Add parallel Print Page Options

Chapter 41

The Liberator of Israel

Keep silence before me, O coastlands;[a]
    let the nations renew their strength.
Let them draw near and speak;
    let us come together for judgment.
Who has stirred up from the East the champion of justice,
    and summoned him to be his attendant?
To him he delivers nations
    and subdues kings;
With his sword he reduces them to dust,
    with his bow, to driven straw.
He pursues them, passing on without loss,
    by a path his feet scarcely touch.
Who has performed these deeds?
    Who has called forth the generations from the beginning?(A)
I, the Lord, am the first,
    and at the last[b] I am he.

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 41:1–4 Earlier prophets had spoken of the Assyrians and Babylonians as the Lord’s instruments for the punishment of Israel’s sins; here the Lord is described as raising up and giving victory to a foreign ruler in order to deliver Israel from the Babylonian exile. The ruler is Cyrus (44:28; 45:1), king of Anshan in Persia, a vassal of the Babylonians. He rebelled against the Babylonian overlords in 556 B.C., and after a series of victories, entered Babylon as victor in 539; the following year he issued a decree which allowed the Jewish captives to return to their homeland (2 Chr 36:22–23; Ezr 1:1–4). For Second Isaiah, the meteoric success of Cyrus was the work of the Lord to accomplish the deliverance promised by earlier prophets.
  2. 41:4 The first…the last: God as the beginning and end encompasses all reality. The same designation is used in 44:6 and 48:12.