14) — but Jerusalem turns him away because it was his faith that made her sacred, and her sanctity did not protect her from destruction. Isaac is sent — but from Isaac came Esau, and Esau's descendants helped burn her. Jacob is sent — the one who called her the abode of God (Genesis 28:17) — but she says he made her sound glorious, and she was not glorious now. She was rubble.

Even Moses is turned away. He wrote the curses — the terrifying section of Deuteronomy that describes exactly the catastrophes that befell her. "You wrote curses and harsh decrees about me," she says to him. How can the author of the prophecy of disaster now offer comfort? The Yalkut Shimoni's telling of this scene is unsparing: there is no human figure — not prophet, not patriarch, not lawgiver — who can reach Jerusalem in her grief, because every one of them was implicated in either pronouncing or failing to prevent what happened to her.

The God Who Admits Fault

What happens next is one of the most extraordinary passages in all of midrashic literature. God sends everyone away and says: I must go Myself. But then He does something almost impossible to expect from the divine. He enumerates His own transgressions against Jerusalem.

"I wrote in My Torah: 'you must not work your firstling ox' — and Israel I called My firstborn son, and I put them under the yoke of Babylon. I wrote: 'You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart' — and I hated her. I wrote: 'you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field' — and I vented all My fury upon her. I wrote: 'he who started the fire must make restitution' — and I ignited her on fire." God quotes His own Torah, four laws He commanded Israel to keep, and admits that He violated each of them against Jerusalem. He broke the terms He had set. He owes her something.

This is not theology that reconciles easily with standard categories. God as the party liable for damages. God as the one who owes restitution. And yet this is precisely where the midrash goes — because only a God who acknowledges the depth of what happened to Jerusalem can possibly have the standing to comfort her. The prophets could not reach her because they were not responsible. God can reach her because He is.

Jerusalem's Final Demand

Even then, when God Himself comes to offer comfort, Jerusalem does not capitulate immediately. She argues back. She reminds God that she was scattered among the nations, that she was beaten until her face looked like the rim of a caldron, and that despite all of it she continued to sanctify His name. She has a case to make. God hears it — and responds not by dismissing her grievances but by holding her accountable as well. The relationship between God and Jerusalem, in this midrash, is a conversation between two parties who have wronged each other and must now find their way back.

Jerusalem's final demand is the most striking. She says: I will not be comforted until You show me the wicked who caused me to suffer and disgraced Your name — and You exact revenge from them in front of me. God agrees. "I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh" (Isaiah 49:26). Only then does Jerusalem ask, in the language of Song of Songs: who shall give You to me like a brother? And the midrash answers with Joseph — not Cain, not Ishmael, not Esau, not the brothers who sold Joseph — but Joseph himself, who after everything his brothers did to him, spoke to them "kindly" (Genesis 50:21). If Joseph could find comfort for his brothers after what they did, the midrash reasons, how much more can God find comfort for Jerusalem.

The Glory That All Flesh Will See

The Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael approaches the same chapter of Isaiah from a different angle entirely, grounding Isaiah 40 in the universal vision of (Isaiah 40:5): "The glory of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh will behold as one, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." The rabbis trace this to Moses' great declaration in (Deuteronomy 32:39): "See, now, that I — I am He, and there is no god beside Me." The future moment when all flesh beholds God's glory is the fulfillment of the oneness that Moses already proclaimed at the end of his life.

Read alongside the midrash of the comforting prophets, this creates a complete arc. Isaiah 40 begins with God going personally to comfort a grieving Jerusalem, and it ends — according to the Mekhilta — with a vision in which that consolation spreads outward until it encompasses every living creature. The comfort God owes Jerusalem becomes, in the end, the revelation that every nation receives. The day Jerusalem is restored is the day the whole world sees what Moses saw: there is only One.

The midrash closes with a line that functions as the whole teaching's summary: "Everything that Jeremiah smote, Isaiah came and healed. Jeremiah said: 'There is none to comfort her' (Lamentations 1:2). Isaiah came and healed: 'Comfort, oh comfort My people' (Isaiah 40:1)." The two prophets are a pair. The wound and the remedy. The accusation and the acquittal. And between them: the longest, most difficult, most honest conversation between God and His people in all of Scripture.