Perek Yomi - Isaiah 40-53

• These chapters are said to be written by Second Isaiah, aka Deutero-Isaiah
• He is referred to as the Suffering Servant by some.
• He wrote during the time of the Babylonian Exile. Unless you believe, as some traditionalists do, that there is only one Isaiah and that these chapters show him looking forward 200 years.
• Lots of references to God as the Creator of the entire world and to creation, hence people are minuscule compared with God's greatness

• Lots of references to flattening the earth---leveling mountains and raising valleys---to make travel back to Jerusalem easy
• Cyrus, a non-Jew, is the Annointed One (Messiah?) of the Jews because he will allow them to return.
• Jews will be a light to the nations; i.e., they will bring morality to them.

Thus Saith the Lord: The Revolutionary Moral Vision of Isaiah and Jeremiah by Richard E. Rubenstein (Uncorrected Proof), Harcourt, Inc. New York, c2006

Behold My Messengers: The Lives and Teachings of the Prophets by Althea O. Silverman, Bloch Publishing Company, New York, c1956

Verse 3 hearkens back to the Israelites wandering in the wilderness after they left Egypt: Bamidbar, in the wilderness / desert, is the name of the fourth book of the Torah. (I prefer wilderness instead of desert.) And this connection makes me think of the three axes of Jewish tradition: Creation, Revelation, Redemption. (see Rabbi Wolpe's "Creation, Revelation, Redemption:
Judaism's past, present and future" in
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/creationrevelationredemption/).
Isaiah keeps referring to God as the Creator of the world who has revealed to us a moral code that we must share with the other nations of the world and that we will soon be redeemed by a Messiah. Interestingly, Isaiah says that this is Cyrus, who is not from the House of David and is, in fact, not even Jewish.

Verse 22 mentions grasshoppers - see Numbers 13:33. I haven't found anyone else making this connection. In Numbers (Bemibar), the spies see themselves as insignificant; in Isaiah, people are truly insignificant compared to God.