**Isaiah 55.11** does not mean that* the word of God…

**Isaiah 55.11** does not mean that* the word of God *was really personified; for example [**Ps 107.20; 147.15** are] no more than a literary and poetical personification.

Evidence for a real personification of *the word of God* in later Jewish thought has sometimes been found in the way in which the phrase *the memra *(= word) *of the Lord* is used in the Targums….But this is a mistake: *memra *is not used as a translation of *dabar*; *the memra of the Lord* is simply a reverential periphrasis for *the Lord*, a translation device confined to the Targums.

In essential meaning [the NT *the logos of God*] is the exact equivalent of the OT *the word of the Lord*; but its application is now, naturally, wider, and it often denotes, specifically, the Christian message, the gospel [**Luke 5.1; Acts 13.44**].

(Richardson, *A Theological Wordbook of the Bible*.)