The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, so that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant—My loving devotion promised to David. Behold, I have made him a witness to the nations, a leader and commander of the peoples. Surely you will summon a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you will run to you. For the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, has bestowed glory on you."
Earlier text
Psalm 89:50BSB
Remember, O Lord, the reproach of Your servants, which I bear in my heart from so many people—
This is a weak pairing at the verse level, and the labels are set to reflect it. Psalm 89:50 turns on חֶרְפָּה (cherpah, "reproach"), עֶבֶד (ebed, "servants"), and נשׂא (nasa, "bear"), and none of Isaiah 55:3-5's key terms appears in it — no חֶסֶד, no דָּוִד, no בְּרִית, no אמן, no עֵד. The connection is contextual: verse 50 belongs to the lament of Psalm 89:38-51 that Isaiah 55:3-5 answers, and the verbal answer lands on verse 49. See Isaiah 55:3-5 to Psalm 89:49 for that evidence.
The one thing this pairing sees that the others do not is the reversal of standing before the nations. Psalm 89:50-51 is about being laughed at: the reproach comes "from so many people," and "Your enemies have taunted, O LORD, and have mocked every step of Your anointed one." A dynasty in ruins is a public embarrassment, and the psalmist feels it as something he carries in his chest. Isaiah 55:5 addresses that exact wound: "Surely you will summon a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you will run to you. For the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, has bestowed glory on you." The peoples who mocked in the psalm are the peoples who run in the prophecy.
The route between the two is not a change in Israel's fortunes but a Messiah who takes the mockery all the way down. The taunting of the anointed one that Psalm 89:51 laments is what the Gospels record at the cross (Matthew 27:39-44), and the glory of Isaiah 55:5 follows it rather than replacing it: "Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place" (Philippians 2:9). Hebrews turns the psalmist's burden into an invitation rather than a complaint — "let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore" (Hebrews 13:13).
What the psalm carried as an unanswered ache, Isaiah names as the setting for glory, and the reason it can be borne gladly is that the running of the nations is already secured by the One who was mocked.