46. Isaiah Chapter Forty-Six

Isaiah Chapter 46 Introductory Note At this chapter there is a change in the subject. There are now three prophecies relating to Babylon. Yet there is a connection with what has preceded. For the prophet has been foretelling what was to be expected by Israel through the raising up and the administration of Cyrus. He is now going to show what Cyrus will carry out regarding Babylon. This potentate would be the instrument of the judgment of the Lord upon the gods of Babylon. At the same time the three prophecies contain matters relating to what is yet future in connection with Israel, and admonitions continue to God’s people. The first prophecy occupies this chapter; the second is in chapter 47, the third in chapter 48. The first deals with the gods, the second with Babylon itself, the third with deliverance from Babylon.

Bel was the Jupiter of the Babylonians and was their tutelar deity. Nebo corresponded to the Roman Mercury and was the tutelar deity of the later Chaldean royal household.

Bel would “fall headlong”; Nebo would stoop till he shared the same fate. Instead of being carried in procession, their images would be a burden to the “beasts” (camels, dromedaries and elephants), and “cattle” (horses, oxen and asses). But even so the burdens would not arrive at their destination, they would not be delivered; in their flight from the conqueror they would be overtaken, and go into captivity (Isaiah 46:1-2). The rest of chapter 46 consists of three admonitions: the first is to all Israel (Isaiah 46:3-7); the second to apostates in the nation, associates with idolaters (Isaiah 46:8-11); the third to the rebellious (Isaiah 46:12-13). The first and third are a call to “hearken,” the second to “remember.” God desires the ready ear to hear, the ready mind to recollect. In the first admonition His people are reminded of their unique origin and support. Divinely formed as the seed of Abraham, they had been borne and cared for from their earliest existence onward. So much for the past. As to the future, He, the unchanging One (“I am He”), promises to bear them on His shoulder (a contrast to the Chaldean burdens in Isaiah 46:1-2), and to carry old age and hoar hairs, a figurative way of assuring the remnant that throughout their experiences His care would never fail them. The statement in Isaiah 46:4, “I have made” (or rather, “I have done it”), speaks not so much of His creative power, as of the fact that He has acted in the past so will He in the future. He is “the great, unchangeable I AM.” In accordance with this He immediately asks to whom they will liken and compare Him, putting another god side by side with Him so that they may be equal. Let them consider, and contrast the egregious and crass absurdity of fashioning, worshiping and appealing to images (Isaiah 46:6-7). The second admonition begins with a call, based upon the preceding, to those who are turning to idolatry, “to shew themselves men,” i.e., to be firm instead of faltering. Let them call to mind “the former things,” the great truths relating to His Person and His dealings of old in the history of the nation, His absolute Deity, evoking adoration, His sole power to declare “the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done” (Isaiah 46:10; cp. Isaiah 41:22, Isaiah 41:26; Isaiah 44:7; Isaiah 45:21). He alone can say “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.”

It is good for the believer to call to mind the former things, to remember the way the Lord has led and helped and delivered. It stirs the soul to renewed praise, and stimulates faith and hope as to the future. In Isaiah 46:11 this power to predict with absolute inerrancy is again illustrated in regard to Cyrus, as in Isaiah 41:2-4. He is called the “the ravenous bird from the east” (Persia), “the man of My counsel from a far country” (Media, as in Isaiah 13:5, Isaiah 13:17). The potentates of earth, summoned on to the arena of history, are God’s instruments to fulfill His counsel, whether for judgment or for deliverance; and Cyrus combined the two, judgment on Gentile nations, deliverance for the captives of Israel.

God’s words are duly carried into action: “I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass”; so with His purposes: “I have purposed, I will also do it.” The third admonition addresses those who resist God’s will in their ignorant obduracy. They are the “stouthearted,” not courageous, but stiffnecked. They are “far from righteousness”; their unbelief has produced despair of the fulfillment of God’s word, and banished desire for knowledge of it. Consequently they are without the salvation He grants on the basis of righteousness (Isaiah 46:12).

There is, however, promise of salvation for those who accept His conditions. “I bring near,” He says, “My righteousness it shall not be far off, and My salvation shall not tarry” (Isaiah 46:13; cp. Deuteronomy 30:13, with Romans 10:6-10, which quotes from the Septuagint with certain modifications, and speaks of the same subjects of righteousness and salvation as in this Isaiah passage). On the basis of His righteousness, established for Israel, as for us, on the ground of the death of Christ, God will “place [or give] salvation in Zion for Israel My glory,” or “My glory to Israel” (r.v. margin). The glory of God which has departed from the nation (cp. Ezekiel 9:3 and Ezekiel 11:23) will return to it, and that in full measure, so that Israel, shining in the divine splendor, will worthily reflect His glory.