Isaiah 45:5

Over and over again the Holy Spirit repeats this all-important fact in chapters 43 to 46. No less than ten times He states it with intensity — there is none else! Israel's God is the only God! He "created" Jacob! He "formed" the nation!... Yes, He "called" her by her name; "you are Mine!" So she can witness not only against idols, but to the only God. Now the call is rightly heard, and it will bring a swift response all over the world. "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other" (Isaiah 45:22).

One excludes everything else. It speaks of what is alone, with nothing else to compare it with... Without doing violence to the thought, we have here the exclusion of all others from the place that God alone can occupy. "I am the Lord, and there is none else." "My glory I will not give to another."

It is, however, for the sake of Israel, God's elect, that God calls Cyrus and allows him to subdue the nations. Two hundred years before he comes on the scene, God can say, "I have called you by your name, I have given you a title of honour." He also says, "I have girded you, though you have not known me."

The challenge of Jehovah that begins with verse 5 does not appear to be a mere repetition of what begins in Isaiah 44:6. It meets, in a very interesting way, the particular evil that those men fell into — the men who under Cyrus overthrew Babylon and its worthless idols. The Persians were famous for their scheme of two rival powers: good and evil, light and darkness, Ormusd and Ahriman. What could be more pointed, given the utter confusion of this scheme, than the words that follow?

So God used three men to fulfil this promise: Jeremiah in prophecy, Daniel in prayer, and Cyrus — a man who did not know the Lord — in providence. God had said of Cyrus long before, through Isaiah, "I have given you a title of honour, though you have not known Me... I have raised you up in righteousness."... This word, and the way it actually came true, are so exact and so encouraging. They fill the soul that trusts the blessed God with comfort and cheer. That soul knows that even now He makes all things work together for the good of His own, whom He has called by His grace according to His purpose.

One is a little astonished at reading this. Cyrus has such honourable mention in Isaiah 45 — though even there He says, "I have given you a title of honour, though you have not known Me." Daniel sees him at one stage of his career. Later than that, God may have brought him into the light of the knowledge of the Lord.

For Israel's sake He named Cyrus, though he did not know Jehovah, so that men might know from east and from west that there is none besides Him... Yet this unmatched return of the Jew from Babylon is clearly only the shadow of an everlasting salvation that is not yet Israel's. That salvation comes when idols and their worshippers will be in the dust, and when in Jehovah all Israel will be justified and will glory. Yes, and every knee will bow to Him and every tongue swear (Isaiah 45:23).