Isaiah 61:1-3 vs. “Great Are You Lord”

All Sons & Daughters · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassageIsaiah 61:1-3 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumLive · 2013

Words addressed toGod, person unspecified

Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting at all: no verse reference, no translation named, nothing framed as scripture
Everything it says about God is supported plainly elsewhere in scripture, and nothing in it is said of God that a text does not carry
It is addressed to God throughout, in the second person, with the singer present as the one who received breath rather than as the subject
It puts the source before the response: the breath is God's first, and praise is what is done with it
It carries the comfort half of Isaiah 61 without the vengeance clause, which is the same portion Jesus read aloud in Luke 4

⚠ Cautions

The works are real and the sending is missing. Isaiah 61's point is that someone was anointed and sent to do them
No reference is given, so a listener who hears the echo has no way to check where it lands
Isaiah 61:3 gives praise as a garment handed to mourners. The song makes praise a response to breath. Both are true, but they are not the same idea, and one does not license reading the other into it

Verse Proof

Isaiah 61:1-3

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of our God’s vengeance, to comfort all who mourn, to console the mourners in Zion— to give them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of despair. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.”

The passage is a first-person announcement. Someone says the Spirit of the Lord GOD is on him, that the LORD anointed him, and that he was sent to do a specific list of things: preach to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, free prisoners, comfort mourners, exchange ashes for beauty. The passage does not name the speaker. The chapters around it, Isaiah 60 to 62, address Zion after ruin and promise rebuilding. In Luke 4 Jesus reads the opening of this passage aloud in the synagogue at Nazareth, sits down, and says the scripture is fulfilled in their hearing, which is where the Christian identification of the speaker comes from.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song opens by telling God what God does. It says God gives life, is love, brings light into darkness, gives hope, and puts broken hearts back together, then answers with a statement that God is great. The line the song returns to most says that the breath being used to sing was God's first, so praise is that breath given back. A closing section widens the picture to the whole earth shouting, hearts crying out, and dry bones singing. No verse is cited anywhere in the song, and no translation is named.

The overlap with Isaiah 61 is a list of works. The passage says the anointed one was sent to bind up the brokenhearted and to comfort mourners. The song's opening verse credits God with mending broken hearts. That is the same work described, and the publisher's own song page lists Isaiah 61:1 among the song's scripture references. What changed is the grammar, and with it the frame. Isaiah 61 is spoken in the first person by someone reporting his commission: the Spirit is on me, the LORD anointed me, He sent me. The song is spoken in the second person to God about God: You give, You bring, You restore. Nothing in that is false. But a commission becomes an attribute, and the sending drops out of view. In Isaiah the works are evidence that a particular person was sent. In the song they are a description of what God is like.

· Not a quote: The song cites no verse and names no translation. So the word-for-word standard does not apply. The material it shares with Isaiah 61 is the list of works rather than the passage's first-person account of who was sent to do them.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Isaiah 61 is not a list of things God does. It is a report of someone being sent to do them.

Why it matters

Isaiah 61 is not primarily a list of good things God does. It is a person's account of being anointed and sent, which is why Jesus read it at Nazareth and said it was fulfilled that day. A song can carry every work in that list and still leave out the one thing the passage was announcing.

That is not a fault in the song, which never says it is quoting the passage. It matters because Isaiah 61 gets quoted at people in hard seasons as general comfort, and the comfort in it arrives attached to a sender. If a singer only ever meets these works as attributes, the passage will read thinner when they finally open it.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

The line this song plants by repetition is a statement about ownership. It says the breath in the singer's lungs was given, and that praise is that breath handed back. Sung a hundred times, what settles in is a reflex: the capacity to worship is not the worshipper's own contribution. That runs the right direction. It makes the singer a receiver first and a responder second, and it puts God at the start of the sentence rather than at the end.

The dwelling tag here is God rather than mixed, and it is worth saying why, because it is countable. Nearly every line is a second-person statement about God: what God gives, what God is, what God does to darkness and to broken hearts. The singer appears mostly in the possessives, the lungs and the hearts, and appears there as the place the breath went. The one thing repetition will not plant is Isaiah 61 itself. If this song has been in your mouth for a decade, read the chapter once. The works you have been singing about are in it, and so is a sentence about who was sent to do them, and Jesus told a room full of people that the sentence had come true.

Helpful comparison

The Luke 4 comparison is worth making because it cuts in the song's favour. Isaiah 61:2 names both the year of the LORD's favour and the day of God's vengeance in one breath. When Jesus read the passage in the synagogue He stopped at the year of favour, rolled up the scroll, and sat down. The song carries only that same first half. A song that lists God's restoring works and says nothing about the day of vengeance is following the shape of the reading Jesus gave, whether or not that was the writers' aim. It is worth knowing the second half is there, in the same sentence, waiting.

Sources

All Sons & Daughters — Great Are You Lord (Lyric Video) · (the recording checked for this proof; AllSonsDaughtersVEVO, © 2013 Integrity Music)
Wikipedia — Live (All Sons & Daughters album) · (the song is track 4; album released April 23, 2013 on Integrity Music, recorded at Ocean Way Studios, Nashville)
Integrity Worship — Great Are You Lord · (the publisher's own song page: writers Leslie Jordan, David Leonard and Jason Ingram, and a scripture reference list that includes Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18)
NewReleaseToday — Behind The Song: Great Are You Lord · (the song grew from a line Jason Ingram had written about breath and praise; the writers connected it to Ezekiel 37 after hearing Louie Giglio at Passion 2013)
Logos — Is “Great Are You, Lord” a New Classic? · (song structure, the dry-bones line in the bridge, and its CCLI chart standing)

Corrections

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