Isaiah Chapter 42 verse 3 Holy Bible
A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth.
read chapter 42 in ASV
He will not let a crushed stem be quite broken, and he will not let a feebly burning light be put out: he will go on sending out the true word to the peoples.
read chapter 42 in BBE
A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment according to truth.
read chapter 42 in DARBY
A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
read chapter 42 in KJV
read chapter 42 in WBT
A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth.
read chapter 42 in WEB
A bruised reed he breaketh not, And dim flax he quencheth not, To truth he bringeth forth judgment.
read chapter 42 in YLT
Isaiah 42 : 3 Bible Verse Songs
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - A bruised reed shall he not break. Egypt was compared to a "bruised reed" by Sennacherib (Isaiah 36:6), as being untrustworthy and destitute of physical strength; but here the image represents the weak and depressed in spirit, the lowly and dejected. Christ would deal tenderly with such, not violently. Smoking flax shall he not quench; rather, the wick which burns dimly (margin) he shall not quench. Where the flame of devotion burns at all, however feebly and dimly, Messiah will take care not to quench it. Rather he will tend it, and trim it, and give it fresh oil, and cause it to burn more brightly. He shall bring forth judgment unto truth. But with all this tenderness, this "economy," this allowance for the shortcomings and weaknesses of individuals, he will be uncompromising in his assertion of absolute justice and absolute truth. He will sanction nothing short of the very highest standard of moral purity and excellence. (For an instance of the combination of extreme tenderness with unswerving maintenance of an absolute standard, see John 8:8-11.)
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) A bruised reed shall he not break . . .--Physical, moral, spiritual weakness are all brought under the same similitude. In another context the image has met us in Isaiah 36:6. The simple negative "he shall not break" implies, as in the rhetoric of all times, the opposite extreme, the tender care that props and supports. The humanity of the servant of the Lord was to embody what had been already predicated of the Divine will (Psalm 51:17). The dimly burning flax, the wick of a lamp nearly out, He will foster and cherish and feed the spiritual life, all but extinguished, with oil till it burns brightly again. In Matthew 25:1-13 we have to deal with lamps that are going out, and these not even He could light again unless the bearers of the lamps "bought oil" for themselves.Judgment unto truth--i.e., according to the perfect standard of truth, with something of the sense of St. John's "true" in the sense of representing the ideal (John 1:9; John 15:1). . . .
