To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
To preach the acceptable [or 'accepted' to (G3588 ) dekton (G1184 )], year of the Lord. To have fixed on any portion relating to His sufferings (as Isaiah 53:1-12) would have been unsuitable at that early stage of His ministry. But He selects a passage announcing the sublime object of His whole mission, its divine character, and His special endowments for it; expressed in the first person, and so singularly adapted to the first opening of the mouth in His prophetic capacity, that it seems as if made expressly for the occasion when He first opened His mouth where He had been brought up. It is from the well-known section of Isaiah's prophecies whose burden is that mysterious "SERVANT OF THE LORD" х `ebed (H5650) Yahweh (H3068)], despised of man, abhorred of the nation, but before whom kings on seeing Him are to arise, and princes to worship; in visage more marred than any man, and his form than the sons of men, yet sprinkling many nations; labouring seemingly in vain, and spending. His strength for nought and in vain, yet Yahweh's Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and be His Salvation to the ends of the earth, (Isaiah 49:1-26, etc.) The quotation is chiefly from the Septuagint version, used, it would seem, in the synagogues.
Acceptable year - an allusion to the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25:10), a year of universal release for person and property. See also Isaiah 49:8; 2 Corinthians 6:2. As the maladies under which humanity groans are here set forth under the names poverty, broken-heartedness, bondage, blindness, bruisedness, (or crushedness), so Christ announces Himself, in the act of reading it, as the glorious HEALER of all them maladies; stopping the quotation just before it comes to "the day of vengeance," which was only to come on the rejecters of His message (John 3:17). The first words, "THE SPIRIT of THE LORD is upon ME," have been noticed since the days of the Church Fathers, as an illustrious example of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being exhibited as in distinct yet harmonious action in the scheme of salvation.