Isaiah 40:12

"Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of Jehovah, or being his counselor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel? and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are accounted as small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt-offering. All the nations are as nothing before him as less than nothing, and vanity."

Isaiah here offered no argument for the existence of God, because he was addressing a people who had long been accustomed to the acceptance of such a fact. Here, Isaiah was commenting upon the greatness of God. As Hailey noted, "No more appropriate title for these verses could be imagined than the one found in the ASV, as follows: `The Incomparable Greatness of God.'"[14]

There is a series of rhetorical questions here, every one of which requires the answer: "No one." Kelley commented that the use of such questions, "was a favorite literary device of this prophet."[15]

The apostle Paul quoted from Isaiah 40:13 in Romans 11:34. One of the unusual metaphors here is in Isaiah 40:16 where it is declared that the whole forest of Lebanon for the fire and all of the beasts thereof for the burnt-offering would not be sufficient to provide a single sacrifice for such a great God as Jehovah!

"The nations ..." (Isaiah 40:17). This means all of the nations on earth taken together.