NOTES for Isa 43:1-28

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¹But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

²When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

³For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.

⁴Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.

⁵Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;

⁶I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;

⁷Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

⁸Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears.

⁹Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth.

¹⁰Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

¹¹I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.

¹²I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.

¹³Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?

¹⁴Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships.

¹⁵I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.

¹⁶Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters;

¹⁷Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they shall lie down together, they shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow.

¹⁸Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.

¹⁹Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

²⁰The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.

²¹This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.

²²But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel.

²³Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices. I have not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied thee with incense.

²⁴Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.

²⁵I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

²⁶Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou, that thou mayest be justified.

²⁷Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me.

²⁸Therefore I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches.

At first sight, today's passage sounds paradoxical: God, who is returning the remnant of His people to the land of the fathers (verses 1–7), reproaches them for betrayal and apostasy, as though He cannot quite bring Himself to forgive those who, it would seem, had already become in exile the new people they were meant to become (verses 23–24; 26–28). Yet on closer reading the answer can readily be found in the text: it turns out that the people deserve no credit at all for what is happening (verses 23–25). In exile there truly could be no question of sacrifices, which God did not require (verses 23–24). The only thing demanded of the faithful in that period was that they not hinder God from acting by their sins. But as we can see (verse 24), even this went badly for them, if they managed it at all.

Such preaching must undoubtedly have come as something like a cold shower to the returnees to whom it was addressed. They were utterly convinced that they had done everything necessary to become the very remnant of whom the pre-exilic prophets had spoken. This was, indeed, what everyone in Babylon who had preserved the faith of the fathers believed. Those who, after Cyrus's decree, resolved to go to Judah to rebuild the city and the Temple felt themselves, so to speak, the “remnant of the remnant”: they alone had gone while the others remained, and those making the journey probably did not doubt for a moment that, if the Messiah did not meet them while they were still on the road to Judah, He would certainly not delay His coming once they were there.

And, of course, they attributed all their victories not only to God but also to themselves. They were ordinary religious people, after all, and religious consciousness has always tended to regard religion as a sphere for the application of human effort just like any other, with the sole difference that in this sphere the effort must be applied in a special way and according to special rules. Thus in religion, as everywhere else and in every age, there have been notions of success and failure, of those who are ahead and those who lag behind, and naturally of the achievements attained by various activists in this field.

The returnees traveling to Judah were sure that they had achieved much. Isaiah does not merely diminish these achievements; he simply reduces them to nothing. Speaking on God's behalf, he says that they have done absolutely nothing for God and have only hindered Him, while He has done everything Himself. Thus not only their triumphant return to the land of the fathers but they themselves, together with all their religious achievements, were created wholly and entirely by Him. The truth proved bitter, but without acknowledging it they could not enter the Kingdom. For the Kingdom is received as a gift, not earned by merit.

Other notes

For Isa 43:1-28