Commentari biblici

Promises to protect and enlarge the church, Isaiah 43:1-7. God appealeth to them as witnesses of his power and knowledge, Isaiah 43:8-13. He foretelleth them the destruction of Babylon, and a new deliverance of his people, Isaiah 43:14-21; whose sins, Isaiah 43:22-24, against God’s mercies, render them inexcusable, Isaiah 43:25-28.

But now thus saith the Lord; but notwithstanding thy gross insensibleness under former judgments, for which I might justly send far heavier ones upon thee, yet I will deal mercifully with thee.

That created thee; that made, thee his people, and that in so miraculous a manner, as if he had created thee a second time out of nothing; and therefore he will be gracious to his own workmanship. I have redeemed thee from the Egyptians, and divers other enemies; and therefore I will redeem thee again.

By thy name; by the name of God’s people, which was as proper and peculiar to them as the name of Israel.

Though I will chastise thee for thy sins, yet I will not suffer thine enemies utterly to destroy thee: compare Jeremiah 30:11.

I gave Egypt for thy ransom: this was fulfilled either,

1. When God smote the Egyptians, both first-born and others, in Egypt, and drowned Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, for the safety and benefit of his people; or,

2. When the king of Assyria, either Sennacherib, as many think, or rather Esar-haddon, who designed to revenge his father’s disgrace and loss before Jerusalem upon the Jews, but was diverted and directed by God to employ his forces against Egypt, and Ethiopia, and Seba, as it follows. See Poole "Isaiah 20:1", &c. Ethiopia and Seba; the Sabeans, who were confederate with the Ethiopians or Cushites.

Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: so the sense is, From that time that I chose time for my precious and peculiar treasure and people, I have had a great esteem and affection for thee. But the words may well be, and by some are, rendered thus, Since that (or, For that; or, Because) thou wast precious in my sight, thou wast honourable, (the same thing repeated in other words,) and I love thee.

Therefore will I give men for thee; as I did give up the Egyptians, so I am ready to give up others to save thee, as occasion requires.

Although the Jews shall for their sins be carried captives out of their own land northward and eastward into Babylon and the adjacent countries, and others of them shall flee southward and westward, and shall there pine away in their iniquities, as I threatened; yet their posterity I will bring back into Canaan, from all the places where they are dispersed.

Give up; thou who hast so long had and held my people in bondage, resign them to me, and permit them to return to their own land. He speaks either to the countries themselves by a prosopopoeia, or to the inhabitants of them. Bring my sons; do not only permit, but assist and further, their return.

Even every one that is called by my name: They are called by my name; I own them for my people and children; and therefore what kindness or cruelty you exercise to them I take it as done to myself. So it is an argument to move those people to let their captives go; or it is an argument to confirm the faith of God’s people, that God would deliver them, because they are his own.

I have created him for my glory; and therefore I will glorify my power, and goodness, and faithfulness in delivering them.

I have made him; I have not only created them out of nothing, as I did all other people, but I have also formed and made them my peculiar people.

The sense is either,

1. Bring out of captivity my people who were blind and deaf, but now have their eyes and cars opened by my grace. So this verse relates to the foregoing passages. Or rather,

2. O ye idolatrous Gentiles, produce and bring forth your false gods, which have eyes, but see not; and ears, but hear not, as is said, Psalm 115:5,6. So this verse belongs to the following context, in which God reneweth his contest with idols; which in this verse he calleth blind, and in the next verse proveth them so to be.