1Thus said the LORD to His anointed one,
to Cyrus, whose right hand I grasp,
to hold sway over nations,
and the loins of kings will I loosen,
to open before him double doors,
and the gates shall not be closed.
2I will go before you,
and rough places I will level,
doors of bronze I will smash
and iron bolts I will hack down.
3And I will set before you treasures of darkness
and hidden stores,
so that you may know that I am the LORD
Who calls your name, the God of Israel.
4For the sake of My servant Jacob
and Israel My chosen one,
I named you when I had not known you.
5I am the LORD and there is no other,
besides Me there is no god.
6So they may know from the sun’s rising place to its setting,
that there is none beside Me,
I am the LORD and there is no other.
7Fashioning light and creating darkness,
making peace and creating evil.
I am the LORD, making all these.
8O, heavens, drip down from above,
and skies, stream justice.
Let the earth open that it be fruitful with rescue
and bring forth righteousness with it.
I am the LORD. I created it.
9Woe, who disputes with his Fashioner,
a shard from the shards of the earth.
Shall the clay say to its Fashioner, “What are you doing?,
and Your work has no hands.”
10Woe, who says to the father, “What did you beget?,”
and to the woman, “Why do you labor?”
11Thus said the LORD,
Israel’s Holy One and its Fashioner:
The signs have inquired of Me about My sons,
and about the work of My hands they have charged Me.
12I made the earth
and the humans upon it I created.
It is I, My hands stretched out the heavens,
and all their array I commanded.
13It is I who roused him in justice
and all his ways I made straight.
He it is shall rebuild My city
and release My exiles,
not for a price and not for a payment,
said the LORD of Armies.
14This said the LORD:
The profit of Egypt and Nubia’s trade
and the Sabeans, men of stature,
shall pass over to you and be yours.
They shall walk behind you, pass on in chains,
to you they shall pray:
and there is none other save God.”
15Indeed, You are a God Who hides,
God of Israel, Rescuer.
16They were shamed and also disgraced
all of them together,
they walk in disgrace,
the crafters of idols.
17Israel is victorious through the LORD,
an everlasting victory.
You shall not be shamed and shall not be disgraced
forever more.
18For thus said the LORD,
Creator of the heavens, He is God,
Fashioner of earth and its Maker, He founded it.
Not for nothing did He create it,
to dwell there He fashioned it.
I am the LORD and there is no other.
19Not in secret have I spoken
in the place of a land of darkness.
I did not say to Jacob’s seed,
“In vain have you sought Me.”
I am the LORD speaking justice,
telling uprightness.
20Gather and come,
draw together,
survivors of nations!
Those who bear the wood of their idols
do not know
and who pray to a god
that does not rescue.
21Tell it and bring it forth,
even let them counsel together.
Who made this known of yore,
from of old told it?
Am I not the LORD
and there is no god beside Me,
a righteous God and a Rescuer,
there is none save Me.
22Turn to Me and be rescued,
for I am God and there is no other.
23By Myself have I sworn,
from My mouth has issued justice
a word that will not be revoked:
For to Me every knee shall bend,
every tongue shall vow.
24But through the LORD—of Me it was said—
victory and strength!
To Him shall they come and not be shamed,
all who were incensed against Him.
25Through the LORD shall they be victorious and praised,
all the seed of Israel.
CHAPTER 45 NOTES
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1. to His anointed one. Some readers may find it startling that a Persian emperor should be designated God’s “anointed one” (mashiah). One should keep in mind that in the first instance this is a political title, not a theological or eschatological one. Cyrus is God’s anointed because he is a king whose legitimacy is confirmed or underwritten by God and as such a ruler who will play a role God has defined for what is to happen in history.
the loins of kings will I loosen. One again can detect the common pattern of biblical poetic parallelism: first the general concept (“hold sway over nations”) and then in the parallel verset a concrete image—loosening the loins would be ungirding the loins that should be girded for battle, which is to say, disabling these royal enemies.
3. treasures of darkness / and hidden stores. The darkness here is pragmatic, not symbolic—the treasures have been hidden or buried in deep dark places, but now they will be brought to light to be appropriated by the conquering Cyrus.
4. For the sake of My servant Jacob. It is, of course, a peculiarly Israel-centered view of the world that Cyrus’s conquests are imagined as coming about strictly to rescue the people of Israel from its exile.
I called you by name. Here this idiom has the sense of “to summon,” as in the previous verse.
when I had not known you. As a foreign ruler, Cyrus would not have had any intimate relationship (the force of “to know” in the Hebrew) with YHWH.
7. Fashioning . . .creating. These are the two terms used for creation at the beginning of Genesis, respectively, in the J version (Genesis 2) and the P version (Genesis 1). The former term, yotser, is more concrete and, indeed, anthropomorphic, its primary reference being to the work of the potter with clay. This is a connotation that this poet repeatedly plays on, as in verse 9 below.
8. O, heavens, drip down from above. In this semiarid region dependent on rainfall, it is usually rain as a source of blessing that comes down from the sky in poetry, but here there is a metaphorical transformation of this primary notion: it is justice that rains down, fructifying human life.
9. Shall the clay say to its Fashioner. This line clearly harks back to Genesis 2, where God fashions the first human from the clay of the earth.
10. Woe, who says to the father. This line relates to the preceding one in a kind of a fortiori logic: just as it would be absurd for a person to deny that his father and mother had begotten him, it is even more preposterous that any human creature should deny that God is his Creator.
11. The signs have inquired of Me. It is unclear what these signs are. The Hebrew is as opaque as this translation and may reflect a defective text.
12. I made the earth. Just as God is the cosmic Creator, bringing into being heaven and earth, He also determines the direction of history, as the next verse will assert.
13. It is I Who roused him in justice. The “him” is Cyrus, who in this version is led to the conquest of Babylonia for the sole purpose of returning Israel from exile. As a matter of historical fact, the return to Zion took place eight decades after the fall of the Babylonian empire to the Persians.
14. shall pass over to you and be yours. “You” in this passage is feminine singular and so must refer to Zion, often represented in poetry as a woman.
to you they shall bow, / to you they shall pray. This wording may sound somewhat suspect from a monotheistic point of view. It should probably be taken as an extravagant hyperbole—these peoples of the south will be so abjectly enslaved to the Israelites that they will prostrate themselves before them and worship them as though they were gods.
In you alone is God. These words are best understood as the speech of the captives addressed to Israel and offering an explanation for their bowing down to their captors.
15. Indeed, You are a God Who hides. Many scholars view this verse as an interpolation, unrelated to what precedes or follows. If there is a connection it might be this: it is hard to detect the presence or earthly manifestation of God, but He dwells (or perhaps hides) within the people of Israel, where foreigners now discern Him through His conquering power.
17. victorious . . . / victory. Given the context of the subjugation of foreign peoples, the root y-sh-ʿ—elsewhere, “rescue”—probably has its military sense.
18. Not for nothing. The use of tohu amounts to a pun. Adverbially, it can mean “for nothing,” “futilely,” as it clearly does in the next verse. But as a noun, it designates the primordial chaos (in this translation of tohu wavohu, “welter and waste”) that preceded creation, so what is also being asserted is that God did not create the earth to be mere chaos or void.
20. Those who bear the wood of their idols. The formulation glances back to the representation of idol manufacture in chapter 44, suggesting an image of the pagans carrying the wood out of which they will fashion their idols.
22. all you ends of earth. As elsewhere, ʾafsey ʾarets is a metonymy since the object of the prophet’s address is clearly the inhabitants of the ends of the earth.
23. For to Me every knee shall bend, / every tongue shall vow. This line would be incorporated in the Aleinu prayer at the end of the morning service, which affirms God’s kingship over all things.
24. of Me it was said. There is no need to emend this clause, as has frequently been proposed. Although the verb appears to say “he said,” the third-person singular is often used as the equivalent of a passive form of the verb.
To Him shall they come and not be shamed. Even though “be shamed” is very often used for a condition of being defeated, here there is an image of those who have set themselves up as God’s enemies (“all who were incensed against Him”) obliged to come before God and accept His admonition in shame.
25. victorious. The root ts-d-q is associated with justice because its primary sense is winning a just case in court. But the concept of winning in a conflict also leads to its use to indicate winning in battle, which would appear to be the sense here.