Isaiah 48:7

They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) They are created now . . .—The verb is an unusual one, as applied to the events of history. What is meant is that the things which had been from the beginning in the mind of God are now, for the first time, manifested, through the prophet, as about to pass into act. What these are the prophet develops in the following chapters, as including the spiritual redemption and restoration of Israel. They were kept in store, as it were, to make men wonder (Romans 16:25-26).

Even before the day when . . .—Better, and before to-day thou heardest them not. . . . The reason given for what we might almost call this method of reserve and reticence, was that the people had been till now unprepared to receive the truth, and in their state it would but have increased their condemnation (John 16:12; Mark 4:33).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

48:1-8 The Jews valued themselves on descent from Jacob, and used the name of Jehovah as their God. They prided themselves respecting Jerusalem and the temple, yet there was no holiness in their lives. If we are not sincere in religion, we do but take the name of the Lord in vain. By prophecy they were shown how God would deal with them, long before it came to pass. God has said and done enough to prevent men's boasting of themselves, which makes the sin and ruin of the proud worse; sooner or later every mouth shall be stopped, and all become silent before Him. We are all born children of disobedience. Where original sin is, actual sin will follow. Does not the conscience of every man witness to the truth of Scripture? May the Lord prove us, and render us doers of the word.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

They are created now - The Septuagint renders this, Νῦν γίνεται nun ginetai - 'Done now;' and many expositors interpret it in the sense that they are now brought into light, as if they were created. Aben Ezra renders it, 'They are decreed and determined by me.' Rosenmuller supposes that it refers to the revelation, or making known those things. Lowth renders it, 'They are produced now, and not of old.' Noyes, 'It is revealed now, and not long ago.' But the sense is probably this: God is saying that they did not foresee them, nor were they able to conjecture them by the contemplation of any natural causes. There were no natural causes in operation at the time the predictions were made, respecting the destruction of Babylon, by which it could be conjectured that that event would take place; and when the event occurred, it was as if it had been created anew. It was the result of Almighty power and energy, and was to be traced to him alone. The sense is, that it could no more be predicted, at the time when the prophecy was uttered, from the operation of any natural causes, than an act of creation could be predicted, which depended on the exercise of the divine will alone. It was a case which God only could understand, in the same way as he alone could understand the purposes and the time of his own act of creating the world.

And not from the beginning - The events have not been so formed from the beginning that they could be predicted by the operation of natural causes, and by political sagacity.

Even before the day when thou heardest them not - The sense of this probably, 'and before this day thou hast not heard of them;' that is, these predictions pertain to new events, and are not to be found in antecedent prophecies. The prophet did not speak now of the deliverance from Egypt, and of the blessings of the promised land, which had constituted the burden of many of the former prophecies, but he spoke of a new thing; of the deliverance from Babylon, and of events which they could by no natural sagacity anticipate, so that they could claim that they knew them.

Lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them - The taking of Babylon by Cyrus, and the deliverance of the exiles from their bondage, are events which can be foreseen only by God. Yet the prophet says that he had declared these events, which thus lay entirely beyond the power of human conjecture, long before they occurred, so that they could not possibly pretend that they knew them by any natural sagacity, or that an idol had effected this.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. Not like natural results from existing causes, the events when they took place were like acts of creative power, such as had never before been "from the beginning."

even before the day when—rather [Maurer], "And before the day (of their occurrence) thou hast not heard of them"; that is, by any human acuteness; they are only heard of by the present inspired announcement.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

They are created now, i.e. revealed unto thee by me; brought to light, as things are by creation. Things are frequently said to be made or done in Scripture, when they are declared or manifested. Job 5:3, I cursed, i.e. I pronounced it cursed. Psalm 2:4, That thou mightest be justified, i.e. declared and acknowledged to be just. Hosea 5:15, Till they acknowledge their offence; which in the Hebrew is, till they be guilty. Not from the beginning, Heb. not from thence; not from these ancient times, when other things were revealed unto thee. Even before the day, Heb. and (or, or, as this particle is frequently used) before this day. Such pronouns are oft understood, as we have seen; and this day answers to nor in the first clause; and this clause seems to be added as an exposition of the next foregoing clause, which is more general and ambiguous, not from then or before this day.

When thou heardest them not, Heb. and thou didst not hear them, to wit, before this time, in which God hath revealed them to time by my ministry.

Lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them; either by thine own sagacity, or by the help of thine idols. The sense is, That it might appear that thou hadst the knowledge of these things only from me, who made known unto thee only what and when I pleased.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

They are created now, and not from the beginning,.... Not that they were now done or brought into being, for as yet Cyrus was not born; though the raising of him up, and holding his right hand, and his executing the counsel of God, are spoken of as if they were already done, because of the certainty of them, Isaiah 45:1. Aben Ezra interprets "created" by "decreed"; though these were not now decreed by God; for no new decrees are made by him; but those which were made by him of old were now revealed and made manifest by prophecy, which is the sense of the phrase; so Kimchi observes,

"the time when they went out of the mouth of God is the time of their creation.''

Thus in like manner the incarnation of Christ, his sufferings and death, and salvation by him, things decreed from eternity, are spoken of in this prophecy as if actually done, because of the clear manifestation and certainty of them:

even before the day when thou heardest them not; they were in the breast of God, kept and reserved in his mind, and therefore are before called hidden things, before the Israelites heard anything of them; as were the things respecting Christ, and salvation by him; which were not only in God, who created all things by Christ, but were revealed before the Israelites had any knowledge of them, even to Adam and Eve, immediately after their fall; and were spoken of by all the holy prophets from the beginning of the world:

lest thou shouldest say, behold, I knew them; lest they should ascribe their present knowledge of them to their own sagacity and penetration; as if they were not obliged to a divine revelation, but of themselves had got the secret, and became acquainted with these things.

Geneva Study Bible

They are created now, and not from the beginning; even before the day when thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I {h} knew them.

(h) Showing that man's arrogancy is the reason God does not declare all things at once, lest they should attribute this knowledge to their own wisdom.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. They are created now] To create is to call into being by a word; and the idea here seems to be that the prophetic word which announces, is at the same time the creative fiat of Jehovah.

not from the beginning] not aforetime (see Isaiah 48:3).

even before the day when &c.] Render with R.V. and before this day thou heardest them not. The phrase “before the day” means “heretofore,” the opposite of “from this day forth” in ch. Isaiah 43:13.

Behold, I knew them] The events would have lost the effect of novelty if announced long before. Unbelief dies hard; when it can no longer say, “My idol did it,” it is apt to take refuge in another subterfuge and say, “It is what I expected.”

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - They are created now. The revelation to man of what has lain secret in God's counsels from all eternity is a sort of creation. As Nagelbach well says, it converts the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος into a λόγος προφορικός and therefore is one step towards actual accomplishment. The mystery of "the Servant of the Lord," and of atonement and salvation through him, had hitherto been hid away - "hid in God" (Ephesians 3:9), and was now for the first time to be made known to such as had "eyes to see" and "cars to hear" by the teaching of the evangelical prophet. Even before the day when thou heardest them not; rather, and before to-day thou heardest them not. Whatever shadows of evangelic truth are discernible in the Law and in the earlier psalms, they did not constitute a revelation of the way of salvation at all comparable to that contained in Isaiah's later chapters. Lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them. If the "new things" of Isaiah's prophecy had been revealed many centuries before, they would not have impressed the Jews of Isaiah's time, or even of the Captivity period, as they did by having been reserved to a comparatively late date. They would have seemed to most of them an old and trite story. Isaiah 48:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But in order to determine exactly what "the former things" were, which Jehovah had foretold in order that Israel might not ascribe them to this idol or the other, we must add Isaiah 48:6-8 : "Thou hast heard it, look then at it all; and ye, must ye not confess it? I give thee new things to hear from this time forth, and hidden things, and what thou didst not know. It is created now, and not long ago; and thou hast not heard it before, that thou mightest not say, Behold, I knew it. Thou hast neither heard it, nor known it, nor did thine ear open itself to it long ago: for I knew thou art altogether faithless, and thou art called rebellious from the womb." The meaning of the question in Isaiah 48:6 is very obvious: they must acknowledge and attest, even thou against their will (Isaiah 43:10; Isaiah 44:8), that Jehovah has foretold all that is now confirmed by the evident fulfilment. Consequently the "former things" are the events experienced by the people from the very earliest times (Isaiah 46:9) down to the present times of Cyrus, and more especially the first half or epoch of this period itself, which expired at the time that formed the prophet's standpoint. And as the object of the prediction was to guard Israel against ascribing to its idols that which had taken place (which can only be understood of events that had occurred in favour of Israel), the "former things" must include the preparation for the redemption of Israel from the Babylonian captivity through the revolution brought to pass by Cyrus. Hence the "new things" will embrace the redemption of Israel with its attendant circumstances, and that not merely on its outward side, but on its spiritual side as well; also the glorification of the redeemed people in the midst of a world of nations converted to the God of Israel, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth; in short, the New Testament aeon (compare עם לברית, lxx εἰς διαθήκην γένους, Isaiah 42:6), with the facts which contribute to its ultimate completion (f. Isaiah 42:9). The announcement and realization of these absolutely new and hitherto secret things (cf., Romans 16:25) take place from this time forward; Israel has not heard of them "before today" (compare מיּום, "from this day forward," Isaiah 43:13), that it may not lay claim to the knowledge conveyed to it by prophecy, as something drawn from itself. This thought is carried to a climax in Isaiah 48:8 in three correlated sentences commencing with "yea" (gam). פּתח signifies patescere here, as in Isaiah 60:11 (Ewald, 120, a). Jehovah had said nothing to them of this before, because it was to be feared that, with their faithlessness and tendency to idolatry, which had run through their entire history, they would only abuse it. This is strange! On the one hand, the rise of Cyrus is spoken of here as predicted from of old, because it belonged to the "former things," and as knowable through prophecy - a statement which favours the opinion that these addresses were written before the captivity; and, on the other hand, a distinction is drawn between these "former things" and certain "new things" that were intentionally not predicted before the expiration of these "former things," which certainly seems to preclude the possibility of their having been composed before the captivity; since, as Ruetschi observes, if "the older Isaiah had predicted this, he would have acted in direct opposition to Jehovah's design." But in actual fact, the dilemma in which the opponents of the authenticity of these prophecies find themselves, is comparatively worse than this. For the principal objection - namely, that a prophet before the captivity could not possibly have known or predicted anything concerning Cyrus - cannot be satisfactorily removed by attributing these prophecies to a prophet of the time of the captivity, since they expressly and repeatedly affirm that the rise of Cyrus was an event foreknown and predicted by the God of prophecy. Now, if it is Isaiah who thus takes his stand directly in the midst of the captivity, we can understand both of these: viz., the retrospective glance at previous prophecies, which issued in the rise of Cyrus that prepared the way for the redemption from Babylon, since, so far as the prophet was concerned, such prophecies as Isaiah 13-14:23; Isaiah 21:1-10, and also Isaiah 11:10-12 (Micah 4:10), are fused into one with his present predictions; and also the prospective glance at prophecies which are now first to be uttered, and events which are now fore the first time about to be accomplished; inasmuch as the revelations contained in these prophecies concerning Israel's pathway through suffering to glory, more especially so far as they grew out of the idea of the "servant of Jehovah," might really be set down as absolutely new to the prophet himself, and never heard of before. Meanwhile our exposition is not affected by the critical question; for even we most firmly maintain, that the prophet who is speaking here has his standpoint in the midst of the captivity, on the boundary line of the condition of suffering and punishment and its approaching termination.