Isaiah 44:24

Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(24) Thus saith the Lord.—A new section begins, which is carried on to the end of Isaiah 45. The contrast between the foreknowledge of Jehovah and the no-knowledge of the worshippers of idols culminates in the proclamation, in Isaiah 44:28, of the name of the deliverer and his restoration of the Temple.

That spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.—The Hebrew written text gives the more emphatic reading: that spreadeth forth the earth; who was with me? (Comp. Isaiah 40:13; Isaiah 63:3; and Job 9:8.)

Benson Commentary

Isaiah 44:24-27. I am the Lord that maketh all things — And therefore I can save thee without the help of any other gods, or any creature; that frustrateth the tokens of the liars — Of the magicians and astrologers, who were numerous and greatly esteemed in Babylon, and who had foretold the long continuance and prosperity of the Chaldean empire. And maketh the diviners mad — With grief for the disappointment of their predictions, and their disgrace which followed it. That turneth wise men backward — Stopping their way, and blasting their designs. That confirmeth the word of his servants — The prophets, as appears from the next clause, namely, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, whom God sent to foretel the destruction of Babylon, and the redemption of his people. The connection of this with Isaiah 44:25, is, As God discovers the folly and madness of such false prophets, so he punctually fulfils the predictions of his own prophets. That saith to the deep, Be dry — That with a word can dry up the sea and rivers, and remove all impediments. “Cyrus took Babylon by laying the bed of the Euphrates dry, and leading his army into the city by night, through the empty channel of the river. This remarkable circumstance, in which the event so exactly corresponded with the prophecy, was also noted by Jeremiah. A drought shall be upon her waters, and they shall be dried up: I will lay her sea dry; and I will scorch up her springs, Jeremiah 50:38; Jeremiah 51:36. It is proper here to give some account of the method by which the stratagem of Cyrus was effected. The Euphrates, in the middle of summer, from the melting of the snows on the mountains of Armenia, like the Nile, overflows the country. In order to diminish the inundation, and carry off the waters, two canals were made by Nebuchadnezzar a hundred miles above the city; the first on the eastern side, called Naharmalca, or the Royal river, by which the Euphrates was let into the Tigris; the other on the western side, called Pallacopas, or Naharaga, (Hebrew, נהר אגם, the river of the pool,) by which the redundant waters were carried into a vast lake, forty miles square, contrived, not only to lessen the inundation, but for a reservoir, with sluices to water the barren country on the Arabian side. Cyrus, by turning the whole river into the latter lake, laid the channel, where it ran through the city, almost dry; so that his army entered it both above and below by the bed of the river, the water not reaching above the middle of the thigh. By the great quantity of water let into the lake, the sluices and dams were destroyed; and being never repaired afterward, the waters spread over the whole country below, and reduced it into a morass, in which the river is lost.” — Bishop Lowth.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

44:21-28 Return unto me. It is the great concern of those who have backslidden from God, like the Jews of old, to hasten their return to him. The work of redemption wrought for us by Christ, encourages to hope for all blessings from him. Our transgressions and our sins are as a thick cloud between heaven and earth: sins separate between us and God; they threaten a storm of wrath. When God pardons sin, he blots out, he dispels this cloud, this thick cloud, so that the way to heaven is open again. The cloud is scattered by the Sun of righteousness; it is quite gone. The comforts that flow into the soul when sin is pardoned, are like clear shining after clouds and rain. Let not Israel be discouraged; nothing is too hard for God: having made all, he can make what use he pleases of any. Those that learn to know Christ, see all knowledge to be foolishness, in comparison with the knowledge of him. And his enemies will find their counsels turned into foolishness, and themselves taken in their craftiness. The exact fulfilling the prophecies of Scripture confirms the truth of the whole, and proves its Divine origin. The particular favours God designed for his people in captivity, were foretold here, long before they went into captivity. Very great difficulties would be in the way of their deliverance; but it is promised that by Divine power they should all be removed. God knew who should be the Deliverer of his people; and let his church know it, that when they heard such a name talked of, they might know their redemption drew nigh. It is the greatest honour of the greatest men, to be employed as instruments of the Divine favour to his people. In things wherein men serve themselves, and look no further, God makes them do all his pleasure. And a nobler Shepherd than Cyrus does his Father's will, till his work is fully completed.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thy Redeemer - (See the note at Isaiah 43:1).

And he that formed thee from thee womb - (See the note at Isaiah 44:2).

That stretcheth forth the heavens - (See the note at Isaiah 40:22).

That spreadeth abroad the earth - Representing the earth, as is often done in the Scriptures, as a plain. God here appeals to the fact that he alone had made the heavens and the earth, as the demonstration that he is able to accomplish what is here said of the deliverance of his people. The same God that made the heavens is the Redeemer and Protector of the church, and therefore the church is safe.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

24-28. Confirmation of His promises to the Church and Israel, by various instances of His omnipotence; among these the restoration of the Jews by Cyrus.

alone—literally, "Who was with Me?" namely, when I did it; answering to "by Myself," in the parallel clause (compare similar phrases, Ho 8:4; Joh 5:30) [Maurer].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

That formed thee from the womb; of which phrase See Poole "Isaiah 44:2".

That maketh all things, & c.; and therefore I can save thee without the help of any other gods or men.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer,.... These are the words of the Son of God, of Christ, the Redeemer of his people; and the following show him to be the mighty God, and so able to redeem them, and therefore was appointed to this work, and undertook it:

and he that formed thee from the womb; that formed thee in it, and brought thee out of it, separated thee from it, and called thee by his grace:

I am the Lord that maketh all things; that made all things out of nothing at first; for without Christ was not anything made that was made; all things in heaven, and earth, and sea, were made by him; and he continues all creatures in their being, and provides for them, and governs all by his power; he works hitherto, and continues working with his divine Father, John 1:1,

that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself; not to the exclusion of the Father and the Holy Spirit, but of all creatures, angels and men; of himself, and by his own strength and power, and, without the help of these, he stretched out the vast space of the heavens as a curtain, and spread out the earth in its length and breadth, and the large surface of it, to that great circumference which it has; a full proof of his proper deity! A man cannot stretch out a curtain, or piece of tapestry, of any size, without the help of another; and much less can a creature stretch out the heavens and the earth.

Geneva Study Bible

Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

24–28. Jehovah, the God of creation and of prophecy, has chosen Cyrus to execute his purpose with regard to Israel.

thy redeemer] See on ch. Isaiah 41:14. formed thee from the womb] as in Isaiah 44:2.

that stretcheth … alone] Cf. ch. Isaiah 40:22; Isaiah 42:5; Job 9:8.

by myself] The A.V. here follows the reading presupposed by the vowel-points (Qěrê). The R.V. rightly goes back to the consonantal text (Kĕthîb) which is preserved in the LXX. and Vulg. and some Hebrew MSS. Render accordingly: who was with me? i.e. there was none to help me.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 24. - Thus saith the Lord. This is not a new prophecy entirely unconnected with the preceding, as Delitzsch supposes, lint a declaration to which the prophet has been working up, and which he intends as the crown and climax of all that he has been announcing with respect to Israel's deliverance. Not only is the deliverance absolutely determined on in God's counsels, but the Deliverer himself is already chosen and designated. He that formed thee from the womb (comp. ver. 2). I am the Lord that maketh all things - rather, I the Lord am he that doeth all things; i.e. I am he that executeth whatever he designs - that stretcheth forth the heavens alone (comp. Job 9:8), that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. God did not delegate the creation of the heaven and the earth to an inferior spirit, a δημιουργός, as the Greeks generally taught. He did not even call in the co operation of a helper. Singly and solely by his own power he created all things. Isaiah 44:24

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The promise takes a new turn here, acquiring greater and greater speciality. It is introduced as the word of Jehovah, who first gave existence to Israel, and has not let it go to ruin. "Thus saith Jehovah, thy Redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I Jehovah am He that accomplisheth all; who stretched out the heavens alone, spread out the earth by Himself; who bringeth to nought the signs of the prophets of lies, and exposeth the soothsayers as raging mad; who turneth back the wise men, and maketh their science folly; who realizeth the word of His servant, and accomplisheth the prediction of His messengers; who saith to Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited! and to the cities of Judah, They shall be built, and their ruins I raise up again! who saith to the whirlpool, Dry up; and I dry its streams! who saith to Koresh, My shepherd and he will perform all my will; and will say to Jerusalem, She shall be built, and the temple founded!" The prophecy which commences with Isaiah 44:24 is carried on through this group of vv. in a series of participial predicates to אנכי (I) Jehovah is ‛ōseh kōl, accomplishing all (perficiens omnia), so that there is nothing that is not traceable to His might and wisdom as the first cause. It was He who alone, without the co-operation of any other being, stretched out the heavens, who made the earth into a wide plain by Himself, i.e., so that it proceeded from Himself alone: מאתּי, as in Joshua 11:20 (compare מני, Isaiah 30:1; and mimmennı̄ in Hosea 8:4), chethib אתּי מי, "who was with me," or "who is it beside me?" The Targum follows the keri; the Septuagint the chethib, attaching it to the following words, τίς ἕτερος διασκεδάσει. Isaiah 44:25 passes on from Him whom creation proves to be God, to Him who is proving Himself to be so in history also, and that with obvious reference to the Chaldean soothsayers and wise men (Isaiah 47:9-10), who held out to proud Babylon the most splendid and hopeful prognostics. "Who brings to nought (mēphēr, opp. mēqı̄m) the signs," i.e., the marvellous proofs of their divine mission which the false prophets adduced by means of fraud and witchcraft. The lxx render baddı̄m, ἐγγαστριμύθων, Targ. bı̄dı̄n (in other passages equals 'ōb, Leviticus 20:27; 'ōbōth, Leviticus 19:31; hence equals πύθων πύθωνες). At Isaiah 16:6 and Job 11:3 we have derived it as a common noun from בּדה equals בּטא, to speak at random; but it is possible that בּדה may originally have signified to produce or bring forth, without any reference to βαττολογεῖν, then to invent, to fabricate, so that baddı̄m as a personal name (as in Jeremiah 50:36) would be synonymous with baddâ'ı̄m, mendaces. On qōsemı̄m, see Isaiah 3:2; on yehōlēl, (Job 12:17, where it occurs in connection with a similar predicative description of God according to His works.

In Isaiah 44:26 a contrast is draw between the heathen soothsayers and wise men, and the servant and messengers of Jehovah, whose word, whose ‛ētsâh, i.e., determination or disclosure concerning the future (cf., yâ‛ats, Isaiah 41:28), he realizes and perfectly fulfils. By "his servant" we are to understand Israel itself, according to Isaiah 42:19, but only relatively, namely, as the bearer of the prophetic word, and therefore as the kernel of Israel regarded from the standpoint of the prophetic mission which it performed; and consequently "his messengers" are the prophets of Jehovah who were called out of Israel. The singular "his servant" is expanded in "his messenger" into the plurality embraced in the one idea. This is far more probable than that the author of these prophetic words, who only speaks of himself in a roundabout manner even in Isaiah 40:6, should here refer directly to himself (according to Isaiah 20:3). In Isaiah 44:26 the predicates become special prophecies, and hence their outward limits are also defined. As we have תּוּשׁב and not תּוּשׁבי, we must adopt the rendering habitetur and oedificentur, with which the continuation of the latter et vastata ejus erigam agrees. In Isaiah 44:27 the prophecy moves back from the restoration of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah to the conquest of Babylon. The expression calls to mind the drying up of the Red Sea (Isaiah 51:10; Isaiah 43:16); but here it relates to something future, according to Isaiah 42:15; Isaiah 50:2 -namely, to the drying up of the Euphrates, which Cyrus turned into the enlarged basin of Sepharvaim, so that the water sank to the depth of a single foot, and men could "go through on foot" (Herod. i. 191). But in the complex view of the prophet, the possibility of the conqueror's crossing involved the possibility or the exiles' departing from the prison of the imperial city, which was surrounded by a natural and artificial line of waters (Isaiah 11:15). צוּלה (from צוּל equals צלל, to whiz or whirl) refers to the Euphrates, just as metsūlâh in Job 41:23; Zechariah 10:11, does to the Nile; נתרריה is used in the same sense as the Homeric ̓Ωοκεάνοιο ῥέεθρα. In Isaiah 44:28 the special character of the promise reaches its highest shoot. The deliverer of Israel is mentioned by name: "That saith to Koresh, My shepherd (i.e., a ποιμὴν λαῶν appointed by me), and he who performs all my will" (chēphets, θέλημα, not in the generalized sense of πρᾶγμα), and that inasmuch as he (Cyrus) saith to (or of) Jerusalem, It shall be built (tibbâneh, not the second pers. tibbânı̄), and the foundation of the temple laid (hēkhâl a masculine elsewhere, here a feminine). This is the passage which is said by Josephus to have induced Cyrus to send back the Jews to their native land: "Accordingly, when Cyrus read this, and admired the divine power, an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfil what was so written" (Jos. Ant. xi. 2). According to Ctesias and others, the name of Cyrus signifies the sun.But all that can really be affirmed is, that it sounds like the name of the sun. For in Neo-Pers. the sun is called char, in Zendic hvarĕ (karĕ), and from this proper names are formed, such as chars'ı̂d (Sunshine, also the Sun); but Cyrus is called Kuru or Khuru upon the monuments, and this cannot possibly be connected with our chur, which would be uwara in Old Persian (Rawlinson, Lassen, Spiegel), and Kōresh is simply the name of Kuru (Κῦρ-ος) Hebraized after the manner of a segholate. There is a marble-block, for example, in the Murghab valley, not far from the mausoleum of Cyrus, which contained the golden coffin with the body of the king (see Strabo, xv 3, 7); and on this we find an inscription that we also meet with elsewhere, viz., adam. k'ur'us.khsâya thiya.hakhâmanisiya, i.e., I am Kuru the king of the Achaemenides.

(Note: See the engraving of this tomb of Cyrus, which is now called the "Tomb of Solomon's mother," in Vaux's Nineveh and Persepolis (p. 345). On the identity of Murghb and Pasargadae, see Spiegel, Keil-inschriften, pp. 71, 72; and with regard to the discovery of inscriptions that may still be expected around the tomb of Cyrus, the Journal of the Asiatic Society, x. 46, note 4 (also compare Spiegel's Geschichte der Entzifferung der Keil-schrift, im "Ausland," 1865, p. 413).)

This name is identical with the name of the river Kur (Κῦρ-ος); and what Strabo says is worthy of notice - namely, that "there is also a river called Cyrus, which flows through the so-called cave of Persis near Pasargadae, and whence the king took his name, changing it from Agradates into Cyrus" (Strab. xv 3, 6). It is possible also that there may be some connection between the name and the Indian princely title of Kuru.