Isaiah 40:3 (BSB)

A voice of one calling: “Prepare the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.

From Isaiah 40. Also in the ESV.

Commentary on Isaiah 40:3

• John Calvin (Reformed), Calvin's Commentaries on Isaiah 40:3: 3. A voice crying in the wilderness. He follows out the subject which he had begun, and declares more explicitly that he will send to the people, though apparently ruined, ministers of consolation. At the same time he anticipates an objection which might have been brought forward. “You do indeed promise consolation, but where are the prophets?
• Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Isaiah 40:3-8: The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time, having come, the people of God must be prepared, by repentance and faith, for the favours designed them; and, in order to call them to both these, we have here the voice of one crying in the wilderness, which may be applied to those prophets who were with the captives in their wilderness-state, and who, when...
• John Gill (Reformed Baptist), Exposition of the Old and New Testaments on Isaiah 40:3: The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,.... Not the voice of the Holy Ghost, as Jarchi; but of John the Baptist, as is attested by all the evangelists, Mat 3:3 and by John himself, Joh 1:23, who was a "voice" not like the man's nightingale, "vox et praeterea nihil" a voice and nothing else; he had not only a sonorous, but an instructive...
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (Reformed), Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible on Isaiah 40:3: crieth in the wilderness--So the Septuagint and Mat 3:3 connect the words. The Hebrew accents, however, connect them thus: "In the wilderness prepare ye," &c., and the parallelism also requires this, "Prepare ye in the wilderness," answering to "make straight in the desert." Matthew was entitled, as under inspiration, to vary the connection, so as to bring out another sense, included in the Holy Spirit's...