XLI. (1) O ISLANDS. — See Note on Isaiah 40:15. LET THE PEOPLE RENEW THEIR STRENGTH... — The same phrase as in Isaiah 40:31, but here, perhaps, with a touch of irony. The heathen are challenged to the great controversy, and will need all their “strength” and “strong reasons” if they accept the cha... [ Continue Reading ]
WHO RAISED UP... — More accurately, _Who hath raised up from the East the man whom Righteousness calls_ (or, _whom He calls in righteousness_)_ to tread in His steps._ (Comp. Isaiah 45:2.) The man so raised up to rule over the “islands” and the “peoples_”_ is none other than Koresh (Cyrus), the futu... [ Continue Reading ]
HE PURSUED... — Tenses in the present, as before. BY THE WAY THAT HE HAD NOT GONE — i.e., by a new untrodden path. So Tiglath-Pileser and other Assyrian kings continually boast that they had led their armies by paths that none had traversed before them. (_Records of the Past,_ i. 15, v. 16.)... [ Continue Reading ]
I THE LORD... — The words are the utterance of the great thought of eternity which is the essence of the creed of Israel (comp. Exodus 3:14; Psalms 90:2; Psalms 102:26), and appear in the Alpha and Omega of Revelation 1:11; Revelation 4:8. The identical formula, “I am He” meets us in Isaiah 43:10; I... [ Continue Reading ]
THE ISLES SAW IT, AND FEARED... — The words paint the terror caused by the rapid conquests of Cyrus, but the terror led, as the following verses show, to something very different from the acknowledgment of the Eternal. As the sailors in the ship of Tarshish called each man on his God (Jonah 1:5), so... [ Continue Reading ]
BE OF GOOD COURAGE. — Literally, _Be strong: i.e.,_ work vigorously.... [ Continue Reading ]
SO THE CARPENTER. — The process is described even more vividly than in Isaiah 40:19. For “the carpenter,” read _the caster,_ the idol being a metal one. The image of lead or copper is then covered with gold plates, which are laid on the anvil, and are smoothed with the hammer; the soldering is appro... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT THOU, ISRAEL, ART MY SERVANT... — The verse is important as the first introduction of the servant of the Lord who is so conspicuous throughout the rest of the book. The idea embodied in the term is that of a calling and election, manifested now in Israel according to the flesh, now in the true I... [ Continue Reading ]
FROM THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. — Ur of the Chaldees, as belonging to the Euphrates region, is on the extreme verge of the prophet’s horizon. FROM THE CHIEF MEN THEREOF. — Better, _from the far-off regions thereof._ I HAVE CHOSEN... — Isaiah becomes the preacher of the Divine election, and finds in it... [ Continue Reading ]
FEAR THOU NOT... — The thought of the election of God gives a sense of security to His chosen. I WILL STRENGTHEN THEE. — The verb unites with this meaning (as in Isaiah 35:3; Psalms 89:21) the idea of attaching to one’s self, or choosing, as in Isaiah 44:14.... [ Continue Reading ]
BEHOLD... — The choice of the Servant has, as its complement, the indignation of Jehovah against those who attack him, and this thought is emphasised by a four-fold iteration. “They that strive with thee, &c,” represents the Hebrew idiom, _the men of thy conflict,_ which stands emphatically at the e... [ Continue Reading ]
FEAR NOT, THOU WORM JACOB. — The servant of Jehovah is reminded that he has no strength of his own, but is “as a worm, and no man” (Psalms 22:6). He had not been chosen because he was a great and mighty nation, for Israel was _“_the fewest of all people” (Deuteronomy 7:7). As if to emphasise this, t... [ Continue Reading ]
A NEW SHARP THRESHING INSTRUMENT. — The instrument described is a kind of revolving sledge armed with two-edged blades, still used in Syria, and, as elsewhere (Micah 4:13), is the symbol of a crushing victory. The next verse continues the image, as in Jeremiah 15:7; Jeremiah 51:2.... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEN THE POOR AND NEEDY... — The promise may perhaps take as its starting-point the succour given to the return of the exiles, but it rises rapidly into the region of a higher poetry, in which earthly things are the parables of heavenly, and does not call for a literal fulfilment any more than “wine... [ Continue Reading ]
I WILL OPEN RIVERS. — The words have all the emphasis of varied iteration. Every shape of the physical contour of the country, bare hills, arid steppes, and the like, is to be transformed into a new beauty by water in the form adapted to each: streamlets, rivers, lakes, and springs. (Comp. Isaiah 35... [ Continue Reading ]
I WILL PLANT IN THE WILDERNESS. — A picture as of the Paradise of God (Isaiah 51:3), with its groves of stately trees, completes the vision of the future. The two groups of four and three, making up the symbolic seven, may probably have a mystic meaning. The “shittah” is the _acacia,_ the “oil tree”... [ Continue Reading ]
THAT THEY MAY SEE. — The outward blessings, yet more the realities of which they are the symbols, are given to lead men to acknowledge Him who alone would be the giver.... [ Continue Reading ]
PRODUCE YOUR CAUSE. — The scene of Isaiah 41:1 is reproduced. The worshippers of idols, as the prophet sees them in his vision hurrying hither and thither to consult their oracles, are challenged, on the ground not only of the great things God hath done, but of His knowledge of those things. The his... [ Continue Reading ]
THE FORMER THINGS. — Not, as the Authorised Version suggests, the things of the remote past, but those that lie at the head, or beginning of things to come — the near future. Can the false gods predict them as the pledge and earnest of predictions that go farther? Can they see a single year before t... [ Continue Reading ]
DO GOOD, OR DO EVIL. — The challenge reminds us of Elijah’s on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:27). Can the heathen point to any good or evil fortune which, as having been predicted by this or that deity, might reasonably be thought of as his work? It lies in the nature of the case that every heathen looke... [ Continue Reading ]
BEHOLD, YE ARE OF NOTHING. — This is _the_ summing up of the prophet, speaking as in the Judge’s name. The idol was “nothing in the world” (1 Corinthians 8:4). The demonic view of the gods of the heathen does not appear, as in St. Paul’s argument (1 Corinthians 10:20), side by side with that of thei... [ Continue Reading ]
I HAVE RAISED UP ONE FROM THE NORTH. — The north points to Media, the east to Persia, both of them under the rule of the great Deliverer. SHALL HE CALL UPON MY name. — The word admits equally of the idea of “invoking” or “proclaiming.” It may almost be said, indeed, that the one implies the other.... [ Continue Reading ]
WHO HATH DECLARED... — The words paint once more the startling suddenness of the conquests of the Persian king. He was to come as a comet or a meteor. None of all the oracles in Assyria or Babylon, or in the far coasts to which the Phœnicians sent their ships of Tarshish, had anticipated this.... [ Continue Reading ]
THE FIRST SHALL SAY TO ZION. — The italics show the difficulty and abruptness of the originals. A preferable rendering is, (1) _I was the first that said to Zion, &c. No_ oracle or soothsayer anticipated that message of deliverance (Ewald, Del.); or (2) _a forerunner shall say_ ... The words “Behold... [ Continue Reading ]
FOR I BEHELD, AND THERE WAS NO MAN — _i.e.,_ no one who had foretold the future. Jehovah, speaking through the prophet, looks round in vain for that.... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY ARE ALL... THEIR WORKS... — The first pronoun refers to the idols themselves, the second to the idolaters who make them. In “confusion” we have the familiar _tohu._... [ Continue Reading ]