“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God” (Isaiah 40:1). After thirty-nine chapters of lawsuit, judgment, woe, and exile, the Great King’s first word in Isaiah 40 is comfort.

Spoken twice.

The Hebrew word is nacham, to comfort, to console, to breathe again after grief.

The doubling is deliberate: the Great King is not murmuring reassurance. He is speaking with full covenant authority into the space that judgment created. The time of hard service is ended. The iniquity is pardoned.

Nephi repeatedly quotes from and returns to Isaiah 40 through 55 more than any other portion of Isaiah.

Why? Because the Nephites understood this chapter personally: a scattered covenant community received the Great King’s direct comfort and the promise of return.