I am Jehovah, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.
Isaiah 42 has just introduced God's chosen Servant, the One who will not break a bruised reed and who comes as a light for the nations. Now the Speaker says who He Himself is: the Name is His alone, and He hands the glory and praise that go with it to no one else.
(Note: some quotes below use older Bible wording. Where the ESV prints "the LORD," they print "Jehovah" — and the point being made depends on it.)
God speaks these words to a nation that had turned to idols.
God will do all this through His lowly Servant. In that light, Jehovah appeals to the nation about their idolatry. He reminds them that their God is Jehovah, the eternal I AM. He will not give His name and His glory to another. He will not let idols take the praise that is due to Him. He alone can bring about what He foretold long ago. He alone can announce what is coming before it appears.
Read on from verse 5, and the same voice that made the heavens is the voice that appoints the Servant. William Kelly notes what holds the passage together:
This leads Jehovah to speak in magnificent terms of what He will accomplish through His own name and glory, in contrast with graven images.
If the divine Name is non-transferable, then every place where Scripture applies that Name to the Son settles the question of who the Son is.
Scripture addresses the Son directly as God and as Jehovah (Heb. 1:8-12). This teaches that His Sonship is eternal. Prophecy gives these names to the Son in His kingdom (Ps. 45), and in His suffering and humiliation (Ps. 102). Their use of Him in those settings proves that the names are His by inherent right. He did not gain them when He became man. If the Son had any right at all to the name God and the name Jehovah, He had that right from all eternity. The divine Name is not transferable: "I am Jehovah, that is My Name; and My glory will I not give to another."
The second half of the verse refuses praise to carved images. One writer sets that refusal against the one true likeness God has given.
God will not give His glory to another; He is jealous over it. But that only underlines that the Son is one with the Father. All images that man might make can only provoke jealousy. But here is "the image of the invisible God." He is jealous for His Son, "that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father."
A rival to God's glory need not be carved from wood or gold. The test is what holds first place.
Everything which takes precedence of the Person of Christ is an idol. Take even the church of God, dear as it is. If its blessedness, if the "one body and one Spirit," becomes a slogan and takes even a little of that supreme place in our heart which belongs only to the Lord Jesus Christ, then the church becomes an idol. Or take an evangelist who thinks and aims more at popularity, preaching himself and not the Lord. His preaching is blessed work, and God's means for the saving of souls. Even so, that too becomes an idol.
The reason lies in what God is.
It is impossible for God to give His glory to another. If He did, He would stop being God. He cannot hand over His place to you; He cannot give you the credit that belongs to Himself alone.
Keeping the glory does not make God stingy. It shapes the way He gives.
God does not give His glory to another. But when He gives, He gives in such a way that it all goes back to Him, in the perfect enjoyment of Himself, to His own praise. God is steady, unmovable in His purposes of mercy. He will give blessing. And He gives it in a way that lays the blessing on the heart, so that the heart enjoys it and gives it back to God in praise.
This word still governs how God works today.
"My glory will I not give to another" is always God's word. These are days of the church's unfaithfulness and the confusion that follows. Even so, we may depend on it: God will do His work in a way that displays His glory and makes nothing of man.
- The Name — "I am the LORD" is the eternal I AM speaking; the glory is inseparable from who He is.
- The Name shared — that Name cannot be passed to anyone. So when Scripture calls the Son Jehovah, the title is His by right, not given later.
- The Name rivalled — an idol is anything that takes the first place, which belongs to Christ. Even church work and preaching can do it.
- The Name defended — God cannot hand His glory over without ceasing to be God, so He works in a way that makes nothing of man.
- The Name enjoyed — He keeps the glory, but He keeps back no blessing. He lays each gift on the heart, so that it returns to Him as praise.
Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare before they spring forth will I cause you to hear them.
Isaiah 42 opens with God introducing His chosen Servant. Verse 9 turns to God's own record of fulfilled words, and raises two questions: what are the "new things," and why does He tell them in advance?
Verse 9 closes a paragraph addressed to the One introduced at the start of the chapter, and the "new things" belong to His work.
Now that our attention is on this true Servant, verses 5-9 give us words spoken to Him in prophecy. Verse 5 stresses God's acts in creation: the heavens, the earth, and mankind are all the work of His hands. This mighty Creator has called His true Servant in righteousness and established Him as a covenant to the people and a light to the nations. In verse 9 Jehovah declares new things, so we may see that He predicts the new covenant here, though not as fully as in Jeremiah 31.
Verse 8 says God will not hand His glory to idols. Verse 9 gives the reason why.
In the light of all that God will do through His lowly Servant, Jehovah appeals to the nation about their idolatry. He reminds them that their God is Jehovah, the eternal I AM. He will not give His name and His glory to another, nor let idols take the praise that belongs to Him. He alone can bring to pass things already foretold, and declare the things to come before they spring forth.
God's knowledge of what has not yet happened is not like ours.
Who knows the future but God! With us there is a yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but with God the most distant future is as vivid and well known as the present. He is the great I AM (Ex. 3:14), "who calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom. 4:17).
The ability is not a trick performed to win an argument. It belongs to God's nature, and what He foretells has a centre.
He does what He does because He is what He is, and in doing it He shows who He is. He tells and foretells because He knows and foreknows... He opens up the future both for blessing and for judgment, all hanging upon Himself as the divine Centre of the whole moral arena.
So who brings these new things in? The answer stands at the head of the chapter.
Isaiah 42 opens by introducing Christ as the true Servant of the Lord. He will not fail or be discouraged until He accomplishes God's will on earth. He is the One who will bring in and establish the new things that verse 9 speaks of.
In Isaiah, these new things have one setting in view.
As far as Isaiah goes, the new things predicted have to do with blessings on the earth. The new song they call out is from both land and sea, from the far distant isles and from the wilderness and the top of the mountains. For heavenly blessing we have to go on to the New Testament.
Later in Isaiah the same declaration comes up again, and its full scope appears.
As far back as Isaiah 42, we had Jehovah's declaration, "new things I now declare" (verse 9), and now we discover the wide scope of it. There is to be a complete sweeping away of the old order and the creation of new heavens as well as a new earth. The verses that follow show that this speaks of the millennial age, not the eternal state, which Revelation 21:1 announces.
The verse leaves no room for human effort to produce the promised age. It is announced by God and carried out by One person.
The Lord Jesus Christ will bring this golden age to pass, and by His work alone. Let us fix that in our minds, so that we do not meddle with present schemes to bring such an age in, whether political or otherwise. It will only come when He comes again. He came first as the Servant to suffer. He will come again as Jehovah's mighty Arm, bringing salvation for the earth by solemn judgments.
- Former — What God said before has already happened. He alone brings foretold things to pass.
- New — God speaks the new things to the Servant of verses 5-9. One commentator sees the new covenant predicted here, stated more fully in Jeremiah 31.
- Declared — No idol can tell the future before it springs forth. God alone can, and that sets Him apart.
- Wide — In Isaiah the new things reach from blessing on the earth to new heavens and a new earth. For heavenly blessing, go on to the New Testament.
- His — The new things come through Christ alone. The response they call out is a new song, not a human scheme.