Isaiah 43

43:1 But 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. 2 When 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; 3 neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of 4 Israel, thy saviour; I have given Egypt as thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou hast been precious in my sight, and honourable, and I have loved thee; therefore will I 5 give men for thee, and peoples for thy life. Fear not; for I am with thee: I will bring thy 6 seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the 7 earth; every one that is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory; I have 8 formed him; yea, I have made him. Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the 9 deaf that have ears. Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the peoples be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring their 10 witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth. Ye 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 11, 12 after me. I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour. I have declared, and I have saved, and I have shewed, and there was no strange god among you: therefore ye 13 are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and I am God. Yea, since 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? 14 Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and I will bring down all of them as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, in the ships of 15, 16 their rejoicing. I am the LORD, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus 17 saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they lie down together, they 18 shall not rise; they are extinct, they are quenched as flax: Remember ye not the former 19 things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in 20 the desert. The beasts of the field shall honour me, the jackals and the ostriches: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my 21, 22 chosen: the people which I formed for myself, that they might set forth my praise. Yet 23 thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices. I have not made thee to serve with offerings, nor wearied thee with 24 frankincense. Thou 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 wea- 25 ried me with thine iniquities. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine 26 own sake; and I will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance; let us plead to- 27 gether: set thou forth thy cause, that thou mayest be justified. Thy first father sinned, and 28 thine interpreters have transgressed against me. Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and I will make Jacob a curse, and Israel a reviling.

Chap. 43. This chapter bears general relations to its larger context (chaps. 40-45), but more special relations to its nearer context—viz., chap. 42 : 19-25. In this latter passage, Israel stands as the servant of God, chosen, yet often unfaithful to her trust ; instructed, but yet dark-minded and at best improving very imperfectly her opportunities for Divine knowledge. Hence she was chastened, but never utterly abandoned.

1. God would not have Israel fear the final issue of those afflictions which will befall her. He created and formed her, which means that He has chosen the posterity of Abraham and has made the nation of Israel all that she is in the line of moral worth and of peculiar honor as His chosen people. Therefore she ought to trust her Lord to determine all her future.

2. A blessed truth underlies these figures—viz., that no peril or pain can be so extreme that God’s presence shall not be with His trustful people there, and make the martyr’s stake a paradise. The antecedent context favors the supposition that the afflictions contemplated here are chastisements from God to humble and reclaim His wandering people. In this view the verse is a promise that however apparently perilous, they shall be really harmless, and even fruitful of blessings. H. C.

The sum is this, That no calamity of this world, no troubles of this life, no terrors of death, no guiltiness of sin, can be so great, but that a “godly” man by means of his faith and felicity in Christ shall wade out of them well enough. For howsoever other things go, still he shall have a solace in his soul, a comfort in his conscience, a heaven in his heart, knowing himself reconciled to God and justified by faith. T. Playfere.—Divine grace, even in the heart of weak and sinful man, is an invincible thing. Drown it in the waters of adversity, it rises more beautiful, as not being drowned indeed, but only washed ; throw it into the furnace of fiery trials, it comes out purer, and loses nothing but the dross which our corrupt nature mixes with it. Leighton.—Though it be through darkness, though it be in deep waters, you know whom you have believed. Infinite love, joined to infinite skill, shall pilot the way through every strait, and temptation, and peril. God has ever loved to place His people where they had none to hope in but Him only. J. W. A.

God has never promised dying grace when one’s duty is to live. He gives living grace then ; grace for temptation, grace for struggle, grace for toil, for service, for all duty. For every hour there is some allotment of obedience or submission, and for each hour strength will be given. “As thy days so shall thy strength be.” Then when the hour of death comes, God will give dying grace, and the believing soul will pass into the strange mystery, sustained by the Divine arm and supported by the Divine Presence. The promise is, “When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee ;” it is not, “When thou art approaching, yet far away ;” nor even “When thou drawest near ;” but, “When thou passest through.” The storehouse in which God has laid up dying grace is found only in the valley itself, and you cannot get it until you enter the shadows. Grace for duty, for toil, for love, for honesty, for earnest service in every good cause, for heroic struggle, for unselfish ministry, for holy influence ; grace for noble and beautiful living and for loyal devotion to Christ while the heart’s pulses are full and while God wants us still in this world ; but not yet grace for dying, since death is far away ; then grace for dying when the life’s work is done, its duty finished, and the call comes to leave this world and depart home. J. R. Miller.

3. The description of the speaker in the first clause is intended to conciliate regard to what he says in the other. It was in the character not only of an absolute and sovereign God, but in that of Israel’s God, his Holy One, his Saviour, that Jehovah had thus chosen him to the exclusion of all other nations.

5-7. The repetition of the same thought—“created,” “formed,” “made”—lays special stress on the agency of God through His word and spirit in the regeneration of sinful men, Jews or Gentiles, to render them fit members of His church and fit servants of His earthly kingdom. This great and precious promise is pertinently adduced as a reason why His people need not fear. “For I am with thee, saith the Lord,” to ensure to thee success in what thou shouldst regard as thy life-work—the conversion of men from darkness to light.

8,9. The grand conception in these verses (as in chap. 41 : 1, 5, 21) is that of a convocation of the heathen world before an ideal tribunal to test the rival claims of Jehovah, versus idol gods—the decision to turn mainly on the point of prescience, as evinced in prophecy. Who has predicted events far in the future, and they have come to pass ? Have any of the heathen gods done this ? If any, who is he, and what has he predicted ? Let them come forward, produce their witnesses, and prove their claim valid [“justify themselves”] or let them hear my witnesses, and say it is truth.

10. Who His witnesses are to be. They are “ye,” His professed people, in the broad sense which appears in verses 5-7—those vast multitudes gathered from every land into the one society of the redeemed, all these and with them “my servant,” the Messiah, who comes to earth to bear witness to the truth—i.e., to reveal God to men. The object sought in all this witnessing is that ye may know and believe Me and understand that I am He, the one ever-living God. Similar is the testimony from the Saviour’s own lips. “This is life eternal that they might know Thee the only true God.” “I have declared unto them Thy name.” H. C.

Every believer, however humble his position, however few or feeble his qualifications, however multiplied his occupations or cares, every believer has his own testimony to bear. None but he can bear it. In the part assigned him there is no proxyship of word or act. As a called soldier of Christ, he can neither procure nor offer a substitute. Neither voluntary Christian associations, an appointed ministry, nor the church in its organized capacity can do his work. The ministers of God have indeed their own peculiar responsibilities and for these, as individuals, they have to give account. But societies, churches, are only combinations of individual believers, each of whom is God’s appointed witness, in his place and to the extent of his ability and opportunity. B.

Life, entire life, is a period of witnessing. By act, by omission, by speech, by silence, whether you will or not, you are forever testifying. Hour by hour you are testifying, sometimes much more loudly than by words, either for or against your Master. To be firm for Christ, when all the tide of opinion, business, pleasure, runs the other way, you need a courage which will never come to you except upon your knees. If you only have His spirit, if His life flows into you, if, believing on and clinging to Him, you have inward pulses which keep time with His heart, you will stand in the evil day, you will win souls, you will recommend the Gospel, you will live teaching and die witnessing. J. W. A.

What we want, above all things, in this age is heartiness and holy simplicity—men who justify the holy impulse of grace in their hearts, and do not keep it back by artificial clogs of prudence and false fear, or the pretences of fastidiousness and artificial delicacy. These are they whom God will make His witnesses in all ages. They dare to be holy, dare just as readily to be singular. What God puts in them that they accept, and when He puts a song, they sing it. They know Christ inwardly, and therefore stand for Him outwardly. They endure hardness. They fight a fight. And these are the souls who shall stand before God accepted. Bushnell.

If the eleven had stopped with being disciples, then we should have said that Christianity meant nothing then and means nothing today but discipleship. But if they went on from being absorbent disciples and became at last radiant apostles, with their mouths full of persuasion and their lives all running over with the demonstration of the Gospel, then we shall be obliged to say that then and now Christianity means apostleship just as much as it means discipleship. It means purpose just as much as it means power; it means making others Christians just as much as it means being Christians ourselves; it means making Christ a real thing in the minds and hearts of others just as much as it means having Christ made a real thing to us; it means to-day as much as it meant 1850 years ago, bearing witness to the Son of God in the narrower circle of the home, the broader circle of the community, and forth even to the uttermost part of the earth. These things when carefully and prayerfully considered will create within us a deep sense of our own individual and personal responsibility. It is a part of Christianity to be apostolic. The anointing of the Holy Ghost sets each one of us—man, woman and child—in the line of the true apostolic succession; and as after the ascension of Christ mankind lay in the hands of the original apostles for them to convert, so today the conversion of the world pertains to us as their spiritual representatives and successors. C. H. P.

12. In view of what God had shown and had done among them and for them, they were competent witnesses to His true divinity. They had seen abundant evidence that Jehovah is indeed the true God. H. C.

13. The best interpreters explain it as meaning since the first day, or since time began. The words are then universal, both in the extent of power claimed and in relation to the time of its execution. Over every object and in every age the power of Jehovah had been clearly proved to be supreme and absolute. A.

14,15. These two verses appeal to the deliverance of the Jews from Babylon as the two next in order (verses 16, 17) appeal to the exodus from Egypt, in proof that Jehovah is truly the mighty God of His people Israel, their Creator, Redeemer, and King. The deliverance from Babylon was indeed in the distant future relatively to the actual life of Isaiah, while that from Egypt was past; yet the former is presented here as seen by the prophet already past or passing. H. C.

14. Note the two qualifications necessary for our spiritual God, or Redeemer. 1. He must be rich enough to purchase back the inheritance, strong enough to destroy the murderer and high enough in rank to take the place of the former husband. Christ, then, must be God. Man is bankrupt and cannot buy the lost estate. Man is murdered, and cannot, therefore, be his own avenger. And God was the first husband—who but God can take God’s place? 2. He must be a kinsman, full of sympathy for the impoverished, the smitten, the lost, for the God was no stranger. Indeed the word, originally signifying “a redeemer,” became synonymous with kinsman. (See Ruth 4:1, 3.) Christ, then, must be man. He “was made flesh and dwelt among us,” and is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” Such must have been the Jewish Christian’s view of Jesus as the Redeemer, combining in Himself the Divine and the human. The very name, seen through the glass of Jewish law and Jewish usage, showed the Son of God to be the Son of man. Crosby.

16,17. The whole description is graphic and terse, full of fire and withal of most impressive truth for the comfort of God’s people in every age.

18. But think not longer of former things, for there are things yet to come vastly greater, eclipsing the old and throwing them entirely into the shade. H. C.

19. It is best to take this and the 16th verses as strong metaphorical descriptions of deliverance from suffering and danger by a direct Divine interposition. Thus understood, the prophet’s language means that God could change the face of nature and control the angry elements in favor of His people; that He had so done in time past, and would again do so in time to come. A.

20,21. The language and figures are possibly borrowed from the restoration from Babylon, or more probably brought before the mind in verse 14, from the journeyings through the desert of Sinai; or perhaps from both. But manifestly, these are figures, and refer to spiritual blessings to be shed forth in the gathering of the Gentiles home to God. When these great blessings shall come upon God’s people, they will indeed show forth His praise, both actively, out of their full hearts, and passively as illustrating in their own wonderful conversion the large and victorious grace of God. H. C.

21. Another declaration of the end for which Israel existed as a nation. This brings us back to the main proposition of the chapter,—viz., that Jehovah had not only made them what they were, but had made them for the purpose of promoting His own glory, so that any claim of merit upon their part, and any apprehension of entire destruction, must be equally unfounded. A.

23,24. The Israelites are here condemned for their failure in the duties of holy worship. Their sin was partly of omission, partly that of idol offerings and worship in high places, instead of God’s own temple; partly weariness and reluctance, and partly also their self-righteous pride. Even the law of sacrifices, when seen and used aright, was “holy and just and good.” It was a wise discipline for their infant faith, and its neglect or perversion formed one main part of their national guilt. Their sin is here exposed in its deep ingratitude, that the pardoning grace of God, by contrast, might be more clearly and fully revealed. Birks.—This strain of complaint and rebuke would have been out of place during the exile, for sacrifices were then out of the question. Hence the writer was not living there. H. C.

25. “I, even I, am He who” yet “blotteth out thy transgressions.” This gracious declaration of God’s readiness to pardon sin comes in very strangely: the charge ran very high, “Thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities” (verse 24). Now one would think it should follow, “I, even I, am He” that will destroy thee, and burden Myself no longer with care about thee." No, “I, even I, am He that will forgive thee;” as if the great God would teach us that forgiving injuries is the best way to make ourselves easy and to keep ourselves from being wearied with them. This comes in here to encourage them to repent, because there is forgiveness with God, and to show the freeness of Divine mercy; where sin has been exceeding sinful, grace appears exceeding gracious. Observe here (1) How the pardon is expressed; He will “blot them out” as a cloud is blotted out by the beams of the sun (44:22), as a debt is blotted out, not to appear against the debtor; the book is crossed as if the debt were paid, because it is pardoned, upon the payment which the surety has made; or as a sentence is blotted out when it is reversed; as the curse was blotted out with the waters of jealousy, which made it of no effect to the innocent (Num. 5: 23). He will not remember the sin; which intimates not only that He will remit the punishment of what is past, but that it shall be no diminution to His love for the future. When God forgives, He forgets. (2) What is the ground and reason of the pardon. It is not for the sake of anything in us, but for His own sake; for His mercies’ sake, His promise’ sake, and especially for His Son’s sake, and that He may Himself be glorified in it. (3) How God glories in it—“I, even I, am He;” He glories in it as His prerogative; none can forgive sin but God only, and He will do it, it is His settled resolution; He will do it willingly and with delight; it is His pleasure, it is His honor; so He is pleased to reckon it. H.

What, my soul, the very God whom thou hast “made to serve with thy sins and wearied with thine iniquities,” will He blot them all out? Yes, as a black cloud is dispelled by the sun or driven away by the wind; or as an immense debt is discharged by the stroke of the pen of a merciful creditor, never, never more to appear against or be demanded of the debtor. For, O wonder of love! He saith farther, And will not remember thy sins. I cannot forget my sins; how then can my Lord! He laid them upon His Son, thy surety. They were all atoned for by Him. Why all this? For the sake of thy works, or anything thou hast done? Spurn the thought. Hear thy Lord, For mine own sake, I have blotted out thy sins through thy Redeemer’s blood. The Father blots them out for the sake of His righteousness and truth. The gracious Spirit blots them out of the conscience, for the glory of the Father and the Son, and because He is the Comforter. Oh, what boundless bliss is here! Believe, rejoice and love. W. Mason.

26. Go, in Christ’s name, to the mercy-seat, and take this complete and eternal pardon as your own. To you God says, “Put Me in remembrance. Let us plead together.” “Tell Me not forever of thine unfitness for My kingdom, thy rebellion and thy crimes. Tell Me of My invitations to the guilty and My promises to the lost. Tell Me of the blood that was shed to save thee. Tell Me of the tears, and prayers, and righteousness, the cross, and passion, of My Son. Show Me that thou canst trust My word. Only believe, and though thou wert as sinful as the cursing Peter or as unworthy as the persecuting Saul, I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” C. B.

28. The character just given of the people in all ages is urged not only as a proof that God’s compassion must be perfectly gratuitous, but also as a reason for the strokes which they experienced. A.