Biblion Bible Commentary
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I Call You by Your Name Though You Have Not Known Me
Isaiah 45:1-13
1 Yahweh says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their armor, to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut: · WEB
A pagan king is called God's anointed and told he was commissioned by a God he has never met.
Yahweh says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before him Isaiah 45:1.
The title is messiah — anointed one — and it is given to a Persian. It is used in Scripture of priests, of kings of Israel, and of one other; this is the only place it is applied to a foreigner, and the book uses it without apology.
I will go before you and make the rough places smooth. I will break the doors of bronze in pieces and cut apart the bars of iron Isaiah 45:2.
Babylon's gates. The city fell in a night with its defenses unbreached, and the account elsewhere describes the river diverted and the army walking in Daniel 5:30.
That you may know that it is I, Yahweh, who calls you by your name, even the God of Israel Isaiah 45:3.
The purpose stated to Cyrus himself: so that he will find out who arranged it.
For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called you by your name. I have given you a title, though you have not known me Isaiah 45:4.
Two things in one verse, and both are hard. The empire-changing career of a Persian king is said to be for Jacob's sake — the world's politics arranged around a displaced people nobody had heard of. And the man himself does not know the God who commissioned him, which is said twice Isaiah 45:5.
I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things Isaiah 45:7.
The most uncompromising verse in the section and it should not be softened. The word rendered calamity is the ordinary word for evil in the sense of disaster, not moral wrong — the same word used of the trouble God brings on a nation Amos 3:6. What is denied is the tidy arrangement in which one power sends good and another sends harm; the book will not allow a second agency behind the darkness.
Woe to him who strives with his Maker— a clay pot among the clay pots of the earth! Shall the clay ask him who fashions it, "What are you making?" Isaiah 45:9.
The potter again Isaiah 29:16, and Paul takes the image up in the same argument where he quotes this book on the remnant Romans 9:20.
Woe to him who says to a father, "What have you become the father of?" Isaiah 45:10.
The second image is a child interrogating a parent about the decision to have him.
He shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward Isaiah 45:13.
No ransom is paid to Cyrus, and none is paid by him. The release costs the exiles nothing, which is the last thing said about the whole arrangement.
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