-- that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the going down, that there is none beside me. I [am] Jehovah, and there is none else;
God takes hold of a Persian king who has never met Him. The purpose reaches far past that one man: from sunrise to sunset, people are to know that the LORD alone is God.
The man God uses here is a foreign conqueror with no faith in Israel's God. That does not weaken the verse's claim. God is free to use a man who does not know Him.
God is able to make the world confess His power and authority. Whatever the case here, God calls Cyrus by name. He calls him His shepherd, His anointed, though Cyrus had not known God (Isa. 44:28; Isa. 45:4), and only in view of what God had called him to do. The point is not what Cyrus was personally, but his work.
The stated aim is that people should know. One writer traces the line from God's grip on Cyrus's hand to the knowledge this verse announces. He then looks further: the return from Babylon was only a preview of something lasting. He uses the older rendering "Jehovah" where the ESV reads "the LORD".
It was Jehovah that held Cyrus' right hand to subdue nations before him, to break the bronze doors in pieces, and to cut through the iron bars. 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 beside Him... Yet this unmatched return of the Jew from Babylon is clearly only the shadow of an everlasting salvation that Israel does not have yet. Then idols and their worshippers will lie in the dust, and in Jehovah all Israel will be justified and will glory.
Cyrus's own empire held a rival creed: good and evil each had its own divine author. The next verses answer it head on.
In raising up Cyrus God would have all nations know that He is God and there is none else beside. The truth about the LORD stands in contrast to the Zoroastrian belief of the Persians. They held that a certain eternal person brought two powerful beings into existence: one the creator of all good, the other the author of all the evils that afflict men. It is God who forms the light and creates the darkness. It is God who makes peace among the nations. And in the way He governs, He creates evil in the sense of punishment.
The short phrase at the end of the verse is not a comparison. It is a total exclusion, and one writer draws that out from the very idea of "one".
One excludes everything else. It speaks of that which is alone, with nothing else to compare it with... There can be no question that this first number conveys the thought of "aloneness", of absolute unity, as nothing else could. Without straining the thought, we have here the exclusion of all others from the place which God alone can occupy. "I am the LORD, and there is no other." "My glory I give to no other."
The refrain does not stop at a statement about God. In these chapters it becomes Israel's testimony and an open call, and it repeats until no one can miss it.
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 force: There is none else! Israel's God is the only God!... She can therefore witness not only against idols, but to the only God. Now people hear the call as they should, and it will bring a swift response in all the world. "Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other" (Isa. 45:22).
- None else — the claim. The last words of the verse are not a ranking but an exclusion. God alone holds a place no one else can share, and He will not give His glory to another.
- None else — the proof. God took hold of a king who did not know Him. What qualified Cyrus was not his personal faith but the work God called him to; the point was never the man.
- None else — the target. The words answer a real rival belief, the Persian scheme of two divine powers behind good and evil. Light and darkness, peace and even punishment all come from one hand.
- None else — the reach. The purpose runs from sunrise to sunset. The release from Babylon was only a small picture of a lasting salvation still ahead for Israel.
- None else — the call. The same words that shut out every rival open a door. Because there is no other God, He calls the ends of the earth to turn to Him and be saved.
forming the light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil I, Jehovah, do all these things.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Drop down, [ye] heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and with it let righteousness spring up. I, Jehovah, have created it.
This call comes in the middle of a challenge God makes to a world that believed in two rival powers. He tells the sky to rain down righteousness and the ground to open and grow salvation, and then claims that harvest as His own creation. (The quotes below use an older translation. It reads "pour down righteousness" and "spring up together.")
The verse belongs to a challenge God begins in verse 5. One writer notes that it strikes at the religion of the Persians — the very people who, under Cyrus, would overthrow Babylon.
The challenge of Jehovah that begins with verse 5 does not seem to be a mere repetition of what begins in Isaiah 44:6. The men who overthrew Babylon and its worthless idols under Cyrus fell into a special evil, and in a very interesting way this challenge meets it. For the Persians were famous for their scheme of two rival powers: good and evil, light and darkness, Ormusd and Ahriman. What can be more pointed, in view of the complete collapse of this scheme, than the words that follow?
Two rival powers cannot share the credit here. One God sends the righteousness down and brings the salvation up, and He says so Himself.
People often set righteousness and salvation against each other, as if one had to give way to the other. This verse puts them in the same soil.
It is the LORD who does these things. The final result is that blessing will come down from heaven, and earth will be open to receive it. It will not be righteousness without grace. It will not be salvation at the cost of righteousness. Salvation and righteousness will "spring up together."
The word "righteousness" turns up again and again in Isaiah. One writer follows its sense here and shows how it clears up the way the New Testament uses it.
Here, and in several other passages, we find a use of "righteousness" that throws light on its use in the New Testament and clears it up... Here God's power steps in, in keeping with His own character and in grace towards His people, and so it must deliver them... Taking Cyrus as a first fulfilment, God has to vindicate His title against the pride of the nations, their idols and their false gods. It is His righteousness, but through it His people are delivered in grace... In chapter 45:8 God is vindicating Himself in public, as He is, so to speak, bound to do in the end, and so righteousness comes out. So God fully establishes and vindicates all that He is in the cross of Jesus, where the blessed Jesus offered Himself up so that this might be done. We come in who, through grace, are made alive together with Him, to be the righteousness of God in Him.
So the rescue and the self-vindication are one act. The verse's last words claim the whole result as God's own creation.
This scene has not yet happened on earth. One writer places it in a coming day for Israel, then draws out what belongs to believers now.
One day Israel will have the place of power and glory before all the nations. Then the blind people will see and the deaf people will hear, and in the rejected Messiah they will see the Lord Jehovah, the only Saviour... But even now the rejected Christ sits on the Father's throne, and the Spirit is sent out to glorify Him in a spiritual way in a world of darkness and rebellion against God. Even now, then, those who confess Christ are to tell out His excellencies... That light has not yet risen to shine on Zion, though it will surely come. It has already shone in our hearts who believe — the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
- Creator. The verse ends by giving God the whole harvest. He alone creates the righteousness that falls and the salvation that grows.
- Correction. It answers the Persian idea of two rival powers behind good and evil — a scheme the verse leaves in ruins.
- Content. "Righteousness" here is God stepping in. He acts true to His own character and in grace towards His people, and so He delivers them.
- Cross. God fully establishes and vindicates all that He is in the cross of Jesus. There believers become the righteousness of God in Him.
- Coming. The scene is still future for Israel in power and glory. The light that has not yet dawned on Zion already shines in the hearts of believers, in the face of Jesus Christ.