I Call You by Your Name Though You Have Not Known Me
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: 2 “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. 3 I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, who calls you by your name, even the God of Israel. 4 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. 5 I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. Besides me, there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not known me, 6 that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is no one besides me. I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. 7 I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things. 8 Rain, you heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, that it may produce salvation, and let it cause righteousness to spring up with it. I, Yahweh, have created it. 9 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?’ or your work, ‘He has no hands’? 10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What have you become the father of?’ or to a mother, ‘What have you given birth to?’” 11 Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel and his Maker says: “You ask me about the things that are to come, concerning my sons, and you command me concerning the work of my hands! 12 I have made the earth, and created man on it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens. I have commanded all their army. 13 I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways straight. He shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward,” says Yahweh of Armies.
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 and strip kings of their armor, to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut:
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.
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.
I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, who calls you by your name, even the God of Israel.
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.
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.
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?’ or your work, ‘He has no hands’?
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?’ or to a mother, ‘What have you given birth to?’”
The second image is a child interrogating a parent about the decision to have him.
I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways straight. He shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward,” says Yahweh of Armies.
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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