Isaiah 43:10

The gods are unable to meet the challenge, and Jehovah turns to His servant Israel, whose very presence is evidence of His power both to predict and to deliver. The words and my servantare not a complement of the subject ("ye are my witnesses, and [so is] my Servant") but of the predicate ( ye are my witnesses and [ye are] my Servant). The former view would imply some sort of distinction between the Servant and Israel, whether of an individual over against the nation, or of a part of the nation over against the whole. But whatever view may be held of the personality of the Servant, the natural construction of the sentence places it alongside of those numerous passages where the title is applied to Israel. To bear witness to Jehovah's divinity is one of the functions of Israel as the Servant of the Lord.

that ye may know In the very act of bearing witness, it would seem that the mind of Israel is to be awakened to the grand truth of which its own history is the evidence, the sole divinity of Jehovah, and its own unique position as His servant.

I am he See ch. Isaiah 41:4.

before me there was no god formed Strictly, of course, the idea is, "before any god was formed I existed." The form of expression might be derived from the Babylonian cosmology, according to which the gods were the first beings to emerge from the primeval chaos. The following words occur in the Chaldæan account of creation: "When of the gods none had yet arisen, when none named a name or [determined] fate; then were the[great gods formed" (Schrader, Cuneiform Inscriptionson Genesis 1:1). It is probably to this origin of the gods themselves that reference is made, rather than to the formation of their images (ch. Isaiah 44:9).