Isaiah 40:1

Verses 1-11 are introductory to the remainder of Isaiah. Pieper groups chapters 40-42 under the heading, "First Triad: The Glory of God's Power is the Guarantee of Israel's Deliverance." In these introductory verses, we see the immanent approach of the Lord to deliver his suffering people. He will display the work of his Suffering Servant later, in chapters 52-53.

נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי יֹאמַר אֱלֹהֵיכֶם׃

1 "Comfort, comfort my people," says your God.

The opening verbs נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ nachmu, nachmu are piel imperative plurals. Nacham means to feel deeply, in the nifal stem it means to "repent." The piel forms we have hear are causative, cause them to be comforted, which God will expand upon and elaborate more fully in the verses and even the chapters which follow. These imperative commands are addressed to no one in particular. How do we bring this about? By telling people about what God has done.

The Mp notes in the margin tells us that the piel imperative נַחֲמוּ occurs twice; it isn't very hard to find the second occurrence.

עַמִּי my people does not necessarily have to mean the physical nation of Israel, but in this case it probably is. This is not a vocative form (a mistake sometimes made by those looking only at the English) but the object of the verb nachmu, "comfort!" Whom shall we comfort? My people, that's who. The usual direct object marker את doesn't occur all that often in poetry, compared to its use in prose. In this chapter, it occurs only in verse 13 (the את in verse 14 is a preposition). 

יֹאמַר אֱלֹהֵיכֶם׃ says your God, the verb here is the qal imperfect (3 m sg), but in poetry it's not always wise to push the differences between the perfect and the imperfect. Leupold suggests that it "is perhaps best taken as the imperfect of continuing action" and references Gk 107f. The Mp note tells us that this phrase occurs only once; it is a hapax legomenon.

Isaiah begins this part of his book on a very positive note; he just takes off right away and jumps right to relief without mentioning how we get it. This will come. It will all come. Just let the Holy Spirit unroll this magnificent scroll and the word of the Lord will work wonders in our hearts.

The Lord's command right away is: Give my people comfort; give them the gospel.