Bible Commentaries
Isaiah 43

Verses 1-7

The Servant of the Lord (42:1—43:7)

The paragraphs in chapter 42 and 43:1-7 all have to do with Israel as God’s servant, with the exception of two (42: 10-17). The whole section may be viewed as a unified composition, though we cannot be completely certain whether it was put together in its final form by Second Isaiah himself or by his disciples who preserved and transmitted the prophet’s words. In the first section (42:1-4) God through his prophet introduces or presents his servant and describes his mission to the world. Next (vss. 5-9) God addresses his servant and explains what the servant’s mission is to be. The section ends in verse 9 with the triumphant assertion that the old order is at an end; the new is at hand, but before it comes to pass God will tell his servant about the coming events. At this point a hymn of praise is introduced (vss. 10-13). Since it does not seem to have been quoted from another source but appears to be the composition of Second Isaiah himself, there is every reason to believe that the hymn was placed purposely at the point where the announcement of the “new things” is made. In verses 14-17 it is as though the thought in verse 9 were continued. God describes his purposes of redemption in the current history. In 42:18-25 the past actions of God in relation to his servant are expounded and defended. The servant has been the blind one, and God was led to punish him, though he did not take the punishment to heart. Finally (43:1-7), God’s redemption of Israel is described as the new Exodus, a new passing through the waters. The exiled of Israel will come from the north and the south and from the ends of the earth.

God Introduces His Servant ( 42 : 1 - 4 )

This is the first of what many interpreters have called the “servant poems.” The servant is spoken of in the third person and his mission is described. When one sees the number of times that the term “servant” is used throughout these chapters, however, it becomes a very subjective judgment which holds these verses to be separate from their context and perhaps by a different author. If they are treated in the context of the assembly of the nations (ch. 41), and if the concentration is on Israel as God’s servant to whom the secrets of history are revealed (42:9) and who are to be his “witnesses” in the assembly of the nations (43:10), then we may interpret the poems as God’s formal presentation of his servant to the peoples of the world.

God’s special relation to the servant is described in verse 1. The servant is the chosen one on whom God’s favor rests. Filled with God’s Spirit, his task will be to bring forth God’s saving justice to all mankind. The “Spirit” of the Lord in the Bible is that agency which God sends to work within individuals to the end that they may be empowered to do the work he would have them do. The term “spirit,” meaning “breath” or “wind,” thus is a metaphorical term, representing God as “breathing into” people, “inspiring” them to do his work. It is a very successful way of speaking about God’s active though always mysterious work among people.

In carrying out his mission as the mediator of the righteousness of God to the nations, the servant is to be an agent of peace and of nonviolence. He will not make any noise; he will not even break a reed already bent. Nevertheless he will faithfully bring forth justice. The time may be long, but the servant will continue his mission until the new order is accomplished. The term “justice,” used in synonymous parallelism with “law” in verse 4, is in Second Isaiah identical with the righteousness of God; that is, God’s reaching down in human affairs in order to save those who are lost. The servant, in ways which are not specified, is to be the mediator of this justice or this saving action to the world of men. As befits its nature, the work will be done quietly, patiently, and without violence.

God Commissions His Servant ( 42 : 5 - 9 )

The prophet now hears God address the servant directly. Yet the introductory statement about God in verse 5 speaks of him as the Creator. All that is has its source in him. It is he who has called Israel and given her a mission to the nations. The themes of creation and redemption are held together as one and the same. God the Creator is the sovereign Lord of all; his purpose is to save the world. For that purpose Israel is chosen.

Verses 6 and 7 give a remarkable statement of God’s work in Israel and the purpose of it. God first introduces himself: “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness.” The mission of Israel as a servant is to be “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon . . The phrase “covenant to the people” has been much commented upon, and its meaning is not entirely clear. In the context, however, it clearly refers to a saving activity of God, of which Israel is the agent. The term “covenant” is parallel to “a light to the nations.” Since “covenant” refers to a way God has of relating himself to people, we presumably are to interpret the prophet’s meaning somewhat as follows: Israel is to be God’s mediator to the world, God’s agent who proclaims to the world the identity of the God who would draw all men into relationship with himself. This is the nations’ light and hope. This is their deliverance from the prison in which they now sit.

The final two verses of this section (vss. 8-9) refer again to God’s determination to be God and God alone, with no rivals among the idols of mankind. This is the God who is now about to bring forth new things which he will reveal to his servant before they come to pass.

A New Song: Hymnic Interlude ( 42 : 10 - 13 )

With God’s announcement of the “new things” the prophet now pauses to introduce a hymn of praise. The whole world and all that is in it is called upon to give praise and glory to the Lord. Verse 13 is written in the style of Israel’s early war poetry (for example, Exodus 15:3; Deuteronomy 32:39-43; Judges 5:4-5). God’s dramatic action in the present scene is compared to that of a great warrior, a fighter of battles who acts “zealously” (the meaning of the term translated “fury”), who shouts aloud the battle cry. This use of warlike language to describe God’s activity in the world is a dramatic portrayal of his effective power and his determination to carry out his plans without defeat.

God Explains His Purposes ( 42 : 14 - 17 )

Verse 14 contains a metaphor unusual as applied to God. For a long time he has held his peace, until now he cannot restrain himself. Like a woman in childbirth he cries out, for his plans and his purposes can be held back no longer. The worldwide turmoil is the action of God. The world of nature will be transformed. The blind will be led by a path they do not know. This is what God has determined to do. Those who turn to their idols and say, “You are our gods,” when they are completely powerless to do anything, will be utterly put to shame (vs. 17).

God’s Past Treatment of the Servant Expounded ( 42 : 18 - 25 )

The mention of the “blind” (vs. 16) now leads to a discussion of the past history of God’s servant or messenger, who has indeed been blind and deaf. God having spoken his indictment through his prophet (vss. 18-20), the prophet now continues the exposition in his own words, referring to God in the third person. For his purposes of salvation God chose to make his “law” (the teaching or doctrine about him) great and glorious, but Israel could not see or understand what God meant. So they have become a people “robbed and plundered,” the prey of the nations. Who did all this to Israel? “Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned, in whose ways they would not walk, and whose law they would not obey?” (vs. 24). God punished his servant, but the servant was so blind and deaf that he still did not understand what was going on.

This section is cast in the style of the older prophecy. It asserts the truth of what the former prophets had said: namely, that Israel had been destroyed for her sin of rebellion. What the prophet here laments is that Israel appears to have learned so little from her history. Nevertheless, as the next section goes on to explain, God has indeed chosen her. (In 43:22-28 the theme of the past history is again introduced, but here, though Israel has indeed sinned and sinned repeatedly, God declares his forgiveness and his blotting out of her past evil.)

God’s Redemption of Israel ( 43 : 1 - 7 )

The prophet now turns from the past to the future, and proclaims in more detail the theme he began in 41:8-10. The great scenes of old are reiterated and used to expound the coming redemption of Israel: that is, God will bring the exiles forth from among the nations so that the people of Israel will be reconstituted. In verse 1 note the verbs, “created,” “formed,” “redeemed,” and “called.” All are used in clauses that are put together in parallelism with one another and build up to the thought at the end of the verse, “You belong to me!” Though Israel has been broken and scattered, God’s work of old still holds true. Israel is his people. The word here for “create” is the same as that used in Genesis 1:1. It is generally used in the context of a special creative activity of God; here it is applied to the formation of a special people. The word “redeemed” has a special background in Hebrew. It is a term that arises out of the legal background of family law. At the death of a member of the family it is the responsibility of the next of kin to “redeem” the deceased’s property so that it does not pass from the control of the clan, and it is also his duty to “redeem” the deceased’s widow by marrying her, taking care of her, and seeing to it that a family is raised up for the man who has died. This term is now applied to God’s action in forming the nation: saving them from Egyptian slavery and giving them the Promised Land. They have a special family relation to him. He is active in relation to them as a next of kin, and he has given them a name. They who were no-people are indeed a people, and they are God’s.

The prophet continues with allusions to the past, which he generalizes and uses to interpret all of God’s actions in the past and in the future (vss. 2-4). God will be with them in whatever they have to do, even though it be a new crossing of the sea (Exodus 14-15). In verse 3 the picture of the negotiations necessary for the freeing of the enslaved evidently has as its background the story of the Exodus, but in the foreground is the coming conquest of Egypt by the Persians (under Cambyses in 525 B.c.). God did this as a “ransom,” and it was a heavy price which he had to pay. He was willing to do it, however, “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (vs. 4). The manner of speech here is highly metaphorical, and it seems not possible to give it a precise historical interpretation. In the strongest possible way the prophet sees God affirming his love for Israel, the broken people, and stating his willingness to pay any price, even the highest of ransom payments, for her salvation.

The exhortation, “Fear not,” is repeated again and again in Second Isaiah as in verses 1 and 5. God is with his people. They need not fear. He will bring them from the four corners of the earth, every one of them who is designated as a member of God’s people whom he created for his “glory”; that is, for the revelation and honoring of his name in the world.

Verses 8-23

Israel as God’s Witness in the Assembly of the Nations

(43:8—44:23)

The prophet’s proclamation now returns to the assembly of nations (43:8-9), and then to Israel, God’s witness, and the message she is to proclaim before the world (43:10-13). This leads to a repeated proclamation that God is going to do a new thing: he has prepared a second Exodus of his people (43:14-21). That is, as soon as Second Isaiah introduces the theme of Israel’s mission among the world of nations, he turns immediately to the question of God’s salvation in order that the faith of the broken community can be restored. As background, verses 22-28 speak again of the past when Israel “burdened” God with her iniquities. That is the reason he delivered her to destruction (vs. 28). This is followed in 44:1-5 with the description of the New Israel formed by God’s Spirit. In 44:6-8 the prophet turns to the message which God wants Israel to proclaim. In the whole of the past there has been only one effective power and force in the world, and that is God himself and none other. This leads to a long insertion which in transmission has lost much of its lyric character: 44:9-20 is a satirical essay on the man-made idols of the human race. Then the prophet hears God’s appeal to Israel to return to him, after which there is a triumphant call to the whole assembly of heaven and all the peoples of the earth to break forth into singing (44:21-23).

The Nations Assembled ( 43 : 8 - 9 )

The trial scene of the nations, first introduced in 41:1-4, is again introduced. The blind and deaf nations of the world are called to assemble. The issue to be decided is the meaning of the current history and the past preparation for it. The peoples of the world are challenged to bring forth their witnesses who can give testimony that will be acknowledged as correct.

Israel’s Calling as God’s Witness ( 43 : 10 - 13 )

The mention of witnesses in verse 9 is followed by God’s direct statement to Israel: “You are my witnesses.” What Israel is to know, believe, and understand, and what she is supposed to proclaim to the world, is that the God who has declared himself to Israel and made himself known in his acts of salvation is God and God alone. There is no savior apart from him. “I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?” (vs. 13). In the midst of a world full of gods, this dramatic and forthright clearing out of the vast amount of underbrush is remarkable testimony. The focus of religious attention must be single. In the whole action of God in the past, as he has made himself known to Israel, there has been no other power associated with him. He alone has done it, and of this fact Israel is to be the witness before the world. His is the only effective power in the world. What he chooses to do none can hinder.

God’s New Salvation Reiterated ( 43 : 14 - 21 )

No sooner has this forthright message been given to Israel as the sum of her testimony to the world, than the prophet immediately turns back to the theme of Israel’s coming salvation. God is going to send to Babylon and break down the bars of her prison and lead a new Exodus. The concentration in verses 18-19 on the new things which God is about to bring forth as over against “the former things” should not be interpreted as though the former things were without meaning for the present. It is, instead, a matter of getting the servant of the Lord to look forward to a future which the nation assumed it did not have. A highway is to be prepared in the terrible desert, and God himself will lead his people across it. They need fear no wild animals, nor will they go without water. God will do this for the people he has formed for himself “that they might declare my praise.”

Here are gathered together in one short poem many of the themes of the prophet with regard to Israel. There is a strong and insistent emphasis upon Israel as God’s chosen people. His acts in the days of old in forming a nation for himself were not in vain; they were not annulled in the Assyrian and Babylonian destructions of Samaria and Jerusalem. Now is the time of the new Exodus, the New Israel. This is the “new thing” which will be far more glorious than the first Exodus. Central in the prophet’s words, however, is the purpose of God’s action: it is that Israel shall be his witness before the world.

God’s Past Indictment and Judgment of Israel ( 43 : 22 - 28 )

The prophet now turns abruptly from the present and future to the past sin of Israel, reiterating the correctness of the messages of the earlier prophets. Israel has not been burdened with a heavy sacrificial system, and as a result her people have not had to bring many offerings of various types. Yet at the same time they have not brought God worship at all but have burdened him with their sins (vss. 22-24). In verses 26-28 God challenges Israel to present her case in court and let the matter be equitably decided. Every one of Israel’s leaders or mediators has sinned against God, and that is the reason why Israel was delivered to “utter destruction.” The term so translated is an old word drawn from the institution of holy war in Israel’s early days as a nation, when pagan peoples and property were to be offered up as a holocaust to God. This was a way of purifying the land, and of hallowing it for the new use to which it was to be put. The prophet proclaimed that God was using Assyria and Babylonia to bring holy war against Israel, and here the reference is to the destruction of the nation as a purifying holocaust. Nevertheless, always in the background is the statement that the punishment is past and that God has blotted out the nation’s transgressions (vs. 25).

The New Israel by God’s Spirit ( 44 : 1 - 5 )

The prophet hears God’s voice reaffirming to Israel that she is his servant, his chosen, and saying again, “Fear not.” The thought in verses 3-5 now turns to the new nation of Israel that is to be formed. God will pour out his Spirit and his blessing upon her future offspring so that they will be as numerous as grass and reeds by a flowing stream.

Israel believed that during the first period in the Promised Land, the period of the Judges, God ruled Israel directly and for periods of crisis raised up leaders and empowered them by his Spirit to do their work. In prophetic eschatology God’s new age will be a time when the New Israel will all be possessors of the Spirit. The most familiar statement of this work of God among the future people is Joel 2:28-29. In the New Testament this prophecy of the age to come is seen as having been fulfilled in Christ. The Church is nourished and formed by God’s Spirit, and her birthday is at Pentecost, when the disciples experienced the outpouring of God’s Spirit in their midst (Acts 2).

Israel’s Message as God’s Witness ( 44 : 6 - 8 )

The message to which Israel is to be witness before the world, first specified in 43:10-13, is now described again. There is no other effective power in the universe than the God who is Israel’s Redeemer, “the Lord of hosts.” If there is, let that power speak up and explain the past and the future. Yet, the people of Israel need not be afraid; God’s sole sovereignty had been revealed to them of old and they are his witness. There is no other “Rock” on which they can rely. This is the first use in Second Isaiah of one of the old words used to describe the dependability, the strength, and the protection of God. God as the “Rock” is a sure and strong refuge and protection in time of danger. (See, for example, Deuteronomy 32:4; Deuteronomy 32:15; Deuteronomy 32:18; Deuteronomy 32:30-31; 1 Samuel 2:2; and 2 Samuel 22:2-3 for earlier and very effective uses of the same metaphor, which is also common in the Psalms.)

Satire on Idols and Their Worshipers ( 44 : 9 - 20 )

The original text of Second Isaiah seems to have been interrupted at this point for the introduction of verses 9-20. Verses 21-23 could well be interpreted as a proper continuation of verses 6-8. The original poetic structure of verses 9-20, if there was such a thing, is no longer clear. Yet even if the verses owe their present expansion to the school of Second Isaiah, the spirit of the great prophet himself and some of his characteristic phrases are present. As a response to the question and its answer in verses 7-8 this section on idolatry is a remarkable satire. People who make their own gods and set them up as witnesses are in a pitiable situation. Such witnesses “neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame” (vs. 9). After a detailed description of the making of an ancient image (vss. 12-17) and of the way a human idol-maker uses part of the same wood to burn in a fire to cook his food and to warm himself, the prophet or his disciples portray the plight of the idolater with the greatest possible irony by remarking, “He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for thou art my god!’” (vs. 17). People who do this sort of thing simply have no discernment whatever. They do not ask, “Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” Such a person “feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he c ann ot deliver himself” (vss. 18-20).

Of course, no polytheist of antiquity would have acknowledged these words of the prophet as a fair description of his religion. The ancient idols were in no way meant to confine the great cosmic deities. They called the great gods to the mind of the worshiper and, since they were “like” the gods they stood for, they in some measure shared in the divine holiness and could be used as proper foci of attention in worship. The Israelite prophet, however, refused to acknowledge that there was any reality whatsoever behind the image. To him the ancient worshiper was trying to worship a fetish, something that had no power to do anything. We see the prophets to have been correct in this adverse judgment, because it is true that the religions about which they were speaking died with the death of the people and civilizations which had formulated them. The ancient gods died when their civilizations died!

“Remember These Things, O Jacob” ( 44 : 21 - 23 )

The precise object of the term “remember” in this section

is unclear. In the present editing of the text of the prophet it would refer to the section on idolatry and the sole Lordship of God (vss. 6-20). Yet verse 22 seems to refer back to 43:22-28. God has forgiven all of their earlier transgressions and now invites his people: “Return to me, for I have redeemed you.”

At this remarkable announcement of the graciousness of God, the prophet suddenly calls for the whole host of heaven and all that is on earth to break forth into singing (vs. 23). The great deed of God has been decided upon and can be spoken of as having been completed: “For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel.” The joy and the triumph of this prophetic faith and of its vision of God’s future is one of the significant characteristics of this literature.