Chapter 43
2021 - A little aside. Here are the verses they use in "The Chosen" series in reference to Mary of Magdala:
1 But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. [Isa 43:1 ESV]
It also goes on, with much comfort.
(((2021 - See the note at Isa 45:4 in reference to this.)))
2024 - In vs 1, "I have redeemed" is Qal perfect. Simple, done, finished. It is another of those things of God where something that has not happened is considered already done because God has ordained it to be so, and there is no turning him back.
2023 - Am I really to believe this verse changes over to "O church" under the New Covenant? "I have called you by name" means "the church" now. I can't get there. By name applies to a person and the family that proceeds from that person. Jacob, because he fathered the 12 tribes. What a stretch to try and say something as physical as that ought to be interpreted to mean Israel then and the church - which is a spiritual entity - now. I cannot get there. Color me Dispensationalist.
The promise of restoration on the other end of this chastening. These verses:
4 Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. [Isa 43:4 ESV]
No nation comes before Israel. God will "trample" all others to keep His promise to Israel.
2024 - Perhaps this is about Assyria going down after they were used to take Israel into captivity. About the fall of Babylon after the Jews went home. How many Romans died taking Jerusalem, and how many die today, every day, to preserve the remnant?
These verses, repeating the theme of the ultimate return of Israel to God:
6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." [Isa 43:6-7 ESV]
2024 - This goes again to the highways in the desert, from the north and from Egypt. The Jews come home when Christ is on the thrown, after Armageddon is complete. Or...somehow, God will protect the road as they come home leading up to Armageddon...but I don't think that's what we get from Revelation. They stay in hiding, protected there, and given water in the desert, until Jesus appears again and defeats all their enemies.
2023 - This one:
8 Bring out the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears! [Isa 43:8 ESV]. When has this ever been true of the church? The church has never been "blinded" so that they cannot see, nor deafened that they cannot hear. This is strictly, uniquely, and ONLY about Israel. What we ought to ask is when this started, and when did it end? We know it started way back here, because Jesus says something in reference to those who have eyes and cannot see, referencing this verse. The curse perhaps started all the way back here, and that is a big reason for them not recognizing Jesus when he came. They were blinded for pushing God out of their lives - really beginning with King Manasseh, and continuing, I think, until the rapture of the church at the sixth seal.
God addresses his servant(s). Not too sure about this part. He also declares that there is none, neither god nor man, who can stop His hand.
Are these next verses a reference to the gospel? Probably not, though the gospel was offered to the Jews by Jesus, and they rejected it. Only after this rejection was the gospel offered to the dogs. This surely seems to be a "light shined" on what was to come with the appearance of Jesus. The old was to pass away - the sacrificial system, dietary laws, and so on. Something new, completely new, was to come.
18 "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. 20 The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, 21 the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise. [Isa 43:18-21 ESV]
2023 - Until today, I have thought this part of the prophecies were as yet unfulfilled. When Jesus came, there wasn't a sudden breaking out of springs and rivers anywhere. But if we look at what Jesus said, at his words, they were surely the water of life. And where was he? He was always in the wilderness, in the out of the way places. And yet "if you drink the water I shall give, you will have everlasting life". Maybe that is what all of these like vs 20 are really about. I prefer a literal interpretation when it is possible - and if I go that way then this part has not been fulfilled, but maybe sometimes, literal just isn't what is meant. After all, we come up with those rules of interpretation for ourselves. What makes us think Isaiah was operating under those same rules?
2024 - But there are those verses that talk about God protecting Israel in the wilderness, in the desert, during the last days. Here it is:
5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. [Rev 12:5-6 ESV]. A place prepared, and for 3 1/2 years. It is certainly within reason to see this passage about "give drink to my chosen people" connecting directly with this verse in Revelation.
2021 - I think vss 16-21 are a far and further prophecy. It seems pretty clearly to be looking at John the Baptist, and the coming of Messiah. But vss 20, 21 don't really seem to be true yet. Those verses seem to be looking at the Millennial. It seems like much of the "jumping around" in Isaiah's prophecies comes right back to this same thing. It is like time was folded from Isaiah's point of view so that the church age is sort of out there in a closed loop - a cut off oxbow in the river - and he does not know it is even there. So as he unfolds his prophecy it goes straight from one crying in the wilderness to the greening of the Promised Land, back to what it was when it was first given to Israel. It would be like having a tape of a football game, and someone had cut out the middle two quarters, during which the "home team" was thoroughly trounced and all hope given up. Then in the fourth quarter, we have the tape back, and we hear about this unbelievable comeback from 48 points down, to the biggest win in the history of the game. Turns out that a lot of second stringers played in the 2, 3rd quarter, and they all earned their letters, but they are an aside, not the main thrust of the game. We Gentiles are so full of ourselves, thinking we're all that, when everywhere the Bible talks about us, we are barely more than just lucky.
2023 - And in light of this paragraph, looking back at the previous 2023 note, if we're going to say vs 20 is metaphor, then we have to explain why vss 16-21 are not...or we have to make them metaphor also. I don't think it is ok to jump back and forth like that just to say we understand it all.
Another indictment. Reason for God to let them go into captivity. The old way was considered a "burden" to Israel, and they stopped doing it. Stopped worshiping God according to His statutes and commandments given to Moses. God says that they were burdened by the sacrificial requirements, and in return they burdened Him with their sins. How totally clear this is!!! This precisely describes the NT times into which Jesus was born!
24 You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities. [Isa 43:24 ESV]
2021 - 22-24 give us the reason for the big "insertion" between vss 19 and 20. Israel has just gone too far for a just God to overlook. Their sins are many, their attitudes self-absorbed, their submission non-existent. They have just cut out everything about God from their hearts and they retain only the ritual.
Despite all this, look at God's response to their rejection of Him:
25 "I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. [Isa 43:25 ESV]
He does it for Himself, because He set them apart, and the promises will be fulfilled. The verses refer back to Jacob - not to Moses. God's protection and preservation of Israel stem from that time, and in order to preserve them, He offered first the Mosaic and then the New, and they have rejected both. Doesn't matter. He is God, He does what He promised and does it for His own sake, not for man's.
2023 - Hard to make this one apply to the church as the designated heir of Israel. Hard to say that this reference to Israel needing her sins blotted out has now become applicable to the church rather than to Israel. The only way this works is if it is about the Babylonian captivity, when God brings Israel back home. But these water in the desert prophecies are going to take a lot of imagination to explain if they are about the return from Babylon. Israel never was anything but subsistence farmers in that day, and they did not "rule the nations", and still do not, to this very day. That's how I would argue these prophecies.
And this verse? Is this the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD? (I think it is that and more. It is the blindness put upon them. Not just destruction but scattering and staying away. I think it is "utter destruction" because they had no land to live in, no homes, no fields, and they were and still are reviled by the whole world. Because they are "the teacher's pet". They were wiped out as a nation for refusing to accept the new covenant offered through Jesus. They were no longer a nation. They were leveled, everything torn down, Josephus says over a million Jews died in the siege of Jerusalem. Utter destruction would surely be an applicable phrase!
28 Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling. [Isa 43:28 ESV]
2023 - Vs 28 foretells the end of the priesthood.
2021 - Vss 25-28 surely do look forward to 70 AD. Babylon may be in the fore-time, but even Babylon did not do this kind of damage to the city. Only the Romans leveled it to the ground, not one stone upon another. There is some amazing stuff here:
27 Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me. [Isa 43:27 ESV] This is about Adam, first, and the mediators...I think of Moses, even Moses, who rebelled to the point he couldn't enter the land, of the corrupt High Priests that came along, Hophni and Phinehas, and others. Of the Judges, several of whom were not saints at all. Then Saul, and then later the horrible kings in both Judah and Ephraim. The mediators most certainly did transgress! And for all this, God will "...deliver Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reviling." Guess why there is Antisemitism in the world!? God put it there. It is part of the price of national sin.
Today is the 21st, and the first verse of Prov 21 says: "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord: he turns it wherever He will". This surely goes well with these chapters in Isaiah, and is it really a coincidence that they come up together in my reading?
All these chapters repeat and hammer home and make absolutely clear the unique nature of God. He is the one One. The theme just repeats and repeats and builds and builds through all these chapters - 40-43.