This chapter, if it be not a second part with the preceding one as the first, is a most appropriate sequel. For the Lord, having opened His counsels as to Jerusalem and its comfort (after many vicissitudes and troubles) at His coming in power and glory, turns now to the Gentiles, challenging them to meet Him in judgment. He had there been displayed in His shepherd care over Israel, in His might and wisdom over all, needing no counselor, and the nations counted less than nothing and vanity, so that comparison or image was futile, and Israel's unbelief was the more deplorable because of His special goodness to all amongst them who waited on Him. Now He says (ver. 1) “Keep silence before me, O islands, and let the people[s] renew their strength: let them come near, then let them speak; let us come near together to judgment.”
Cyrus is the text. It is no question of a past name of renown, but of a future deliverer, of whom God knew all; man and his idols could say nothing. Before the prescient eye of the prophet stands the mighty conqueror of Babylon. None but the true God, who made him the instrument of His designs in providence, had anticipated his rise. Jehovah here describes him, but typically (in the manner of the prophetic Spirit) as the shadow of a greater than Cyrus, who should forever overturn the idols of the nations, judge their pride, and deliver the people of Israel from all their captivities. “Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? He gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow. He pursued them and passed safely, even by the way that he had not gone with his feet. Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he.” (Ver. 3, 4.)
It is as vain to drag in the gospel of Christ here as to interpret Jacob and Israel in chapter 40 of Christendom. Nor is the plea at all valid that the Jews will never more meddle with idols. Matt. 12:43; 24:15,43When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. (Matthew 12:43)
15When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) (Matthew 24:15) not to speak of the Revelation, are clear evidence confirmatory of Isa. 65; 66, and of other passages in the Old Testament, which prove that the end of the age will see a fatal revival of idolatry, the return of the unclean spirit with the full antichristian power of Satan, which will bring down the Assyrian scourge on the Jews and also the Lord's coming in vengeance. The last state of that generation then which rejected Christ will be characterized both by idol-worship and the Antichrist: so that, on this score, there is no pretense for turning aside the expostulation to the Gentiles that are now baptized, or for interpreting Jacob and Israel of Christendom as some have done who ought to have known better. Again, it is absurd to say that the gospel could be foreshown by the first one raised up from the East; for, among the Jews, the East was always reckoned from Palestine, never Palestine itself. The Rabbinical idea (strange to say, espoused by Calvin) was not so unreasonable: the allusion, they thought, was to Abraham, who was a righteous man called out of Mesopotamia. But all else fails. For who could think that his exceptional sally against the kings of the East who were returning after their successful raid into the valley of the Jordan, or the incidents of Pharaoh and Abimelech, duly answer to the giving up of nations and subduing kings, making his sword as a column of dust and as the driven stubble his bow in resistless progress? Still less does it suit the testimony of Christ in the gospel. The comparison of chapter 45:1, 13 may convince any thoughtful mind that Cyrus is really in view, but of course ultimately as foreshadowing the triumph when He comes in His kingdom, putting all enemies under His feet, instead of gathering souls out of the world in one body for heaven as He is now doing by the Holy Ghost's power through the gospel. (Comp. also Ezra 1:1-31Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, 2Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:1‑3).) If the Babylonish captivity of Judah was the divine chastening of their idolatry by means of the chief patron of idols on earth, the fall of Babylon was a tremendous blow on its own idolatry, predicted as it was by the Jewish prophet long before either event. These were among the reasons which made the first success and the final ruin of Babylon so important in Scripture, They were bound up with God's ways in His people. And hence the answer to the infidel sneer touching the silence of prophecy respecting America. What has the discovery or growth of the new world of the far west to do with Israel? From the New Testament, again, all such matters are excluded, because the rejected Messiah involves not only the disappearance of Israel and the kingdoms of the earth from the foreground, but the calling of the Church for glory in the heavenly places as the body and bride of Christ, at least until the corruption of Christendom becomes morally unbearable and the age ends in the judgment of apostate Jews and Gentiles, under the beast and the false prophet, when Christ and His glorified saints appear from heaven, and the godly remnant of Jews here below become a strong nation, the earthly center of His kingdom under the whole heaven.
Hence the suitability here of confronting in this very connection “Jehovah, the First and with the last,” the One who had wrought and spoken. Why were the gods of the nations silent and powerless? why were the boasted oracles dumb? If the fall of Judah, moral necessity as it was, (unless Jehovah must sanction His own dishonor in the midst of His people and sustain them to give His glory to a graven image), made His power questionable in a Gentile's eyes, let them learn in the downfall of Babylon which the Jews alone knew generations beforehand, even to the name and race of him who was its instrument, that His righteousness and wisdom were no less than His power, and that the chastised Jews were the people of His choice. “The isles saw it, and feared; the ends of the earth were afraid, drew near, and came. They helped every one his neighbor; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved. But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend. Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away.” (Ver. 5-9.)
The honor to which Cyrus was called by the way, was no change in His purposes or affections respecting Israel. Not Cyrus but Israel was His servant. (See ver. 8, 9.) “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee: yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of naught. For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel.” (Ver. 10-16.) These last words, however, render it beyond just doubt that the prophet carries his eye far beyond the immediate occasion and presents not the condition of the Jews under their Persian or other Gentile lords, but days still future when Israel shall take them captive whose captives they were, and shall rule over their oppressors. It is impossible to apply to the same period Nehemiah's language (chap. 9) and the prophetic description here. “Behold we are servants this day, and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it: and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins: also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress.” (Ver. 36, 37.) Here the word is in manifest contrast: “Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small,” &c.: figurative language, no doubt, but figures neither of servitude, nor of the grace of the gospel, but of triumph when the true Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings and Israel shall flourish and tread down the wicked in the day that shall burn all the proud and lawless as an oven. The Maccabean and Apostolic triumphs of Vitringa and others are a burlesque on a sound interpretation. Not only must we leave room for the future but for a total change from the character of God's actual working in and by the Church. Now it is grace building living stones on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone; then it will be the awful descent of the Stone cut without hands on the statue of Gentile empire in its last phase, which corresponds with the judicial functions of Israel there described in that great day.
Not that refreshment will fail from Jehovah for Israel. “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will bear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.” (Ver. 17-20.)
The Lord then recurs to a renewal of His challenge to the Gentiles and their idols, but in terms of justly increased contempt for their trust in a thing of naught, again grounding His appeal on their ignorance of the scourge of idolatry who would come from the north and east. “Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of naught: an abomination is he that chooseth you. I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth clay. Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that showeth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is none that heareth your words. The first shall say to Zion, Behold, behold them: and I will give to Jerusalem one that bringeth good tidings. For I beheld, and there was no man; even among them, and there was no counselor, that, when I asked of them, could answer a word.” (Ver. 21-28.) There was not even reason—nothing but insensate folly in men owning as gods things which could neither speak nor hear. “Behold they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion.” (Ver. 29.) Human helps to devotion are the death-bed of faith.