Isaiah 49:1

1. Listen An earnest call-word, because something of importance is to be communicated.

O isles Literally, coastlands; islands and maritime regions, generally westward from the scene of the speaker.

From far Gentile nations as far away as their geographic location could then have been known.

Hath called me With evangelical expositors this pronoun “me” is the Messiah, distinctly and indisputably. Grotius, Gesenius, and the schools following them, wrench the sense into a reference to the prophet Isaiah. This sense is truly improbable, if only because the prophet has never in this wise so brought himself into the foreground before. He is the medium only of the word of God. The nearest to his being or assuming more than this, is in semblance of phraseology in chap. Isaiah 48:16, (where see note,) in which the decision is radically diverse to such an idea. There is no doubt at all entertained as to the speaker here being the Messiah by those who believe the Old Testament recognises its all-ruling divinity, Jehovah, to be divinity identical with the incarnate Logos of the New Testament.

The circumstantiality of the description in the context also bears out this view. See Matthew 1:20-21; Luke 1:35. In a passage parallel to this, (Jeremiah 1:5,) the reference is plainly to Jeremiah; and in another, (Isaiah 44:2,) as plainly to Israel. But what the speaker here says is so unique, so glorious withal, that the reference reaches far beyond the vocation or action of any single prophet or any individual man, subject to the limitations of human life or human strength. Delitzsch. As in Isaiah 42:1, so here, the ideal speaker is the Messiah considered as the head of his people, and as forming with them one complex person. At the present stage of the study of Christology, it is not certain that the prophet conceived the future Church and the Head of the Church as separately individualized entities. At one time it is the spiritual Israel, or the Church, that is prominent: at another, it is the Church on its anointed mission to the Gentiles, condensed into the conception of a single person as the divine agent, or outflow of salvation to all the nations. The latter, under the legitimate designation of Messiah, seems the proper view to take here.