Isaiah 45:8

The message opens, “Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus”. Cyrus founded the Persian Empire and took Babylon in 539 BC. He worshipped other gods, and yet the God of Israel speaks to him directly and gives him a title that belonged to Israel’s own kings and priests.

The word is mâshîyach, “anointed one”, from the verb mâshach, to smear or anoint. It is the word from which “Messiah” comes, and it is most famously used of the coming Saviour. In Israel a man was anointed to set him apart for an office God gave him. David was anointed king (1 Samuel 16:12–13), Aaron was anointed priest (Exodus 29:7), and prophets too were counted as anointed. Cyrus is anointed for a task. God has chosen him, set him apart and given him strength for one great work, the overthrow of Babylon and the release of the exiles. In the verse just before this chapter the LORD also calls him “my shepherd”, who will see Jerusalem and its temple built again (Isaiah 44:28).

That is what happened. After Cyrus took Babylon he issued a decree that let the Jews return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (Ezra 1:1–4). His conquests and his decree served God’s people, which is exactly what this passage says they were for.

Isaiah gave this prophecy in the eighth century BC, well over a century before Cyrus was born and before the Babylonian exile of 586 BC. In Isaiah’s time Assyria ruled the nations around Judah, Babylon’s rise still lay ahead, and Persia was not yet a power. Into that world God names the king who would one day take Babylon.

Through these chapters the LORD sets himself against the idols of the nations, which are silent about what is to come. He is the first and the last (Isaiah 44:6–8), and he declares “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:9–10). Naming Cyrus is that claim made plain in history. The gods of Babylon kept quiet, and the God of Israel named the man who would take their city. He knows every person and every person’s days before they are born (Psalm 139:16), and the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he will (Daniel 4:17).

“Whose right hand I have holden” uses châzaq, a verb that means to be strong or to make strong, to strengthen and make firm, and also to take firm hold. The right hand stands for strength and action. When God takes hold of Cyrus’s right hand, he becomes the source of Cyrus’s strength and the reason he succeeds “to subdue nations before him”.

“I will loose the loins of kings” uses pâthach, to open wide, to loosen or to ungird. The loins were thought of as the seat of a man’s strength, and a belt was tied around them for work or battle. To loose a king’s loins is to take away his strength and courage so that he cannot stand. God weakens the kings and, as verse 5 says, girds Cyrus.

In verse 2 the LORD promises, “I will go before thee”, using yâlak, the ordinary verb to walk. God walks ahead of Cyrus and clears the way. “Make the crooked places straight” rests on hâdar, a root meaning to swell up, so the crooked places are swelling, hilly and uneven ground that slows an army down. God promises to level it.

The rest of verse 2 turns to the city itself. “I will break in pieces the gates of brass” uses shâbar, to break or shatter, and “cut in sunder the bars of iron” uses gâdaʻ, a verb for felling a tree and so for cutting anything down. The bars were the heavy beams or bolts that held a gate shut. Babylon was famous for its massive walls and its gates plated with bronze, and its people thought it could never fall. God names its strongest defences and says he will open them.

In verse 3 God promises Cyrus “the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places”. The first word, ʼôwtsâr, means a treasure or the place where treasure is kept: a storehouse, treasury, armoury, granary or cellar. Chôshek is darkness, and elsewhere it can picture misery, death or ignorance. Here it describes wealth kept out of sight. The second half says the same again: maṭmôwn is hidden riches, and miçtâr is a secret or hidden place. Babylon’s great wealth lay in secure vaults and chambers, some of it buried for safekeeping, and when Cyrus took the city it came into his hands.

God knows where every treasure lies, because all of it is his. “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts” (Haggai 2:8), and “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). All things are of him, through him and to him (Romans 11:36).

The gift has a purpose: “that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.” The wealth is meant to point Cyrus to the one who gave it. The verb for call is qârâʼ, which means to call out to someone or to address him by name, and the word for name is shêm. God calls himself by his covenant name, Yᵉhôvâh, and adds “the God of Israel”, so Cyrus is to learn that the God of a small, conquered people is the one behind his victories. Israel had the same calling: “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD... that ye may know and believe me” (Isaiah 43:10).

Verse 4 gives the reason for everything said to Cyrus so far: “For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel mine elect”. Jacob and Israel are the patriarch’s two names, and here both stand for the whole people descended from him. They are God’s servant and his elect, bâchîyr, a word for one who is chosen. God chose Israel by his grace and for his purpose, and he keeps faith with them even in exile, after all their disobedience. He has promised to gather them from east and west (Isaiah 43:5–7), and he has blotted out their sins and redeemed them (Isaiah 44:21–23). An empire rises and a great city falls so that God can bring his people home.

“I have even called thee by thy name” uses qârâʼ again, the same verb as in verse 3. “I have surnamed thee” means God has given him a further name, a title that marks out his purpose, such as the “anointed” of verse 1. To call someone by name, and to give him a name, was an act of authority, of ownership and of appointing a person’s course. God did both before Cyrus had any thought of him.

This is how God’s choosing works throughout Scripture. He has mercy on whom he will have mercy (Romans 9:15–16), his counsel stands for ever while the counsel of the nations comes to nothing (Psalm 33:10–11), and he works all things after the counsel of his own will (Ephesians 1:11).

The verb yâdaʻ, to know, runs through these verses. It covers finding something out by seeing, recognising, being acquainted with someone, and knowing a person closely. God gives Cyrus treasure “that thou mayest know” (verse 3). Twice he says, “though thou hast not known me” (verses 4 and 5). Then he widens it to the world: “That they may know” (verse 6).

Cyrus was a pagan king with no covenant tie to the LORD, and he did not worship him. Yet God named him, armed him and directed his whole career. People ask whether God’s calling Cyrus by name means that Cyrus came to know him. The calling is God’s choice of Cyrus for a task, and verse 4 says plainly that it came while Cyrus was still a stranger to God. God’s plans rest on his own power and will, and they go forward whether or not the people he uses acknowledge him.

Scripture says this of other rulers as well. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). God removes kings and sets up kings (Daniel 2:20–21), and Paul says there is no power but of God (Romans 13:1). Earlier in Isaiah, God calls Assyria the rod of his anger, though Assyria meant only to destroy (Isaiah 10:5–7). He raised up Pharaoh for his own purpose (Romans 9:17). And Peter tells the people of Jerusalem that they and their rulers acted in ignorance when they put Jesus to death (Acts 3:17).

Verse 5 grounds everything in who God is: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me”. The name Yᵉhôvâh is connected with hayah, “to be”, and it speaks of the God who is self-existent and eternal and who keeps his promises. ʼĕlôhîym, “God”, is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is a plural of majesty, read with a singular sense. “Beside” is zûwlâh, a word used to mean except, only or save. Put together, the LORD says that there is no other god, apart from him or alongside him.

Israel’s whole faith rests on this. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and “the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him” (Deuteronomy 4:35). The psalmist says to God, “thou art God alone” (Psalm 86:10), and “our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Psalm 115:3). For the exiles this was strong comfort. They lived in Babylon among a crowd of gods and grand temples, and they were tempted to think that their own God had been beaten or had left them. He tells them that Babylon’s gods are nothing, and that he alone rules every nation.

“I girded thee” uses ʼâzar, to belt or bind about. A man girded himself to get ready for battle, a journey or hard work, so to gird someone is to equip and strengthen him for his task. Every victory Cyrus won came from that unseen hand.

Verse 7 states God’s rule over everything in four short clauses: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” To form is yâtsar, to mould or shape as a potter shapes clay. Create is bârâʼ, the verb Scripture uses for God bringing something into being. Light is ʼôwr, and darkness is chôshek, the same word as in the “treasures of darkness” of verse 3. Peace is shâlôwm, which means wholeness, well-being and prosperity.

Light and darkness, peace and trouble, take in the whole of the world and the whole of human life, from one end to the other. Every part of it answers to the LORD. The Persians, whose empire was about to swallow Babylon, came to follow Zoroastrianism, which set a good spirit of light, Ahura Mazda, against a destructive spirit of darkness, Angra Mainyu. Against any idea of two powers at war, this verse says that one God stands over light and darkness alike and leaves no room for a rival. The whole of Isaiah 45 rests on that, since a God who rules even darkness and calamity can certainly use a foreign king.

Verse 8 turns from the king to the world, and the LORD speaks to heaven and earth as if they were listening. “Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness” pictures righteousness falling like rain, coming from God above. Then “let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation” pictures the ground opening and bearing a crop, the way soil brings forth fruit. “And let righteousness spring up together” shows righteousness growing up from below like a plant, side by side with salvation.

Two related Hebrew words lie behind “righteousness” in this verse. Tsedeq comes first and means rightness, righteousness and justice in what is done and decided. Tsᵉdâqâh is the righteousness that springs up. Salvation is yeshaʻ, deliverance, liberty, safety and prosperity, covering both rescue from oppressors such as Babylon and the well-being of God’s people.

Righteousness and salvation come up “together” because they belong together throughout Isaiah. God saves in keeping with his justice and his faithfulness to his covenant, and his saving brings his people into a right standing before him. A psalm uses the same picture of heaven and earth: “Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven” (Psalm 85:11). Paul says that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God (Romans 1:17) and that the believer’s righteousness is the one which is of God by faith (Philippians 3:9).

The verse closes, “I the LORD have created it.” The verb is bârâʼ, the same verb as “create darkness” and “create evil” in verse 7, and it ties this saving work to God’s first work of creation in Genesis 1. The God who made heaven and earth commands them to bring forth his salvation, and it comes because he has made it. Peter looks ahead to new heavens and a new earth, “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13).

Cyrus, God’s anointed, freed God’s people from Babylon and let them rebuild their temple. Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One in the fullest sense, frees his people from sin, death and the devil. On the cross he “spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), and through death he destroyed him that had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). Cyrus opened the gates of a city, and Jesus has opened a new and living way into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19–20). Cyrus made way for a temple of stone, and in Christ believers are built together into a dwelling place of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19–22). He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and he is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

The hidden riches of verse 3 point to the mystery that was hidden for ages and is now made known in Christ (Colossians 1:26–27), who is the light of the world (John 8:12). Jesus is also God’s true servant and chosen one, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). Cyrus did not know the God who called him, and when Christ came, the world that was made by him knew him not, and his own received him not (John 1:10–11). The promises made to Abraham and his seed find their fulfilment in him (Galatians 3:16).

The God who says “there is none else” is fully revealed in his Son, who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9), and by whom all things were created and hold together (Colossians 1:16–17, John 1:3). Paul calls Christ “God blessed for ever” (Romans 9:5), and there is one God and one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). The knowledge of God that verse 6 longs for, from the rising of the sun to the west, goes out through the gospel of the risen Christ, to whom all power is given in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18).

Verse 7’s “I make peace” comes to its fullest meaning in the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), who made peace through the cross and broke down the wall between peoples (Ephesians 2:14–16), and who gives a peace the world cannot give (John 14:27). His light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not (John 1:5). The worst calamity of all, his death, was part of God’s plan and became the means of redemption, and God has now raised him far above all principality and power (Ephesians 1:21).

Verse 8’s righteousness from heaven and salvation from the earth find their answer in him as well. God made him to be sin for us, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he is “the author of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:9). The earth opening to bring forth salvation is a picture of his coming to earth, his death and his rising from the grave. And as God created the heavens and the earth, he has created a new people in Christ, “his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10).

This passage shows a God who is never caught off guard by the rise of an empire. He named the conqueror of Babylon before the man was born, held his hand, walked ahead of him and opened gates for him, and he did it all to bring a small, scattered people home. The rulers of the world, including those who never acknowledge him, serve his purposes for his people.

It shows a God who stands alone. Light and darkness, peace and calamity, all answer to him, and there is no rival power for his people to fear. When the LORD says “I the LORD do all these things”, the hard seasons and the good ones are both held in the same hand.

And it shows a God whose purpose is salvation. Everything in these eight verses moves toward the moment when heaven rains down righteousness and the earth brings forth salvation, a work God calls his own creation. That salvation has come in Jesus Christ, and it reaches from the rising of the sun to the west, so that you and everyone who hears may know that he is the LORD, and there is none else.