1And now, listen, Jacob, My servant,
and Israel whom I have chosen.
2Thus said the LORD your Maker,
your Fashioner in the womb, Who helps you:
Do not fear, My servant Jacob
and Jeshurun whom I have chosen.
3As I pour water on thirsty land
and rivulets on dry ground,
I will pour My spirit on your seed
and My blessing on your offspring.
4And they shall sprout among the grass
like willows by brooks of water.
5This one shall say, “I am for the LORD,”
and another shall call upon Jacob’s name,
and another shall write with his hand for the LORD
and Israel’s name he shall invoke.
6Thus said the LORD King of Israel
and its Redeemer, the LORD of Armies.
I am the first and I am the last—
and besides Me there is no god.
7Who is like Me? Let him call out,
let him tell it and lay it out to Me.
Who has made known from of old the signs
and what is to come has told?
8Do not be afraid and do not tremble.
Have I not informed you and told?—
And you are My witnesses.
Is there any god besides Me?
Is there any Rock? None have I known.
9Fashioners of idols, they are all mere wind,
and their cherished things cannot avail,
and their witnesses cannot see
nor know, and hence they are shamed.
10Who fashioned a god and cast an idol
to no avail?
11Look, all his fellow workers shall be shamed,
and the craftsmen, they are but men.
Let them all gather and stand,
they shall fear and all be shamed.
12The ironsmith with an adze
works it with coals
and with hammers fashions it
and works it with his strong arm.
Should he hunger, his strength will fail,
should he not drink, he will grow faint.
13The carpenter stretches a line,
marks the outline with a stylus,
he makes it with a plane,
marks the outline with a compass,
and makes it in the form of a man,
human splendor to set in a temple,
14cutting down cedars for it,
taking plane trees and oak,
he picks from the trees of the forest,
plants cedar, and the rain makes it grow.
15And it turns into fuel for man,
and he takes it and warms himself.
He lights it and bakes bread and is sated.
He also makes a god and bows down,
makes it an idol and worships it.
16Half of it he burns in fire,
on half he eats meat, he roasts it,
also warms himself, saying, “Hurrah!
I have warmed myself, seen the fire.”
17And the rest he makes as a god, as his idol.
He worships it and bows down
and prays to it and says,
“Save me, for you are my god.”
18They do not know and do not discern,
for their eyes are plastered over from seeing
and their hearts from understanding.
19None takes to heart,
with no knowledge or discernment to say:
“Half of it I burned in fire
and also baked bread on its coals,
I roasted meat and ate it.
And the rest as an abhorrence I made,
a block of wood I worshipped.”
20He herds ashes, a mocked heart has led him astray,
and he shall not save his life,
and he shall not say, “This is a sham in my right hand.”
21Recall these, O Jacob,
and Israel, for you are My servant.
I fashioned you, you are My servant,
Israel, do not forget Me.
22I have wiped away your crimes like a cloud,
and like the sky’s mist your offenses.
Turn back to Me, for I have redeemed you.
23Sing gladly, O heavens, for the LORD has done it,
shout out, you deeps of the earth.
Burst forth in glad song, you mountains,
the forest and all trees within it,
For the LORD has redeemed Jacob,
and shall glory in Israel.
24Thus said the LORD your Redeemer,
Who fashioned you in the womb:
I am the LORD, Maker of all,
stretching out the heavens, I alone,
laying down earth—who is with Me?
25Overturning the omens of lies,
making fools of soothsayers,
setting sages back on their heels
and thwarting their devisings.
26Confirming the word of His servant
and fulfilling His messengers’ counsel.
He says to Jerusalem, “You shall be settled,”
and to Judah’s towns, “You shall be rebuilt,
and I will raise up her ruins.”
27He says to the Deep, “Dry up,
and your streams I will make dry.”
28He says to Cyrus, “My shepherd!
And all I desire he shall fulfill.”
He says of Jerusalem, “It shall be rebuilt,”
and to the Temple, “Your foundation shall be laid.”
CHAPTER 44 NOTES
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2. Jeshurun. This is a synonym for “Israel” used only in poetic texts. Although the name appears to derive from a root that means “straight,” there are scholarly debates about its etymology.
5. write with his hand for the LORD. The received text says merely “write his hand,” but several ancient translations show a preposition. Perhaps the phrase indicates signing a pledge of loyalty, but some interpreters understand it to mean that he shall write the name of the LORD on his hand.
7. Who is like Me? The context gives this rhetorical question a different meaning from “Who is like You among the gods” in the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15:11. There the implication is that there are other gods but that they scarcely measure up to the God of Israel. Here, God has just emphatically declared, “I am the first and I am the last— / and besides Me there is no god.” The rest of the line, beginning with “Let him call out,” clearly indicates that there is none capable of calling out.
Who has made known from of old the signs. The received text here looks garbled. It reads literally: “From My placing an everlasting people and signs.” This translation accepts a widely proposed emendation, reading mashmiʿa meʿolam ʾotiyot instead of the Masoretic misumi ʿam-ʿolam we ʾotiyot. The “signs” are the omens of things to come: God’s divinity is demonstrated by His power to tell future events through His prophets.
8. Is there any Rock? “Rock” (tsur) is a recurrent epithet for God in Psalms, based on God’s role as a stronghold for His believers.
9. Fashioners of idols. The lengthy polemic against the manufacturers of idols that begins with these words is a hallmark of our prophet. No other biblical writer so scathingly reduces paganism to mere absurd fetishism. In the mid-twentieth century, the Israeli Bible scholar Yehezkel Kaufman used such prophecies to argue that the Israelites were so far removed from paganism that they failed to understand that idols were conceived merely as symbols of the gods they represented. One may question that view because polemic or satire is a literary vehicle that thrives on exaggeration: the prophet, in order to show vividly that idolators worship imagined entities, not real gods, represents them absurdly carving gods out of wood, using the leftover wood for fuel, and bowing down to their wooden carvings as to gods.
12. with an adze. The precise identity of several of the tools mentioned in this catalogue is uncertain.
Should he hunger. That is, the craftsman fashioning the idol is palpably subject to the human weakness of hunger and thirst, and hence it is preposterous to imagine that the image he produces is a god.
13. human splendor to set in a temple. By itself, the phrase “human splendor” sounds rather grand, but mere human splendor sitting in a temple as though it were a god becomes a satiric barb.
14. plants cedar. In this instance, the satire takes the process of manufacturing idols, all the way back to the planting of the tree that will later be cut down to provide wood for the statue.
15. bakes bread . . . / makes . . . an idol. This pairing is virtually a zeugma, the syntactic yoking together of disparate items: the same wood from which fuel is taken to bake bread also furnishes the material for an idol.
19. the rest as an abhorrence I made. This is, of course, a polemic revision of the pagan’s speech. The idol worshipper would never call his god an “abhorrence,” but that is precisely the term, toʿevah, that biblical writers frequently use to designate idols.
a block of wood. The first verset uses an abstraction, “abhorrence”; now, in keeping with the general procedure of poetic parallelism, the second verset lets us know concretely what the abhorrence is.
20. He herds ashes. This is a pointed oxymoron: ashes cannot be herded, and if a wind blows on them, they fly away. The image is an anticipation of “herding the wind” in Qohelet.
22. the sky’s mist. The Hebrew is simply another word for “cloud,” but English has scant synonyms for “cloud,” and the rare ones that come to mind (e.g., “thunderhead”) are not right for this context.
23. Sing gladly. This entire verse, which evokes a cosmic celebration of God’s glorious deeds in behalf of Israel, is reminiscent of quite a few psalms, and it is likely that the prophet-poet is remembering Psalms here.
24. Who fashioned you in the womb / . . . stretching out the heavens. The bold movement of the poetry here from the tight confinement of the womb to the vast expanse of the heavens beautifully conveys God’s magisterial power as Creator from the smallest things to the largest.
25. the omens of lies. The meaning of the second term, badim, is in dispute, although it could derive from the root b-d-h, which means to falsely invent or fabricate. In any case, here as above, the incapacity of pagan sages to forecast future events (which was a Babylonian specialty) is taken as a token of the nullity of their gods.
their devisings. The literal sense is “their knowledge.”
26. His servant / . . . His messengers. The reference is in all likelihood to God’s prophets. Unlike the pagan soothsayers, the prophets have an authentic channel through which they can foretell future events.
28. Cyrus. For the first time, the Persian emperor whose armies are threatening Babylonia is mentioned by name. In the earlier prophetic poetry there are generalized references to foreign kings—those of Assyria in particular—serving as God’s instrument, the rod of His wrath, but this text introduces a new order of specificity: a momentous change in history is unfolding, with the Babylonian empire, which destroyed the kingdom of Judah, under the shadow of destruction; and the Persian Cyrus is seen as God’s shepherd, fulfilling a divine plan. The endgame of this plan is the return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple, invoked in the second half of this verse and in fact to be implemented by another Persian emperor, decades after the probable time of this prophecy.