Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 41:22

"Let them bring forth, and declare unto us what shall happen: declare ye the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or show us things to come." — Isaiah 41:22 (ASV)

The former things. —Not, as the Authorized Version suggests, the things of the remote past, but those that lie at the head, or beginning of things to come—the near future. Can the false gods predict them as the pledge and earnest of predictions that go farther? Can they see a single year before them?

We note that the challenge exactly corresponds to Isaiah’s own method of giving “signs” that his words are not idly spoken (Isaiah 7:10–14; Isaiah 38:7–8). The other meaning is maintained, however, by some critics as more in harmony with Isaiah 43:18. The things for to come lie, as it were, in the middle future, the hereafter of Isaiah 41:23, in the more remote. All are alike hidden from the gods of the heathen oracles.