Isaiah 40:21

These verses stand in the middle of Isaiah 40, the chapter that opens with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” and promises that the word of God stands for ever (Isaiah 40:1–11). From verse 12 the chapter praises the Creator who measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, whose understanding is unsearchable, and before whom the nations are a drop in a bucket (Isaiah 40:12–31). These chapters speak to God’s people facing or living through the exile in Babylon, a land full of temples and images of gods such as Bel and Nebo (Isaiah 46:1). Stripped of temple, land and king, the exiles were tempted to doubt the LORD’s power, or to take up the worship of the people around them. Isaiah’s question meets them there.

“To whom then will ye liken God?” The verb is dâmâh, to compare or resemble, and the word for God is ʼêl, a name of God that also carries the sense of strength and might. The second half of the verse asks, “or what likeness will ye compare unto him?” Here the verb is ʻârak, to set in a row or put in order, and so to compare or value, the way two things are laid side by side and weighed against each other. “Likeness” is dᵉmûwth, a resemblance, model or shape. The first question asks who could stand beside God, and the second asks what form or image could show him. Both expect the same answer, and the rest of the passage gives it.

The question reaches past God’s appearance to his being and his power. He stands alone in his majesty, and anything set beside him, whether an image of metal or a picture in the mind, makes him smaller than he is. This is the ground of the second commandment, which forbids the graven image (Exodus 20:4). The psalmist asks, “who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD?” (Psalm 89:6), Jeremiah confesses that none is like the LORD in greatness (Jeremiah 10:6–7), and Moses gives God’s own word that he alone is God (Deuteronomy 32:39). Paul ends his long argument in Romans by marvelling at the unsearchable wisdom and knowledge of God (Romans 11:33–36), and Isaiah later hears the LORD say that his ways and thoughts are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:8–9).

“Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?” Four questions come one after another, and each expects the answer yes. They rebuke forgetfulness, because God’s people already had all they needed to know about him. “Known” is yâdaʻ, to know, properly to know by seeing, a word that covers recognising and understanding as well as being told. “Heard” is shâmaʻ, to hear with attention, often with the sense of obeying, and here it is the hearing of what had been taught and declared through the generations.

“From the beginning” is mêrôʼsh, built on rôʼsh, the word for head, so “from the first”. From the earliest times, through the account of creation, the patriarchs and the giving of the Law, Israel had been told who the LORD is. Isaiah will press the point again when God declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9–10). “The foundations of the earth” are môwçᵉdôwth hâʼârets, from môwçâdâh, a foundation, and the phrase reaches back to the moment God laid the earth’s foundations, the subject of his questions to Job (Job 38:4–7).

The four questions widen as they go, from what the people know, to what they have heard, to what has been told from the beginning, to what creation itself has always shown. Creation is a witness anyone can see. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1–4), and Paul says that God’s invisible things are clearly seen in the things he has made, so that people are without excuse (Romans 1:19–20).

“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth”. Sitting is the posture of a king on his throne, calm and in full command of his realm, and a psalm sees the same throne set in the heavens, ruling over all (Psalm 103:19). The circle is chûwg, a circle, circuit or compass. From God’s throne the whole earth lies under his eye.

“And the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.” The word is châgâb, a locust or grasshopper, the word the spies used of themselves before the sons of Anak: “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers” (Numbers 13:33). The spies felt that small beside the giants of Canaan, and Isaiah says that every inhabitant of the earth is that small beside God. The picture speaks of smallness, frailty and a short life. A psalm asks, “LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him! Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away” (Psalm 144:3–4), and David, considering the heavens, asks the same question (Psalm 8:3–4). The grasshopper is a lesson in humility, and our worth as people made in God’s image stands as it was.

“That stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in”. The verb is nâṭâh, to stretch or spread out. The heavens, vast beyond measure to us, are hung by God as easily as a thin curtain. Then the picture turns to a tent, which gives shelter, order and a place to live, and so the sky is the roof of a home God has spread out for life. Job praises the same God, who “hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7).

“That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.” The princes are named with râzan, a root meaning to be heavy or weighty, and so honourable. They are the men of weight in the world, and God makes them weigh nothing. “Bringeth” is nâthan, to give, put or set, a verb used with the widest range of meaning, here joined to lᵉʼayin, “to nothing”. “Maketh” is ʻâsâh, to do or make, and “vanity” is tôhûw, a desolation or worthless thing. ʼAyin and tôhûw are the pair Isaiah has just used of the nations: “All nations before him are as nothing” (Isaiah 40:17). Tôhûw is also the “without form” of Genesis 1:2, where the earth was “without form, and void” (Genesis 1:2). In God’s sight the princes and judges go back to the emptiness that was there before he made the world.

Princes stand for rule and judges for law, so the verse covers every kind of human power. To exiles under Babylon’s kings this was comfort, because the men who ruled them answered to God. “The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men” (Daniel 4:17), and God “removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21). Nebuchadnezzar himself came to confess God’s everlasting dominion (Daniel 4:34–35). The one who sits in the heavens laughs at the rulers who plot against him (Psalm 2:4), and “the LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought” (Psalm 33:10–11). So the psalmist warns, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help” (Psalm 146:3), and Paul says that God has chosen the weak and despised things of the world to bring down the things that are (1 Corinthians 1:27–28).

“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things”. After the earth and its rulers, Isaiah turns his hearers’ eyes to the sky, and “these things” are the stars. The verb is bârâʼ, to create, the verb of “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Babylon studied the stars and looked to them for guidance, and Isaiah later names its “astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators” (Isaiah 47:13). Against all that, the stars are creatures, and the LORD made every one of them.

“That bringeth out their host by number”. The host is tsâbâʼ, an army or host, the word in God’s title “the LORD of hosts”. God leads the stars out the way a commander musters an army, and he counts them as they come. “He calleth them all by names”. A psalm says the same: “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names” (Psalm 147:4). To call by name shows ownership, authority and personal knowledge, as when God says to Israel, “I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (Isaiah 43:1). The Levites in Nehemiah’s day confessed the LORD as the one who made the heavens and all their host (Nehemiah 9:6).

He does it “by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power”, rôb ʼônîym, abundance of strength, and ʼammîyts kôach, mighty in power. Then the verse closes, “not one faileth.” The verb is ʻădar, used of arranging a battle line and mustering troops, and so of finding someone missing at the muster. When God calls the roll of his starry army, every one answers.

This is the ground of the comfort that follows. The people were saying, “My way is hid from the LORD, and my judgment is passed over from my God” (Isaiah 40:27). The God who misses no star in the sky has not lost sight of his people. Jesus says that the very hairs of our heads are numbered (Matthew 10:30), and the faithfulness that keeps the stars in their order is the faithfulness of the God whose mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23).

Isaiah’s question has one answer that the New Testament gives with joy. Nothing created can be likened to God, and yet Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”, through whom all things in heaven and earth were created, thrones and dominions included, and by whom all things consist (Colossians 1:15–17). He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person”, upholding all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). He is the Word who was with God and was God, and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:1–3). That Word “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). The idols in Isaiah’s workshop are made by men. The Son is begotten, truly God and truly man, and in him the God who cannot be pictured has made himself known.

The one who stretches out the heavens “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). God then raised him far above all principality, power, might and dominion (Ephesians 1:20–21) and gave him the name at which every knee shall bow (Philippians 2:9–11), as Paul also writes in Romans 14:11. All power in heaven and in earth is his (Matthew 28:18), he is King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16), and he is the judge of the living and the dead (Acts 10:42). The princes of verse 23 come to nothing, and his kingdom, which is not of this world (John 18:36), stands for ever.

The poor man of verse 20 has no oblation to bring, and Christ is the offering God provides. He is the Lamb of God (John 1:29), who put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (Hebrews 9:26), and by his offering of his body we are sanctified once for all (Hebrews 10:10). The idol has to be nailed down to stay upright. Christ rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4) and says, “I am he that liveth” (Revelation 1:18). There is salvation in his name alone (Acts 4:12).

What Israel had heard “from the beginning” is gathered up in him as well. Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). The God who loses none of the stars loses none of his people either, for Jesus says that of all the Father has given him he will lose nothing, and will raise it up at the last day (John 6:39).

These verses were spoken to people who felt that God had lost sight of them. Isaiah answers by setting before them the God who has no equal. The gods they saw in Babylon were gold hammered over metal, or wood chosen because it would last, chained and nailed so they would stand. The LORD sits above the circle of the earth, the kings and judges who frightened them are grasshoppers before him and stubble in his wind, and the stars come out at his call, each by name, with none missing.

So the passage gives us a true measure of everything else. The rulers who look strong are brief, the things people build to lean on have to be held up themselves, and the one who made the heavens is both great beyond comparison and close enough to know each of his own by name. The chapter goes straight on to say what that means for the weary. He is “the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth”, who does not faint or grow weary (Isaiah 40:28), and the same strength that brings out the host of heaven is the strength he gives to those who wait upon him (Isaiah 40:29–31).