Isa 42:6 – an important assurance and promise confirmed in the New Testament

I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles… Isa 42:6-7 (KJV); cf. Isa 49:6

This is an important assurance and promise as seen by its use in the NT. The terms of its first fulfillment centre on Hezekiah. The ‘light for the Gentiles’ is the ‘judgment to the Gentiles’ of Isa 42:1. The NT typological application is the dissemination of the Gospel around the Mediterranean and this can mislead the exegete if s/he anachronistically thinks of, say, the nations of the Middle East. Rather, as a consequence of Assyrian deportation policies, the nations had already come to the territory of Northern Israel. Galilee was known as ‘Galilee of the Nations’ (Isa 9:1). Therefore the nations to which the Servant would be a light are those very near to Jerusalem—the peoples (including Babylonians) that had been deported to Northern Israel.