Isaiah 43:13

Isaiah 40–55 speaks comfort to God’s people in their exile in Babylon, a time of grief when the gods of their captors looked strong. Just before this passage the LORD has promised that Israel is his chosen and redeemed people, and that he will be with them through the waters and the fire (Isaiah 43:1–7). Now the scene becomes a court. “Bring forth” is yâtsâʼ, to go or come out, and in this form to bring out: God orders his people brought out to stand before him.

The people he calls are pictured in two short phrases. The word for blind, ʻivvêr, and the word for deaf, chêrêsh, can each be used of the body or of the heart, and here they speak of the heart, because these people have eyes and ears. Israel had seen the LORD bring them out of Egypt and give his law at Sinai, and had heard his warnings and promises through his prophets, and still they failed to grasp what he was doing in their history and in their exile. Their dullness was a hardened heart that turned away from what God had plainly shown, the very hardening Isaiah was warned of when he was first sent to his people (Isaiah 6:9–10). Jeremiah speaks to a people who have eyes and ears and still are blind and deaf to God’s word (Jeremiah 5:21), and Jesus speaks of the same seeing without seeing when he explains why he teaches in parables (Matthew 13:13–15).

This summons is a rebuke and an invitation at once. It exposes Israel’s failure, and yet God calls these very people into his presence because he means to make them his witnesses in verse 10. His faithfulness to them holds while their sight fails, and there is hope that their eyes and ears will be opened.

Now the whole world is summoned: “Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled.” The nations (gôwy) and the peoples (lᵉʼôm) are gathered (qâbats) and assembled (ʼâçaph) on purpose, the way a town’s elders sat in the gate to settle disputes and test claims. In this court the LORD sets his claim to be God against every other claim. Babylon, where the exiles lived, worshipped Marduk, Ishtar and many other gods, and its priests and soothsayers tried to read the future through omens, the stars and rites, often with unclear and unreliable results.

The heart of the challenge is a question: “who among them can declare this, and shew us former things?” The verb for declare, nâgad, means to stand out in front of someone, and so to make known, to announce by word of mouth to one who is present. It can also mean to expose, predict, explain or praise, and here it means to foretell. “This” is what God is about to do, above all the return of his people from exile. The question expects the answer that nobody can, because the LORD alone knows and rules the whole course of history. He had already put the idols to the same test (Isaiah 41:21–29), and he had said that the former things had come to pass and that he declares new things before they spring forth (Isaiah 42:9).

“Let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified.” A witness, ʻêd, is a person who testifies, or the testimony or evidence itself, and its root means to testify as by repeating. In Israel’s courts witnesses were needed to establish the truth of a claim. If the nations’ gods ever foretold anything, let someone come forward and say so, so that they may be justified (tsâdaq), shown to be in the right. God knows full well that such witnesses will be absent.

Then he gives them the other course: “or let them hear, and say, It is truth.” To hear (shâmaʻ) is to listen and take in the LORD’s case, and to say (ʼâmar) “It is truth” is to admit it. The word for truth, ʼemeth, speaks of stability and certainty, of what is firm and can be relied on. When their witnesses fail to appear, the only right answer left to the nations is to confess that the LORD’s word is true and that he is the one true God.

When the nations’ gods stand silent, the LORD calls his own witnesses, and they are the blind and deaf people of verse 8. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen.” The same word ʻêd is used, with the same sense of the courtroom: Israel is the evidence in the LORD’s case. Their place is the LORD’s own appointment. He chose them, and he calls the nation his servant, a name that runs through these chapters of Isaiah and is heard in the servant songs. They were chosen by grace, to carry his revelation to the nations.

Their history is the testimony they bring. He brought them out of Egypt through the sea (Exodus 14), kept them in the wilderness, and now promises to bring them home from Babylon, as the verses that follow go on to say in his promise of a new act of redemption (Isaiah 43:14–21). These things happened, and Israel saw them. Israel stood apart from the religion of the nations around them, a people whose God showed himself in what he did in their history.

The witnesses themselves have something to gain: “that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he.” To know, yâdaʻ, is a rich word that takes in knowing by experience, the knowledge that comes from meeting someone and living through what he does. To believe is ʼâman. The LORD wants his witnesses to know him, to trust him and to understand who he is, and their witness to the nations grows out of that knowledge. Jeremiah gives the same priority when he says that the one who boasts should boast in understanding and knowing the LORD (Jeremiah 9:24).

Verse 11 is short and emphatic. “I, even I” repeats the Hebrew word for I, ‘ānōkî ‘ānōkî, to fix attention on the speaker, so that a people surrounded by the gods of the nations may be sure who is speaking to them. “Am the LORD” gives his personal name, Yᵉhôvâh, which the KJV writes as “the LORD”. The name comes from the root hayah, “to be”, and speaks of God who exists of himself and for ever, the God who keeps covenant with his people and is at work in their history.

“Beside” is bilʻădêy, a word formed from the elements for “not” and “until”, which means except or apart from. The saviour is yâshaʻ, from a root meaning to be open, wide or free. To save is to bring someone out of distress into safety and freedom, out of a narrow place into room to live. The verse joins God’s name to his saving: because he alone is the LORD, he alone can save. For the exiles this meant that their return from Babylon would be his work alone, owed to him and to him only. The same Saviour rescues his people from sin and its consequences, and Isaiah sings, “Behold, God is my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2).

Scripture says this again and again. In the song of Moses the LORD says that he alone puts to death and saves (Deuteronomy 32:39). Through Hosea he says, “there is no saviour beside me” (Hosea 13:4), and through Isaiah, “I am the LORD, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:5). Israel confessed the oneness of God every time it said the Shema, “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and Paul writes that there is one God and one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). For a people in exile this was hope. The Saviour who claims them is the God who had already told them, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10).

Verse 12 sets out the LORD’s case: “I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed.” “Declared” is nâgad, the same verb as in God’s question to the nations, who could declare this. He announced beforehand what he would do. “Saved” is yâshaʻ, the word behind “saviour” in verse 11, and it points to his acts of rescue, above all the Exodus, and to the return from Babylon he is now promising. “Shewed” is shâmaʻ, the ordinary verb for hearing, which in its causative form means to make someone hear, to tell. It is the same verb as “let them hear” in verse 9. God has made his word heard and his power known, so that his people could hear and understand. He did what he challenged the nations’ gods to do, and he did it before Israel’s eyes.

“When there was no strange god among you”: the word for strange is zûwr, foreign or outside, and the word for god here is ʼêl. In all those acts the LORD alone was at work among his people, and a foreign god had no share in any of them. That reminded Israel of their covenant with him, and it stands against every kind of idolatry.

“Therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.” “Saith the LORD” is nᵉʼum Yᵉhôvâh, and nᵉʼum means an utterance or declaration, the word for a prophetic statement, so the commission comes with the LORD’s own authority. ʼêl means god, and chiefly God, and it also carries the sense of strength or might. The psalmist calls God’s people to the same knowledge, “Know ye that the LORD he is God” (Psalm 100:3). Because God acted alone, Israel’s very existence, its survival through trials and its coming restoration are the proof that the LORD alone is God, and Israel is to tell it to the idolatrous nations. Their witness rests on what God has done, and its force comes from him.

“Yea, before the day was I am he.” The word for day, yôwm, means a day or a span of time. Before any day had come, God already was, and “I am he” is said again to make the point. He is the eternal God, before time and over it, the author of the order of days he made.

“And there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” To deliver, nâtsal, is to rescue or snatch away, and the one rescued is taken “out of the hand of” whatever holds him. Here the hand is God’s own, yâd, the picture of his power and rule. Whatever God holds stays in his grip. That is a comfort to his people, whom he keeps, and a warning to his enemies, who are in his hand just as surely.

“I will work, and who shall let it?” To work is pâʻal, to do, make or work, and Strong’s adds that it is used especially of what one practises. The verb is the ordinary word for doing, and the certainty lies in the question that follows. Once God acts, nobody can turn his work back. His counsel stands for ever (Psalm 33:11), Job confessed that God’s plans cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2), and his dominion over all the inhabitants of the earth carries out his will (Daniel 4:35). God’s people can rest on this, because the God who makes the promises of this chapter is fully able to keep them, whatever Israel’s plight and however strong their oppressors look.

These verses find their fullest meaning in Jesus Christ. When Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), and tells his hearers that when they have lifted up the Son of man they will know “that I am he” (John 8:28), he speaks of himself in the words the LORD uses here. His other “I am” sayings, such as “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) and “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25), carry the same claim. He is the eternal Word, who was with God in the beginning and was God (John 1:1), the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) and the brightness of his glory (Hebrews 1:3). The Word was made flesh (John 1:14), and in him the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9).

“Beside me there is no saviour” is fulfilled in him. The angel told Joseph to call the child Jesus, “for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), and the shepherds heard of “a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Peter preached, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), and Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). He is the truth the nations are called to hear and confess in verse 9, and Paul writes that the one who confesses Jesus as Lord and believes that God raised him from the dead will be saved (Romans 10:9–10). Every knee will one day bow to him and every tongue confess him Lord (Philippians 2:9–11).

The former things God declared all come together in Christ, from his birth, foretold in Isaiah 7:14, to his death and resurrection, which fulfilled what was written of him in the law, the prophets and the psalms (Luke 24:44). Israel was called to be God’s witness, and Jesus is the faithful witness (Revelation 1:5), who came into the world to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37) and has made the unseen God known (John 1:18). His people are now his witnesses, sent in the power of the Holy Spirit “unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The hand of verse 13 is his hand too: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28). And God’s greatest work, the salvation of his people through the cross and the resurrection, went forward exactly as he purposed. Sin, death and the grave were powerless to turn it back, and Christ triumphed over the powers that stood against it (Colossians 2:15).

These verses give God’s people their place in the world. We stand where Israel stood, once blind and deaf, brought into God’s presence by his grace, and called to tell what he has done. Our witness rests on his deeds. He has declared his word, he has saved us in Christ, and he has made it heard, and the strength of our testimony is his, whatever our own eloquence or strength.

The passage also shows how small every rival is. The strange gods of our own day, such as wealth, power, comfort, the approval of others and trust in ourselves, are formed things, and they have never foretold a future or saved a soul. Jesus said that no man can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), and the LORD here claims his people whole, because beside him there is no saviour.

And the God who speaks here was before the day was. He holds his people in his hand, and his work goes forward to its end. When the world looks out of control and its powers look strong, the question of verse 13 still stands with its answer: “I will work, and who shall let it?”