Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 41
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Isaiah 41
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Isaiah 41
"Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the peoples renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak; let us come near together to judgment." — Isaiah 41:1 (ASV)
O islands. —See Note on Isaiah 40:15.
Let the people renew their strength ... —This is the same phrase as in Isaiah 40:31, but here, perhaps, with a touch of irony. The heathen are challenged to the great controversy and will need all their “strength” and “strong reasons” if they accept the challenge.
In what follows, we have to think of the prophet as having, like Balaam, a vision of what shall come to pass in the “latter days” (Numbers 24:20), seeing in it not only the forms of the old empires on their way to Hades, as in Isaiah 14:9-12, but also the appearance on the scene of the new conqueror.
"Who hath raised up one from the east, whom he calleth in righteousness to his foot? he giveth nations before him, and maketh him rule over kings; he giveth them as the dust to his sword, as the driven stubble to his bow." — Isaiah 41:2 (ASV)
Who raised up ... —More accurately, Who has raised up from the East the man whom Righteousness calls (or, whom He calls in righteousness) to tread in His steps. (Compare to Isaiah 45:2.) The man so raised up to rule over the “islands” and “peoples” is none other than Koresh (Cyrus), the future restorer of Israel.
The thought of Cyrus as working out the righteousness of God is dominant in these chapters (Isaiah 42:6; Isaiah 45:13). In the rapidity of his conquest, the prophet urges men to see the proof that he is doing God’s work. So Jeremiah speaks of Nebuchadnezzar as the servant of Jehovah (Jeremiah 27:6). One may notice, if only to reject, the exposition of the Targum, followed by some commentators, which refers the verse to the call of Abraham and the victory of Genesis 14:0.
He gave them. —Better, He gives them, the future seen as present. The Septuagint and some modern critics follow a reading which gives, he makes them as dust, their sword as stubble.
"He pursueth them, and passeth on safely, even by a way that he had not gone with his feet." — Isaiah 41:3 (ASV)
He pursued ... —Tenses in the present, as before.
By the way that he had not gone —i.e., by a new untrodden path. So Tiglath-Pileser and other Assyrian kings continually boast that they had led their armies by paths that none had traversed before them (Records of the Past, i. 15, v. 16).
"Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I, Jehovah, the first, and with the last, I am he." — Isaiah 41:4 (ASV)
I the Lord ... —The words are the utterance of the great thought of eternity which is the essence of the creed of Israel (Psalms 90:2; Psalms 102:26), and appear in the Alpha and Omega of Revelation 1:11; Revelation 4:8. The identical formula, I am He, appears in Isaiah 43:10; Isaiah 43:13; Isaiah 46:4; Isaiah 48:12. It is probably used as an assertion of an eternal being in the I AM of John 8:58.
"The isles have seen, and fear; the ends of the earth tremble; they draw near, and come." — Isaiah 41:5 (ASV)
The isles saw it, and feared ... —The words paint the terror caused by the rapid conquests of Cyrus, but the terror led, as the following verses show, to something very different from the acknowledgment of the Eternal. As the sailors in the ship of Tarshish called each man on his God (Jonah 1:5), so each nation turned to its oracles and its shrines. The gods had to be propitiated by new statues, and a fresh impetus was given to the manufacture of idols, probably for the purpose of being carried forth to battle as a protection. (Compare 1 Samuel 4:5–7; Herodotus i. 26.)
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