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We do not know for sure what audience Isaiah had in mind with these stirring words of invitation, how close his first hearers stood either to the destruction of Jerusalem in around 586 BCE or to the return to the promised land from Babylonian captivity some 50 years later. But certainly, from the vantage of exile, they knew a great deal about hunger and thirst. No better way, then, to imagine God’s future redemption than for the prophet essentially to cry out on the Lord’s behalf, “Free food!”
