Why will God not give His glory to another (Isaiah 42:8)?

(Vv. 8, 9). In the light of all that God will do through His lowly Servant, Jehovah appeals to the nation as to their idolatry. They are reminded that their God is Jehovah, the eternal I AM; that His name, and His glory, He will not give to another, nor permit the praise that is due to Him to be given to idols. He alone can bring to pass things already foretold, and declare the things to come before they spring forth.

But till we come to this no blessing can come, for it is impossible that God should give His glory to another. Did He do so, He would cease to be God. He cannot hand over His place to you; He cannot give you the credit that belongs to Himself alone. Blessed be God, He must have the glory. Therefore it is that God must smash us to pieces in order to bless us, because only thus can He be glorified in His Son, and it be seen that He alone is worthy. Man is worthless, he is done for, there is not a single good thing in him at all. God has set him aside and begun again in a new Man according to His own heart, and when God works in us all is well, not otherwise.

It may however be asked, What scripture do you give for this? The answer is that God says, "My glory will I not give to another." What is God's glory which He cannot give to another? The glory surely of being the source of all goodness and blessing. He cannot be otherwise than what He has ever been. "God is Love," and He cannot but sustain that character. This is His glory. Ours is to know Him in the love and to reflect that character.

This leads Jehovah in magnificent terms to speak of what He will accomplish through His own name and glory, in contrast with graven images. "Thus says God Jehovah, he that created the heavens, and stretched them forth; he that spread abroad the earth and that which comes out of it; he that gives breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein. I Jehovah have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, [and] them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. I [am] Jehovah; that [is] my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them" (vv. 5-9). Is this, or anything else, too hard for Jehovah?

Another commandment was, "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain." To take His name in vain is not merely uttering it in vulgar oaths, but what is equally, if not more offensive to God, the associating it with idols. This was done in Egypt. One or more of the Divine attributes was applied to the sun, to the moon, and to each of their idols. Nay, the incommunicable name of self-existence was found, as Plutarch records, as an inscription in one of their temples. "I am all that has been, is, and ever shall be." Where did the Egyptians get the idea of self-existence? There was evidence of the Creator's eternal power and Godhead in the things that He had made; but man lost sight of Him, and fixed his eye upon the creature, and looking only there ignored its evidence. And his mind, outside the testimony of creation, was incapable of conceiving it. Where else could the Egyptians have had this absolute, and to man incomprehensible, yet necessary expression of the One Supreme Being, than from Moses, who said "I am" had sent him? What more likely than when the Egyptian priests had witnessed the power of "I am" by the hand of Moses they transferred that name to their god? Is not this the most offensive feature in idolatry, the giving the glory of God to another, and His praise to graven images? (See Isa. 42:8). But this gives evidence that whatever notion the heathen had of One God, it came first from a source opposed to idolatry. Afterwards fable being mixed with truth, the name of the Absolute was given to idols, and the truth which condemns the worship of idols was used to maintain it. No deeper dishonour can be to the Creator God.

Number 1. One excludes everything else. It speaks of that which is alone, with nothing else to compare it with. The Lord our God is one Lord," "To us there is but one God." There can be no question that this thought of "aloneness," of absolute unity, is conveyed as it could be in no other way by this first numeral. Without doing violence to 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 none else," "My glory will I not give to another."

Thus He is the one only God: "Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counselor hath taught Him?" "To whom, then, will ye liken God?" "To whom, then, will ye liken Me, or shall I be equal?" "I the Lord, the First, and with the last;" “I am the Lord, that is My name, and My glory will I not give to another;" "I am the First, and I am the Last, and beside Me there is no God;" "Is there a God beside Me? yea, there is no God;" "That stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth forth the earth by Myself."

It is noticeable that God will not brook any assumption of Divine honours by the creature.

(3) The eternity of the Sonship is taught by the fact that the Son is personally addressed as God and as Jehovah (Heb. 1:8-12). These names are applied prophetically to the Son in His kingdom (Ps. 45), and in His affliction and humiliation (Ps. 102), but their application to Him in those circumstances proves that these names are His by inherent right, and were not acquired at His incarnation. For if the Son was at all entitled to the name, God, and to the name, Jehovah, He was so entitled 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" (Isa. 42:8).

(3) The eternity of the Sonship is taught by the fact that the Son is personally addressed as God and as Jehovah (Heb. 1:8-12). These two names are applied prophetically to the Son in His kingdom (Psa. 45), and in His affliction and humiliation (Psa. 102) but their application to Him in those circumstances proves that these names are His by inherent right, and were not acquired at His incarnation. For if the Son was at all entitled to the name, God, and to the name Jehovah, He was so entitled 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 “(Isa. 42:8).