Verse 27
27. The first shall say to Zion This verse is severely difficult. Who, or what is meant by ראשׁון , first? One explanation refers back to Isaiah 41:4, where “I the Lord, the first” is found, and reads in this verse, “I, the Lord, will say to Zion,” I, the first and only great Being, am alone competent to make this prediction.
Behold them Behold it, that is, there it is, namely, the fulfilled prediction. Others, making “the first” the first fruits (as in Septuagint, and Syriac Version) of Zion, consider Cyrus as meant and personified in the word “first,” and as such he becomes the fulfilled prediction; he is the evangelist to Jerusalem. Nagelsbach, apparently, adopts this view, and finds some support for it in Isaiah 45:1, where Cyrus is called “the anointed” of Jehovah, that is, the Messiah: not the true Messiah, indeed, yet in an important sense the beginning of the redemption of the restoration of God’s people from exile, and so a pre-eminent type of the true Messiah, and civilly the first fruits of the prediction.
I will give to Jerusalem one A publisher of good tidings; in other words, an evangelist. See Isaiah 40:9.
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