Isaiah 41:8-13

2. THE SECOND CHIEF FIGURE: THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH ISRAEL CHOSEN IN ABRAHAM AND CALLED IN GLORIOUS VICTORY

Isaiah 41:8-13

8          But thou, Israel, 14art my servant,

Jacob whom I have chosen,The seed of Abraham my friend.

9     Thou whom I have 15taken from the ends of the earth,

And called thee from the 16chief men thereof,

And said unto thee, Thou art my servant;

I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away

10     Fear thou not; for I am with thee:

17Be not dismayed; for I am thy God:

I 18will strengthen thee; yea, I 19will help thee;

Yea, I fwill uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

11     Behold, all they that were incensed against thee

Shall be ashamed and confounded

20They shall be as nothing;

And 21they that strive with thee shall perish.

12     Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them,

Even 22them that contended with thee:

23They that war against thee

Shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought.

13     For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand,

Saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL

See List for the recurrence of the words: Isaiah 41:8. אֹהֵב—בָּחַר Isaiah 41:9. אָצִיל. Isaiah 41:10. אָמַץ—שָׁעָה. Isaiah 41:11 כָּלַם. Isaiah 41:12. אֶפֶם.

Isaiah 41:9. On קצות הארץ see Isaiah 40:28.

Isaiah 41:10. תשׁתע, Hithp. from שָׁעָה stands here in the sense of “to look anxiously about.”—כי אני אלהיד occurs only here; see Isaiah 41:13; Isaiah 51:15.—On עָזַר see. Isaiah 41:6.

Isaiah 41:11. נחרים again only Isaiah 45:24.—אַנְשֵׁי רִיב only here in Isaiah; comp. Judges 12:2; Job 31:35; Jeremiah 15:10.

Isaiah 41:12. מַצּוּת jurgium, ἅπ. λεγ.; comp. Isaiah 58:4, and נצה rixari, Isaiah 37:26.—אנשׁי מלִח׳ only here in Isa. comp. Isaiah 42:13; Jeremiah 50:30; Ezekiel 27:10.

Isaiah 41:13. מחזיק ימינד only here; comp. Isaiah 45:1; Isaiah 51:18.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. But thou Israel——away.

Isaiah 41:8-9. In the preceding section (Isaiah 41:1-7) the Prophet has introduced the principal figure of the prophetic cycle, chaps. 40–48. With this is immediately connected another: the Servant of Jehovah in a national sense.

But thou Israel is evidently contrasted with “islands and people,” Isaiah 41:1. The Prophet turns to Israel with well-founded and glorious consolation. The Lord calls His people Israel my servant. We encounter here for the first time this significant notion of the עֶבֶד יהוה. Yet not the subjective, but the objective side of the notion is made prominent. The nation is not so named because it has chosen the Lord for its God out of the great mass of gods that, according to heathen ideas, are in existence, therefore not because “Jehovah was its national god in contrast with other nations, the servants of Baal, Moloch,” etc. (Hitzig). On the contrary, they are so named because the Lord has chosen Israel for His possession, His instrument, His servant. For a servant is the property of his lord, and Israel is the “peculiar people” (Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 7:6; Deuteronomy 14:2; Psalms 135:4; Malachi 3:17). But Israel is chosen in its ancestor Abraham, whom, already, the Lord calls “my servant” Genesis 26:24, which passage easily comes to mind, since Isaiah 41:10 is evidently a citation from it. Thus Abraham was not only chosen for his person, though what he was personally by God’s grace, fitted him to be for all times a pattern of the right sort of “servant of Jehovah,” even in subjective respects. Hence he is called My friend. For love is the fulfilling of the law, and involves faith (Genesis 15:6; Deuteronomy 6:5). In 2 Chronicles 22:7 Abraham has the same title; also in James 2:23. In Arabic his regular surname is Chalil-Allah, i.e., “confidant of God.” Abraham was chosen that by his seed all the nations of the earth might be blessed. And after Isaac and Jacob, this seed was to be the “great nation” that the Lord would make of Abraham (Genesis 12:2), and to which He would give the land of his pilgrimage (ibid. Genesis 41:7; Genesis 13:15; Genesis 15:18, etc). Accordingly Israel is the servant of Jehovah primarily as the seed of Abraham. This is purely an objective honor and dignity, belonging to the nation by reason of the election of their ancestor, but of which, of course, it must make itself worthy by worshipping Jehovah alone as its God, and serving Him with its entire being and possessions. On the parallelism of Israel and Jacob see Isaiah 40:27.

With great emphasis the Prophet repeats in various forms the thought that Israel is Jehovah’s chosen servant. Whom I have taken, [or “grasped”] החזקתי (see Isaiah 41:6-7) expresses that the Lord stretched out His hand after Israel to seize it (comp. Isaiah 41:13; Isaiah 42:6; Isaiah 45:1; Isaiah 51:18) and bring it to Him; thus that He alone was active in this, while Israel was passive. By the ends of the earth the Prophet, whose viewpoint is Palestine, means the distant lands of the Euphrates. Concerning the situation of Ur Kasdim see Schrader, D. Keilinschr. u. d. A. T. p. 383. The monuments prove that the present ruin of Mugheir (on the right bank of the Euphrates south-east from Babylon) was Ur. אציל is probably related both to אצילExo 24:11, nobilis, princeps—properly the extremest, extremus, thus in some sense also summus, comp. יַרְכְּתֵי הארץ, and also to אֵצֶלlotus, juxta. It occurs only here. Yet twice again, Isaiah 41:9, it is affirmed that in choosing Israel Jehovah alone was active. Once by I have called thee, and then by I have chosen thee. Finally the thought is confirmed by the negative expression I have not cast thee away. Evidently underlying this last is the thought that the Lord might indeed have rejected Israel, in fact that He was near doing it (comp. Deuteronomy 7:7 sq.), but that He did not do it. Therefore, spite of considerations that existed, He has still on reflection and on purpose chosen Israel.

2. Fear thou not——I will help thee.

Isaiah 41:10-13. Having set forth the election of Israel in Abraham as emphatically the basis of the relation between Himself and His people, the Lord now infers the consequences. These are positive and negative: Israel need not fear, the Lord helps them; their enemies must be destroyed. The words fear not for I am with thee are quoted from Genesis 26:24 with only עִמְּךָ for אִתְּדָ. On “fear not” comp. Isaiah 40:9. The context shows that אמצתי is used here as in Isaiah 44:14; Psalms 80:18 with the meaning “to make firm, sure, viz., the choice of one object out of several.” The idea is not an invigoration imparted to Israel, but the election made sure (comp. 2 Peter 1:10, βεβαίαν ποιεῖθαι τὴν ἐκλογήν). תָּמַדְ is also used in a similar sense. Comp. Isaiah 42:1 and Matthew 12:18, where תמך is rendered αἱρετίζειν, The expression ימין עדקי occurs only here. It can only mean the right hand that does right in the Old Testament sense, on which comp. Isaiah 41:2. The relation of the three verbs of the second clause of Isaiah 41:10 seems to me to be the following: אמץ signifies the sure election, from which follows, on the one hand, the helping, on the other, the not letting go again. The correlative of this promise is the threat (Isaiah 41:11) of destruction to their enemies. This thought is presented in various forms in what follows (Isaiah 41:11-12). Isaiah 41:11 a it appears as a theme, and Isaiah 41:11-12Isaiah 41:11-12Isaiah 41:11-12b give it a three-fold amplification: first the opponents are called אנִשי ריב (contestants, opponents in general), and it is said “they shall be nothing and shall perish;” then they are called אנשׁי מצות (rixatores, objurgatores) that one shall seek and not find; finally they are called א׳ מלחמה (enemies in war, hostes), and it is said of them that, not only they are not to be found, but that they shall absolutely no more exist. In conclusion, Isaiah 41:13, the protecting and helping presence already promised Isaiah 41:10 is repeated to the nation as the ground of its expecting victory. That Isaiah 41:13 has the character of a confirmatory repetition appears from הָאֹמֵר וגו׳. For האמר expressly refers to the comforting words “fear not,” “I have helped thee,” as having been used by the Lord (Isaiah 41:10).

Footnotes:

[14]omit art.

[15]seized.

[16]their borders.

[17]Look not around.

[18]have made thee (i. e thine election) sure.

[19]omit will.

[20]They shall be as nothing and destroyed thy adversaries.

[21]Heb. the men of thy strife.

[22]Heb. the men of thy contention.

[23]Heb. the men of thy war.