Redeemed People
“You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD,
“and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor will there be one after me.
11 I, even I, am the LORD,
and apart from me there is no savior.
12 I have revealed and saved and proclaimed—
I, and not some foreign god among you.
. THE LORD’S PLAN UNFOLDED (42:18–44:23)
Isaiah has seen his people caught up in a double plight: captivity because of sin—and that the deadliest of all sins, the abandonment of the way of faith, the rejection of the Lord’s promises in favour of a do-it-yourself remedy (chs. 38–39). But the double plight was matched by a double cure, the word of comfort (40:1–2): both that the time of duress would end, and that iniquity would be pardoned. The section that now opens continues along this twin track—and it really is a twin track: the parallel development of two themes. Captivity will be ended by national liberation (42:18–43:21), and sin dealt with by spiritual redemption (43:22–44:23). Under the former heading, Isaiah moves through four topics: captivity (42:18–25), the meeting of this need (43:1–7), the Lord, Saviour and sole God, in contrast with idols (43:8–13), and redemption from Babylon (43:14–21). He then offers four matching topics: sin (43:22–24), the meeting of this need (43:25–44:5), the Lord, Redeemer and only God in contrast with idols (44:6–20), and redemption from sin (44:21–23). It is important to grasp this overall plan. Isaiah wrote a book with planned development and everything in its proper place. As an example of this, note how, with the matching passages on idols (43:8–13; 44:6–20), each suits its own context: the former focuses on the inability of other ‘gods’ to act in history, the latter on their inability to save spiritually.
a. Israel’s bondage and liberation (42:18–43:21)
i. The blind servant (42:18–25). 42:18–19. In verse 18 blind (like deaf) is plural, in verse 19 blind is singular. The plural looks back to verses 7 and 16, where the blind are the benighted Gentile world out of which the Lord will lead, by his Servant and by his personal action, those whom he illuminates. Since verse 19 is about the Lord’s servant, this is plainly a topic of vital concern to the Gentile world, for their spiritual illumination and deliverance is at stake. But when they look, it is to see a servant as blind as they are! This servant is the one mentioned in 41:8, the Lord’s people, Israel: but now an Israel in ‘prisons’ (22), consigned to ‘the plunderers’ (24); and, as if this were not disappointment enough for the blind Gentiles, an Israel under punishment for sin (24) and without spiritual sensitivity (25). Isaiah, then, is doing two things: first, he is ruling out the possibility that the servant nation (41:8) can be the Servant revealer and rescuer (42:1–7). Can the blind lead the blind? Some other Servant must emerge if the great role is to be fulfilled. But, secondly, Isaiah is dramatically introducing the topic of this section: how deep is Israel’s need! The heaping up of honorific titles, servant … messenger … committed … servant, underlines the dignity of the calling of the people of God. Servant as defined in 42:1–4 confers the duty of bringing divine revelation to a bereft world; messenger (lit. ‘my messenger whom I send’) speaks of a commission given to one on whom the Lord has a personal claim (‘my’); committed comes from √šālēm, ‘to be at peace, enjoy wholeness/well-being’. The form of passive participle found here means ‘brought into peace, reconciled’, i.e. enjoying the benefits and blessings of salvation. But Israel, sadly, is deaf to his word and blind, or spiritually untransformed. This latter thought is the one Isaiah hammers out, blind … blind … blind, underlying the need for the work of transforming grace which it is the servant’s task to bring to the world.
20. The blindness and deafness of the Israel-servant is now carefully diagnosed. It is not the total darkness of the Gentile world (41:7, 16). The Lord’s Israel has sight, you have seen many things, an abundant revelation of divine truth has been granted; spiritual deafness has been remedied, your ears are open. The problem with the Lord’s people (then and now) is not that the basic work of transformation is yet to be done, but that, transformation having taken place, no attention has been paid, the open ears hear nothing. The word of God is available but ignored.
21. The verse speaks of something that delights the Lord (pleased, as in 53:10), of something that expresses his righteous nature and fulfils his righteous purpose (righteousness)—his law or ‘teaching’, the truth of God imparted by revelation to his people—and of the purpose he envisaged in giving his law, literally ‘that he should make the law great and mighty/splendid’. The ‘he’ in question may be the Lord himself: he gave his teaching to his people, purposing through their obedience that divine truth should be seen in its greatness and splendour. Alternatively the ‘he’ may be Israel: that they should set out, by faithful adherence to Scripture in conviction and practice, to display the wonders of divine truth to the world (cf. Deut. 4:5–7; Titus 2:10).
22. But, far from winning the world, the world conquered Israel (cf. 2:5–9)! Through failure to ‘make the law great’, Israel lost its distinctive status in the world (22a–c) and its protected status before the Lord (22d–g)—the truth taught in the Song of the Vineyard: no fruit-bearing, no protection (5:1–7). Pits … prisons: no prophet living with exiled Israel in Babylon could so describe the exile. Conditions were not quite as bad as that (Jer. 29). Isaiah is using conventional stereotypes of captivity to underscore the enormity of Israel’s downfall from the divine intention.
23–25. Recognizing that he has an unpalatable truth to share (Which of you will listen?), Isaiah takes us to the theological heart of Israel’s situation. First, the key question to ask is not ‘Why?’ but ‘Who?’ ‘Why?’ is the cry of logic looking for a way to make life’s tragedies fit into a humanly satisfying pattern. To this there is no answer (55:8). ‘Who?’ brings us to rest on the executive sovereignty of the Lord. Was it not the LORD? Secondly, for the people of God the word of God is the clue to life: the tragedy came about through sin. They would not follow … did not obey: i.e. specifically the sin of having revealed truth but not conforming to it. Would not follow: (lit.) ‘were not willing to walk in’, i.e. an unsubmitted will. Obey: ‘listen to’, the submission of the mind to the word of God. Thirdly, there is the reality of divine chastisement: his personal burning anger. On anger, cf. 5:25. Violence of war: the Lord of history uses the forces of history to punish his disobedient people. Fourthly, disobedience brings suffering and loss, flames … consumed. But, fifthly, not even suffering on the scale of defeat, bondage and deprivation (22) produced reformation: as Isaiah viewed his people he saw in them spiritual incomprehension, they did not understand … take it to heart. The Lord’s people though they are, possessing his truth though they do, they are still direly in need of an inner work of transformation, first touching the mind (understand, lit. ‘know’), and then the heart, the inner spring of responsiveness and direction (Prov. 4:23).
ii. Unchanged divine care (43:1–7). With great drama, Isaiah moves from the Lord’s people in the Lord’s fire (42:25) to the Lord who will not allow the fire to burn them (43:2).
1. But now makes a logical connection with what has gone before: ‘Now then’. Israel has been revealed as blind (42:19), inattentive (42:20), falling short of the Lord’s plan (42:21), defeated (42:2), sinfully disobedient (42:24), spiritually uncomprehending and insensitive (42:25). ‘Now then’ is enough to make us quake in our shoes! How will the Lord react to such a catalogue of culpability? Created … formed: the verbs are used in their established sense, the former to bring into being, de novo, by a sole and free act of God, and the latter to fashion and mould into shape as a potter would. So the Lord determined to have a people for his very own, brought them into being and shaped them on the wheel of circumstances. This is the first ground on which the Lord will say, you are mine (Eph. 1:4; 2:10). The second ground is redemption. The verb is √gā’al (35:10). The Lord made himself the Next-of-Kin of the people he had created. They are his family and he shoulders all their needs as if his own. The third ground is the personal relationship between the Lord and his people (summoned by name) whereby, as we might say, they are on first-name terms.
2. The Lord will not now desert his people. They may have given up on him (42:18–25), but not he on them! Many see the hardships mentioned here as those of the exiles returning from captivity, but such extreme hardships rather suggest those of captives being dragged off by their captors (cf. 47:2). When Isaiah speaks of homecoming, he does so in terms of a new exodus journey, with miraculous provisions and supplies (48:20–21).
3–4. The safety they enjoy under and within such life-threatening experiences (2) is explained (For) in five ways. (a) By the Lord’s name, LORD, Yahweh, the everlasting statement of his character (Exod. 3:15). Yahweh is the God defined in the exodus revelation as the One who delivers and redeems his people (Exod. 6:6–7) and overthrows his foes (Exod. 12:12). Unless he changes his name (alters his character), he is committed to his Israel. (b) By the relationship between himself and his people: notwithstanding all their failings (42:18–25), he still calls himself your God. (c) By his holiness: the great Isaianic title, the Holy One of Israel (1:4), holds together the reality of his holiness and the reality of his relationship with Israel. If his holiness and their sinfulness did not militate against forming the relationship, then it cannot militate against its continuance. (d) By his saving ability: while the verb √yāša‘ expresses salvation from sin (64:5), it majors on deliverance from afflictions (1 Sam. 9:16; 2 Sam. 22:4), suitably to this context. (e) By the evidence of the past: NIV follows many in the translation I will give, and, of course, the Hebrew perfect tense can well express a confidence for the future (‘I have determined to give’), but this is understandable only if we take it to mean ‘I have determined to give (if I have to)’, for Egypt has no part to play in the Lord’s future care of his people. Furthermore, to translate the perfect here as a future destroys the contrast with I will give at the end of the verse. Rather, the titles of the Lord in verse 3ab flow naturally into a reference back to the exodus: because he is Yahweh, Israel’s God and Holy One, their Saviour, he actually did give Egypt as their ransom. Faced with Egyptian intransigent refusal to let the people go, the Lord, so to speak, weighed up whether he was prepared to shatter Egypt in order to free Israel. There was ‘no contest’, and it was ‘at the expense of’ (ransom, kōper, the price paid; see 6:7) Egypt that Israel was freed. Cush and Seba are respectively the extreme south of Egypt and lands still further south. They are a poetical elaboration of the picture of the price paid. In your stead expresses one taking the place of another (Gen. 22:13; 1 Kgs 11:43). Israel was under sentence of death (Exod. 1:16, 22), but Egypt ‘died’ (Exod. 14:27, 31) instead. This past flows into the present, in which the Lord treasures his people (precious) and has not withdrawn their honoured position as his people. Consequently, for the future, not even humankind (men) itself nor all people (‘peoples’) would be too high a price.
5–7. I will bring: the wide reference to ‘humankind’ in verse 4 is now justified. The Lord foresees a worldwide scattering and a worldwide regathering. From all the compass points (5–6), embracing everyone of his people (7). My sons … daughters: right up to the End the Next-of-Kin relationship (1; Exod. 2:21) remains unchanged, and the initial thoughts of created and formed are enhanced by the added thought that, in so doing, the Lord purposed his own glory. Thus his honour is bound up with the final security of those whom he chose to be his people.
iii. No other God: sure promises (43:8–13). Whether we think of Isaiah’s people as in Palestine or taken into exile or residents in Babylon, they are surrounded by other gods and their devotees. Therefore they need to get their theology straight: what sort of entities are these who seem so powerful and whom others worship with such conviction? This short passage, therefore, has an abiding relevance. Notice how it climaxes on a claim by the Lord to be the only saviour (11). This not only links it with verses 1–7 (see 3), but it turns the discussion to the practical question of who can effectively deliver in the thick of the world’s adversities. In form, the passage is another courtroom drama (cf. 41:21–29). The court assembles (8–9b), the issue is stated (9c–f), the Lord’s witnesses are presented (10a–d) and his claim is affirmed (10e–11), the issue is settled (12), and the verdict given (13). The point of this quasi-legal presentation is that what Isaiah asserts about the Lord (11–12) is not a fable but a truth tested at law, a verified conclusion based on evidence.
8–9. We must not miss the pathos: imagine any litigant depending on the blind to testify to what they have seen and the deaf to what they have heard! The Lord’s people could have been very different: theirs is a culpable deficiency, for they have eyes and ears; they were granted faculties of spiritual perception but chose to be blind and deaf, refusing to see and hear (6:9–10; 29:9; 42:20, 24)—and the Lord’s case depends on their testimony! Which of them: the voice is that of the Presiding Judge. This … the former things: the interpretation of this turns on how we understand verse 3. We noted that many make verses 3–7 refer to the future (see p. 302). If so, then this could be the fact of the coming conqueror (41:1–4, 25) as in that earlier court scene, and former (lit. ‘first’) things would be an open request to the idols to mention any earlier prediction they may have made. If (as we hold) verse 3 refers back to the exodus, then this and former both look back to that first great act of the Lord for Israel. Do the ‘gods’ have any such thing to their credit (cf. Deut. 4:34–37; 2 Sam. 7:22–24)? Right: i.e. in the right, gaining the verdict. The case must go to the one who can demonstrate by credible evidence his sovereign capacity to determine beforehand what he is going to do, and then do it without alteration, let or hindrance. This is the mark of deity.
10–11. The pathos continues. You are my witnesses—as if the Lord has to prompt his witnesses to testify on his behalf! How well Isaiah knows our guilty silences! Declares, see 1:24; servant, as in 41:8 (see 42:1). The ‘servant people’ inherit the Abrahamic vocation to the world, but their privileged conscription to be the Lord’s (chosen) was intended (so that) to bring them to spiritual conviction (know … understand, lit. ‘discern, see to the heart of’) and to faith. Believe me: the construction ha’ămîn lĕ mostly means to believe what someone says (Gen. 45:26) but it also includes trusting (Deut. 9:23). I am he is the answer to the question Which? in verse 9. Before me …: the attempt to prod the witnesses into action has failed, and the Lord speaks in his own cause about his uniqueness (10ef) and his work (11). Formed: the gods of the pagan world were often spoken of as coming into being, but the Lord is derived from none (before me) and succeeded by none (after me). Unique in his being, he is also unique in action (no saviour). Only he can enter into the circumstances of his people (Exod. 3:8) and ‘save’ them out of all their afflictions (Exod. 14:18, 30; 15:2; Deut. 33:29).
12–13. Thus the issue is settled (12) and the verdict pronounced (13). Revealed (‘declared’) is the verb translated ‘proclaimed’ in verse 9. It was only the Lord who thus proclaimed what he would do, not the idols. The sequence of the three verbs revealed (‘declared’) … saved … proclaimed (‘made [people] hear’) is important. Moses and his people were not left to look back on the exodus, surmise that it was an act of God, and fumble about to discern its meaning. Revelation comes first (Exod. 3–4) in clear divine speech: the actual words of God anticipating the acts of God; then the events confirm the words; and finally there is the ministry of Moses, spelling out what the Lord has done and what it means. You are my witnesses: again the prompting to witness, but yet again (13) the Lord must take the task on himself. In keeping with the court scene, this last divine statement takes the form of the verdict. The Lord alone is God. From ancient days (miyyôm) can mean ‘since time began’ or ‘today’ or ‘from today on’—a comprehensive claim to a deity which pervades all time. No-one can deliver: this is no remote or ornamental deity but a sovereign over every other possible agency, human or ‘divine’. The Lord is the God who has absolute rights over all people and, as who can reverse …? adds, over the whole course of events as he determines they shall happen.