Isaiah 41:1

Keep silence before me, O islands,.... The great controversy in the world after the coming of Christ, which is expressly spoken of in the preceding chapter, was, as Cocceius observes, whether he was

Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near together to judgment.

ISAIAH CHAPTER 41 God called Abraham, and was with him: the nations idolatrous, . Israel encouraged by promises of safety and deliverance, . The vanity of idols, . Redemption by Christ, . Keep silence before me; attend diligently to my plea, and then answer it if you can. O islands; O you inhabitants of islands, as the next clause explains this. By islands he here means, as he doth , and elsewhere, countries remote from Judea, inhabited by the idolatrous Gentiles, with whom he here debateth his cause. Let the people renew their strength; strengthen themselves to maintain their cause against me; let them unite all their strength together. Let them come near unto me, that we may stand together, and plead our cause before any indifferent judge. Let them speak; I will give them free liberty to say what they can on their own behalf.

Isaiah 41:1 Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew [their] strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near together to judgment.Ver. 1. Keep silence before me, O islands,] i.e., O islanders (so the Hebrews called all that were beyond sea to them), with whom God, being about to contest, calleth for silence that he may be heard. The people of Rome could hardly digest a Sιωπησατε, or keep silence from their emperor Adrian, as too severe; but when God thundereth it, men wriggle into their holes as so many worms. And let the people renew their strength.] Come as strong as they can into the court, with their best advocates and arguments, since they are to debate the cause concerning their religion. Let them come near together in judgment.] This is a wonderful condescension. En in quantum se demittat Deus! Dio in Adrian.

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 challenge. In what follows we have to think of the prophet as having, like Balaam, a vision of what shall come to pass in the “latter days” (Numbers 24:20), and seeing not only the forms of the old empires on their way to Hades, as in Isaiah 14:9-12, but the appearance on the scene of the new conqueror.

CHAPTER XLI The prophet, having intimated the deliverance from Babylon, and the still greater redemption couched under it, resumes the subject. He begins with the Divine vocation of Abraham, the root of the Israelitish family, and his successful exploits against the idolaters, 1-7. He then recurs to the Babylonish captivity, and encourages the seed of Abraham, the friend of God, not to fear, as all their enemies would be ultimately subdued under them, 8-16; and every thing furnished necessary to refresh and comfort them in them passage homewards through the desert, 17-20. The prophet then takes occasion to celebrate the prescience of God, from his knowledge of events so very distant as instanced in the prediction concerning the messenger of glad tidings which should be given to Jerusalem to deliver her from all her enemies; and challenges the idols of the heathen to produce the like proof of their pretended divinity, 21-27. But they are all vanity, and accursed are they that choose them, 28, 29. NOTES ON CHAP. XLI Verse 1. Keep silence before me, O islands - "Let the distant nations repair to me with new force of mind"] Εγκαινιζεσθε, Septuagint. For החרישו hacharishu, be silent, they certainly read in their copy החדישו hachadishu, be renewed; which is parallel and synonymous with יחלפו כח yechalephu coach, "recover their strength; " that is, their strength of mind, their powers of reason; that they may overcome those prejudices by which they have been so long held enslaved to idolatry. A MS. has הר har, upon a rasure. The same mistake seems to have been made in this word, Zephaniah 3:17. For יחריש באהבתו yacharish beahabatho, silebit in directione sua, as the Vulgate renders it; which seems not consistent with what immediately follows, exultabit super te in laude; the Septuagint and Syriac read יחדיש באהבתו yachadish beahabatho, "he shall be renewed in his love." אלי elai, to me, is wanting in one of De Rossi's MSS. and in the Syriac.

1. Jehovah calls the heathen nations to a disputation concerning the appearance of Cyrus. Keep silence before me] A pregnant constr. in the Heb. = Listen in silence unto me. On islands, see on ch. Isaiah 40:15. renew their strength] The words are somewhat suspicious, as they are repeated from ch. Isaiah 40:31, and the thought is hardly suitable at the beginning of an argument. Job 38:3 is not an exact parallel. Possibly the eye of a scribe may have wandered to the previous verse. judgment] (mishpâṭ ?) is used in the same sense as in Malachi 3:5 (= “judicial process.”) Cf. Judges 4:5.

The design of this chapter is the same as that of the preceding, and it is to be regarded as the continuation of the argument commenced there. Its object is to lead those who were addressed, to put confidence in God.

1. Islands — Poetical variation for lands — all maritime lands and countries round about: here, the whole heathen world. It had just transpired, (Isaiah 40:31,) that those trusting in Jehovah “shall renew their strength,” etc.