Biblion Bible Commentary
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Look to Me and Be Saved, All the Ends of the Earth
Isaiah 45:14-25
14 Yahweh says: “The labor of Egypt, and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and the Sabeans, men of stature, will come over to you, and they will be yours. They will go after you. They shall come over in chains. They will bow down to you. They will make supplication to you: ‘Surely God is in you; and there is no one else. There is no other god. · WEB
A God who hides himself, an invitation issued to everybody alive, and an oath that every knee will bend.
Most certainly you are a God who has hidden yourself, God of Israel, the Savior Isaiah 45:15.
The sentence is spoken by foreigners who have just recognized him, and it is the strangest confession in the book. The moment of discovery produces the observation that he had been concealed — and the two titles at the end are held together: hidden, and Savior.
Israel will be saved by Yahweh with an everlasting salvation Isaiah 45:17.
Yahweh who created the heavens, the God who formed the earth and made it, who established it and didn't create it a waste, who formed it to be inhabited Isaiah 45:18.
The word for waste is the one from the second verse of Genesis. The claim is about intent: the world was not made empty, it was made to be lived in, and the same verb runs through the sentence four times.
I have not spoken in secret, in a place of the land of darkness. I didn't say to the offspring of Jacob, "Seek me in vain" Isaiah 45:19.
Against the hiddenness of verse fifteen, this. Whatever is meant by a God who hides, it does not include oracles delivered in the dark or a search set up to fail. The revelation has been public and the seeking has not been pointless.
Those have no knowledge who carry the wood of their engraved image, and pray to a god that can't save Isaiah 45:20.
Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other Isaiah 45:22.
The widest invitation in the Old Testament, and the verb asks for almost nothing. Not come, not work, not bring — look. It is the same instruction given to people dying of snakebite in the wilderness, who were told to look at a pole and live Numbers 21:8.
And the reason attached is not that looking is effective but that there is nowhere else to look.
I have sworn by myself. The word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and will not be revoked, that to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath Isaiah 45:23.
Paul quotes this verse twice — once of the judgment seat of God Romans 14:11, and once at the climax of the hymn in Philippians, where the knees that bow are bowing at the name of Jesus Philippians 2:10–11. The oath a God swore by himself, that every knee would bend to him, is applied there without alteration.
They will say of me, "There is righteousness and strength only in Yahweh" Isaiah 45:24.
All the offspring of Israel will be justified in Yahweh, and will rejoice Isaiah 45:25.
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