Bel bows down. Nebo stoops. Their idols are carried by animals, and on the livestock. The things that you carried around are heavy loads, a burden for the weary.
They stoop and they bow down together. They could not deliver the burden, but they have gone into captivity.
“Listen to me, house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, that have been carried from their birth, that have been carried from the womb.
Even to old age I am he, and even to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear. Yes, I will carry, and will deliver.
“To whom will you compare me, and consider my equal, and compare me, as if we were the same?
Some pour out gold from the bag, and weigh silver in the balance. They hire a goldsmith, and he makes it a god. They fall down— yes, they worship.
They bear it on their shoulder. They carry it, and set it in its place, and it stands there. It cannot move from its place. Yes, one may cry to it, yet it can not answer. It cannot save him out of his trouble.
“Remember this, and show yourselves men. Bring it to mind again, you transgressors.
Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me.
I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. I say: My counsel will stand, and I will do all that I please.
I call a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. Yes, I have spoken. I will also bring it to pass. I have planned. I will also do it.
Listen to me, you stubborn-hearted, who are far from righteousness!
I bring my righteousness near. It is not far off, and my salvation will not wait. I will grant salvation to Zion, my glory to Israel.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 13 These were the chief idols of Babylon.
These were the chief idols of Babylon.
Because they were of gold and silver, the Medes and Persians carried them away.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Isa 46:1 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols…
Isa 46:1 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages [were] heavy loaden; [they are] a burden to the weary [beast].
Ver. 1. Bel is bowed down.] Jupiter Belus (as Pliny {a} calleth him), Babel’s chief God, is now become a prey to the Persians, and might be to them of as great worth as was Nebuchadnezzar’s solid gold image dedicated in Dura. {Dan 3:1-2} This great golden image some think to be the same that is here called Nebo or Nebuchadnezzar. Others think it to be Apollo Deus vaticinus. Tremellius rendereth it, the prophesying or oracular God. Jeremiah seemeth to call him Merodach. {Jer 51:2} Dagon the Septuagint render him, but not well.
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Your carriages were heavy laden.] Tam estis dii graves.
{a} Lib. vi. cap. 26.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Bel; the chief idol of the Babylonians, Jer 50:2;…
Bel; the chief idol of the Babylonians, Jer 50:2; 51:44, called by profane historians Jupiter Belus.
Boweth down; as the Babylonians used to bow down to him to worship him, so now he boweth down and submits himself to the victorious Persians.
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Nebo; another of the famous idols, which used to deliver oracles, as his name signifies.
Their idols were upon the beasts; were taken and broken, and the materials of them, which were gold, and silver, and brass, as both Scripture and other authors witness, were carried upon beasts into Persia.
Your carriages, O ye Persians; to whom he suddenly turneth his speech, as is usual;
were heavy laden; they lie upon the backs of your cattle like dull, and unprofitable, and heavy burdens to the beasts, as they had been to men before.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 5 We are here told,
We are here told,
I. That the false gods will certainly fail their worshippers when they have most need of them, Isa 46:1, Isa 46:2. Bel and Nebo were two celebrated idols of Babylon. Some make Bel to be a contraction of Baal; others rather think not, but that it was Belus, one of their first kings, who after his death was deified. As Bel was a deified prince, so (some think) Nebo was a deified prophet, for so Nebo signifies; so that Bel and Nebo were their Jupiter and their Mercury or Apollo. Barnabas and Paul passed at Lystra for Jupiter and Mercury. The names of these idols were taken into the names of their princes, Bel into Belshazzar's, Nebo into Nebuchadnezzar's and Nebuzaradan's, etc. These gods they had long worshipped, and in their revels praised them for their successes (as appears, Dan 5:4); and they insulted over Israel as if Bel and Nebo were too hard for Jehovah and could detain them in captivity in defiance of their God. Now, that this might be no discouragement to the poor captives, God here tells them what shall become of these idols, which they threaten them with. When Cyrus takes Babylon, down go the idols. It was usual then with conquerors to destroy the gods of the places and people they conquered, and to put the gods of their own nation in the room of them, Isa 37:19. Cyrus will do so; and then Bel and Nebo, that were set up on high, and looked great, bold, and erect, shall stoop and bow down at the feet of the soldiers that plunder their temples. And because there is a great deal of gold and silver upon them, which was intended to adorn them, but serves to expose them, they carry them away with the rest of the spoil. The carriers' horses, or mules, are laden with them and their other idols, to be sent among other lumber (for so it seems they accounted them rather than treasure) into Persia. So far are they from being able to support their worshippers that they are themselves a heavy load in the wagons, and a burden to the weary beast. The idols cannot help one another (Isa 46:2): They stoop, they bow down together. They are all alike, tottering things, and their day has come to fall. Their worshippers cannot help them: They could not deliver the burden out of the enemy's hand, but themselves (both the idols and the idolaters) have gone into captivity. Let not therefore God's people be afraid of either. When God's ark was taken prisoner by the Philistines it proved a burden, not to the beasts, but to the conquerors, who were forced to return it; but, when Bel and Nebo have gone into captivity, their worshippers may even give their good word with them: they will never recover themselves.
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II. That the true God will never fail his worshippers: "You hear what has become of Bel and Nebo, now hearken to me, O house of Jacob! Isa 46:3, Isa 46:4. Am I such a god as these? No; though you are brought low, and the house of Israel is but a remnant, your God has been, is, and ever will be, your powerful and faithful protector."
1. Let God's Israel do him the justice to own that he has hitherto been kind to them, careful of them, tender over them, and has all along done well for them. Let them own, (1.) That he bore them at first: I have made. Out of what womb came they, but that of his mercy, and grace, and promise? He formed them into a people and gave them their constitution. Every good man is what God makes him. (2.) That he bore them up all along: You have been borne by me from the belly, and carried from the womb. God began betimes to do them good, as soon as ever they were formed into a nation, nay, when as yet they were very few, and strangers. God took them under a special protection, and suffered no man to do them wrong, Psa 105:12-14. In the infancy of their state, when they were not only foolish and helpless, as children, but forward and peevish, God carried them in the arms of his power and love, bore them as upon eagles' wings, Exo 19:4; Deu 32:11. Moses had not patience to carry them as the nursing father does the sucking child (Num 11:12), but God bore them, and bore their manners, Act 13:18. And as God began early to do them good (when Israel was a child, then I loved him), so he had constantly continued to do them good: he had carried them from the womb to this day. And we may all witness for God that he has been thus gracious to us. We have been borne by him from the belly, from the womb, else we should have died from the womb and given up the ghost when we came out of the belly. We have been the constant care of his kind providence, carried in the arms of his power and in the bosom of his love and pity. The new man is so; all that in us which is born of God is borne up by him, else it would soon fail. Our spiritual life is sustained by his grace as necessarily and constantly as our natural life by his providence. The saints have acknowledged that God has carried them from the womb, and have encouraged themselves with the consideration of it in their greatest straits, Psa 22:9, Psa 22:10; Psa 71:5, Psa 71:6, Psa 71:17.
2. He will then do them the kindness to promise that he will never leave them. He that was their first will be their last; he that was the author will be the finisher of their well-being (Isa 46:4): "You have been borne by me from the belly, nursed when you were children; and even to your old age I am he, when, by reason of your decays and infirmities, you will need help as much as in your infancy." Israel were now growing old, so was their covenant by which they were incorporated, Heb 8:13. Gray hairs were here and there upon them, Hos 7:9. And they had hastened their old age, and the calamities of it, by their irregularities. But God will not cast them off now, will not fail them when their strength fails; he is still their God, will still carry them in the same everlasting arms that were laid under them in Moses's time, Deu 33:27. He has made them and owns his interest in them, and therefore he will bear them, will bear with their infirmities, and bear them up under their afflictions: "Even I will carry and will deliver them; I will now bear them upon eagles' wings out of Babylon, as in their infancy I bore them out of Egypt." This promise to aged Israel is applicable to every aged Israelite. God has graciously engaged to support and comfort his faithful servants, even in their old age: "Even to your old age, when you grow unfit for business, when you are compassed with infirmities, and perhaps your relations begin to grow weary of you, yet I am he - he that I am, he that I have been - the very same by whom you have been borne from the belly and carried from the womb. You change, but I am the same. I am he that I have promised to be, he that you have found me, and he that you would have me to be. I will carry you, I will bear, will bear you up and bear you out, and will carry you on in your way and carry you home at last."
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth,.... These are names of…
Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth,.... These are names of the idols of Babylon. Bel is by some thought to be the contraction of Baal, the god of the Phoenicians, called by them Beel; so "Beelsamin" (h), in the Phoenician language, is Lord of heaven: but rather this is the Belus of the Babylonians, who was a renowned king of them, and after his death deified; whom Nebuchadnezzar, according to Megasthenes (i), calls Belus his progenitor, and by whom Babylon was walled about. This idol is, no doubt, the same with Jupiter Belus, who had a temple in Babylon with gates of brass, and which was in being in the times of Herodotus (k), as he reports. This name is sometimes taken into the names of their kings, as Belshazzar or Beltesbazaar. Nebo was another of their idols, an oracular one, from whom, by its priests, prophesies of things future were pretended to be given out; for it may have its name from "to prophesy", and answers to the Apollo or Mercury of other nations. The Alexandrian copy of the Septuagint has very wrongly, instead of it, Dagon the god of the Philistines; and so the Arabic version "Dsagon". This name Nebo was also taken into the names of the kings of Babylon, as Nabonassar, Nabopalassar, Nebuchadnezzar, and others. As Bel is the same with Belus, so Nebo is the same with Beltis, the queen Megasthenes or Abydenus speaks of in the same place; and Bel may design the sun, and Nebo the moon, which may have its name from "to bud forth", or "make fruitful", as the moon does; see Deu 33:14. It is said of both these deities, that they "stooped" or "bowed down"; being taken down from the high places where they were set upright, and looked grand and majestic, and where they might be seen and worshipped by the people. Jarchi gives the words another sense, that it represents in a sarcastic way these idols, as through fear, in a like condition that men are in, in a fit of the colic, who not being able to get to the solid stool, are obliged to bend their knees, and ease themselves as they can (l). Aben Ezra seems to refer to the same signification of the word, when he says the sense was well known, but it was not fit to write it. The prophet goes on in the derision of these idols:
their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle; that is, being taken down, and broke to pieces for the sake of the silver, and gold, and brass that were about them, or they were made of, they were put into sacks by the Persians, and laid upon camels, and mules, and horses, and transported into Media and Persia. Jarchi interprets it, their idols are like to beasts, which defile themselves with their dung as they do; and so the Targum renders it,
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"their images are "in" the likeness of serpents and beasts.''
These were the forms of them:
your carriages were heavy loaden, they are a burden to the weary beast; this seems to be spoken to the Persians, who loaded their carriages, and their beasts, with this lumber, that their wagons were ready to break down, and their cattle groaned under the weight of it; a sarcastic jeer at the idols which were become the plunder and prey of the soldiers. It was usual at the taking of cities to demolish the idols of them; and this was typical of the demolition of Heathen idols, and the cessation of Heathen oracles in the Gentile world, through the spread of the Gospel in it, in the first times of Christianity.
(h) Sanchoniatho apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 1. c. 10. p. 34. (i) Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 4. l. p. 456. (k) Clio, sive l. 1. c. 181. Vid. Pausan. Messen. p. 261. (l) Vid. gloss. in T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 63. 2.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 The ruin of Babylon and her idols, ver. 1-2.…
The ruin of Babylon and her idols, ver. 1-2. God's love and faithfulness to the Jews. ver. 3-4. Idols not to be compared with God, ver. 5-8. for power, knowledge, and sure salvation, ver. 9- 13.
Bel - The chief idol of the Babylonians, called by profane historians Jupiter Belus. Boweth - As the Babylonians used to bow down to him to worship, so now he bows down to the victorious Persians. Nebo - Another of the famous idols, which used to deliver oracles. Their idols - Were taken and broken, and the materials of them, gold, silver, and brass, were carried upon beasts into Persia. Your carriages - O ye Persians, to whom he turns his speech.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 12 The idols of Babylon represented as so far from…
CHAPTER XLVI
The idols of Babylon represented as so far from being able to
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bear the burden of their votaries, that they themselves are
borne by beasts of burden into captivity, 1, 2.
This beautifully contrasted with the tender care of God, in
bearing his people from first to last in his arms, and
delivering them from their distress, 3, 4.
The prophet, then, with his usual force and elegance, goes on
to show the folly of idolatry, and the utter inability of
idols, 5-7.
From which he passes with great ease to the contemplation of
the attributes and perfections of the true God, 8-10.
Particularly that prescience which foretold the deliverance of
the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, with all its leading
circumstances; and also that very remote event of which it is
the type in the days of the Messiah, 11-13.
NOTES ON CHAP. XLVI
Verse 1. Their carriages were heavy loaden - "Their burdens are heavy"] For נשאתיכם nesuotheychem, your burdens, the Septuagint had in their copy נשאתיהם nesuotheyhem, their burdens.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 9, 12 Isa 46:1-2. Bel — The chief idol of the…
Isa 46:1-2. Bel — The chief idol of the Babylonians, called by profane historians Jupiter Belus; boweth down — As the Babylonians used to bow down to him to worship him, so now he bows down, and submits himself to the victorious Persians. Nebo stoopeth — Another of their famous idols, probably a deified prophet, the word signifying to deliver oracles, or to prophesy. The names of these idols were included in the names of several of their princes, as Bel, in Belshazzar; Nebo, in Nabonassar; Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan. Their idols were upon their beasts — Were taken and broken, and the materials of them, which were gold, and silver, and brass, were carried upon beasts into Persia. Your carriages — O ye Persians, to whom he suddenly turns his speech, were heavy loaden — With these useless gods, which were so far from being able to come forward to the help of their worshippers, that they could not move themselves, but must be dragged on carriages by cattle. They bow down together — The Babylonians and their idols, neither of them being able to help the other. They could not deliver the burden — The Babylonians could not deliver their idols, which he now had called a burden; but themselves are gone into captivity — They as well as their idols.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–13 Bel boweth down - Bel or Belus (בל bēl,…
Bel boweth down - Bel or Belus (בל bēl, from בעל be‛ēl, the same as בעל ba‛al was the chief domestic god of the Babylonians, and was worshipped in the celebrated tower of Babylon (compare Jer 50:2; Jer 51:44). It was usual to compound names of the titles of the divinities that were worshipped, and hence, we often meet with this name, as in Bel-shazzar, Bel-teshazzar, Baal-Peor, Baal-zebub, Baal-Gad, Baal-Berith. The Greek and Roman writers compare Bel with Jupiter, and the common name which they give to this idol is Jupiter Belus (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvii. 10; Cic. De Nat. Deor. iii. 16; Diod. ii. 8, 9). Herodotus (i. 181-183) says, that in the center of each division of the city of Babylon (for the Euphrates divided the city into two parts) there is a circular space surrounded by a wall. In one of these stands the royal palace, which fills a large and strongly defended space.
The temple of Jupiter Belus, says he, occupies the other, whose huge gates of brass may still be seen. It is a square building, each side of which is of the length of two furlongs. In the midst, a tower rises of the solid depth and height of one furlong; on which, resting as a base, seven other turrets are built in regular succession. The ascent on the outside, winding from the ground, is continued to the highest tower; and in the middle of the whole structure there is a convenient resting place. In this temple there is a small chapel, which contains a figure of Jupiter in a sitting posture, with a large table before him; these, with the base of the table, and the sear of the throne, are all of the purest gold. There was formerly in this temple a statue of solid gold, twelve cubits high. This was seized, says Herodotus, by Xerxes, who put the priest to death who endeavored to prevent its removal.
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The upper room of this tower was occupied as an observatory. The idol Baal, or Bel, was especially the god of the Phenicians, of the Canaanites, of the Chaldeans, of the Moabites, and of some of the surrounding nations. The most common opinion has been, that the idol was the sun (see the notes at Isa 17:8-9), and that, under this name, this luminary received divine honors. But Gesenius supposes that by the name Jupiter Belus was not denoted Jupiter, ‘the father of the gods,’ but the planet Jupiter, Stella Jovis, which was regarded, together with Venus, as the giver of all good fortune; and which forms with Venus the most fortunate of all constellations under which sovereigns can be born. The planet Jupiter, therefore, he supposes to have been worshipped under the name Bel, and the planet Venus under the name of Astarte, or Astareth (see Gesenius, Commentary zu Isaiah, ii. 333ff, and Robinson’s Calmet, Art. Baal). The phrase ‘boweth down,’ means here, probably, that the idol sunk down, fell, or was removed. It was unable to defend the city, and was taken captive, and carried away. Jerome renders Confractus est Bel - ‘Bel is broken.’ The Septuagint, Ἔπεσε Βὴλ Epese Bēl - ‘Bel has fallen.’ Perhaps in the language there is allusion to the fact that Dagon fell before the ark of God 1Sa 5:2-3, 1Sa 5:7. The sense is, that even the object of worship - that which was regarded as the most sacred among the Chaldeans - would be removed.
Nebo stoopeth - This was an idol-god of the Chaldeans. In the astrological mythology of the Babylonians, according to Gesenius (Commentary zu Isaiah ii. 333ff), this idol was the planet Mercury. He is regarded as the scribe of the heavens, who records the succession of the celestial and terrestrial events; and is related to the Egyptian Hermes and Anubis. The extensive worship of this idol among the Chaldeans and Assyrians is evident from the many compound proper names occurring in the Scriptures, of which this word forms a part, as Neb-uchadnezzar, Neb-uzaradan: and also in the classics, as Nab-onad, Nab-onassar. Nebo was, therefore, regarded as an attendant on Bel, or as his scribe. The exact form of the idol is, however, unknown. The word ‘stoopeth,’ means that it had fallen down, as when one is struck dead he falls suddenly to the earth; and the language denotes conquest, where even the idols so long worshipped would be thrown down. The scene is in Babylon, and the image in the mind of the prophet is that of the city taken, and the idols that were worshipped thrown down by the conqueror, and carried away in triumph.
Their idols were upon the beasts - That is, they are laid upon the beasts to be borne away in triumph. It was customary for conquerors to carry away all that was splendid and valuable, to grace their triumph on their return; and nothing would be a more certain indication of victory, or a more splendid accompaniment to a triumph, than the gods whom the vanquished nations had adored. Thus in Jer 48:7, it is said, ‘And Chemosh shall go forth into captivity, with his priests and his princes together’ (compare Jer 44:3, margin.)
Your carriages - That is, they were laden with the idols that were thus borne off in triumph.
They are a burden - They are so numerous; so heavy; and to be borne so far. This is a very striking and impressive manner of foretelling that the city of Babylon would be destroyed. Instead of employing the direct language of prophecy, the prophet represents himself as seeing the heavy laden animals and wagons moving along slowly, pressed down under the weight of the captured gods to be borne into the distant country of the conqueror. They move forth from Babylon, and the caravan laden with the idols, the spoils of victory, is seen slowly moving forward to a distant land.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 12 Bel; perhaps Nimrod, (Calmet) or Saturn, to whom they…
Bel; perhaps Nimrod, (Calmet) or Saturn, to whom they sacrificed their children. (Worthington) --- Nabo, "the oracle" of Belus. The Chaldeans adored statues and beasts. But the Persians worshipped the elements. (Calmet) --- Xerxes destroyed the tomb of Belus, after his expedition into Greece. (Arrian vii.) He had there demolished the temples, (Herodotus viii. 109.) pretending (Haydock) that "the world is the house of the gods." (Cicero, Leg. ii.) --- Weariness. The priests affected to be weighed down, as if the god were present. (Baruch vi. 25.) (St. Cyril)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 The overthrow of the Babylonian idols, and the gain…
VII.—THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE
The overthrow of the Babylonian idols, and the gain that Israel shall derive from it for its knowledge of God
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Isaiah 46
1. ISRAEL SHALL KNOW ITS GOD FROM THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIM WHO BEARS AND THE IDOLS THAT ARE BORNE
Isa_46:1-4
1 Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth,
Their idols 1were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle:
2Your carriages were heavy loaden;
They are a burden to the weary beast.
2 They stoop, they bow down together;
They could not deliver the burden,
But 3themselves are gone into captivity.
3 Hearken unto me, O house of Jacob,
And all the remnant of the house of Israel,
Which are borne by me from the belly,
Which are carried from the womb:
4 And even to your old age I am he;
And even to hoar hairs will I carry you:
I have made, and I will bear;
Even I will carry, and I will deliver you.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
See List for the recurrence of the words: Isa_46:1. נְשֻׂאוֹת –קָרַם–בָּרַע Isa_46:3. שִׁמְעוּ.
Isa_46:1. בדע and קרם mean “to bow, bend one’s-self, to fall down.” קָרַם is kindred to the unused root כָּרַשׂ from which comes כְּרֵשׂ “belly,” (Bauch, comp. beugen) Jer_51:34.—It is likely no accident that after כָּרַע בל the discourse does not continue with קָרַם נבו, but we have instead the particip. קֹרֵם. It seems to me nearly accordant with Isaiah’s way, to assume that he intends by this participle an allusion to כֹּרֶשׁ, an allusion whose justification is still more strengthened by the addition of כָּרַע and כָּרַשׂ. Then the sense becomes, that to כֹּרֶשׁ who attacks, there will be a corresponding קֹרֵם (כּרֵשׁ) and a כָּרַע on the part of the attacked.—משׂא לעיפּה an appositional added clause; the fem, is likely occasioned by the preceding חיה and בהמה; unless one takes the fern, in a neuter sense.
Isa_46:2. מָלַט originally signifies “to be smooth, slippery” (comp. מָרַט and פָלַט), the Piel then means “to make smooth, slippery,” and thus to make fit for slipping away, falling out. Hence the meaning “to let slip away,” of eggs (Isa_34:15) and of the foetus (in the Hiph. Isa_66:7).—נֶפֶשׁ means here the life-centre in antithesis to the periphery: the person, the proper I or self. Thus נפשׁ is not unfrequently used to strengthen the pronoun, in order to express the notion “self,” or to emphasize it (comp. e.g., Hos_9:4; Jer_26:19; Jer_37:9).
Isa_46:3. העמסים and הנשׂאים are in apposition with בית יעקב and שׁארית ב׳ י׳
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. The reverse of the foregoing picture is now presented. There we have the victor; now we see the fate of the vanquished. But first it is the central point and refuge of the vanquished whose disgraceful end is set before us. The idols of Babylon, of which Bel and Nebo are named as the chief representatives, must come down from the places of honor where they were enthroned. Their images are loaded on beasts of burden to go into captivity (Isa_46:1-2). From the contrast Israel may learn the lofty nature of its God. No one bears Him forth. On the contrary He has borne Israel with maternal love from the time of its birth, and will continue to carry it when no longer a child, but an old man (Isa_46:3-4).
2. Bel boweth——into captivity.
Isa_46:1-2. There have been found in the library of king Asurbanipal two tablets of terra cotta, which contain two lists, one of the Assyrian, the other of the Babylonian superior gods (see Schrader,Assyrisch-Biblisches in Stud. u. Kr., 1874, p. 324 sqq.). From these it appears that the Assyrians and Babylonians had a system of gods ranged in four grades. At the summit was the highest, transcendent god, by the Assyrians called Asur, by the Babylonians Ilu, El (with the female deity Istar, Astarte). Following these, in the second grade, are three gods, also belonging it would seem to the unseen world: Anu, Bel or Bil and I—o (Ao). In Babylonian and Assyrian these three bear the same names. Then in a third grade, follow three gods of heaven belonging to the visible world, which again are named alike in both languages: Sin, the moon-god, Samas, the sun-god and Bin, the air-god. Finally, in the fourth degree appear the planet-gods, of which the Assyrian list names five (Marduk, Merodach, i.e., Jupiter; Istar, i.e., Astarte, Venus; Adar=Saturn; Nirgal=Mars; Nabu, Nebo=Mercury), the Babylonian however names only two male and two corresponding female divinities: Marduk (Merodach) with Zarpanituv (Zirbanit) and Nabiuv (Nebo) with Tasmituv (Tasmit). From this it appears that Bel has the second place in the second degree, and Nebo the last place in the lowest degree. Bel (comp. further on it Schrader,Die Keilinschrift. etc., p. 80 sq.), belongs to the divinities of the transcendent, invisible world, whereas Nebo as a planet-god corresponds to Mercury. He is the נָבִיא, the “revealing” god, and was, in the period of the later Chaldean kingdom along with Merodach, the chief god of the Babylonians, so that most of the kings named themselves after him (Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonned). Comp. Schrader, l. c. p. 272.
The highly honored images of the gods, else only served by human hands, are now distributed among the beasts and the cattle, i.e., partly the tamed wild beasts, as elephants and partly the tame domestic beasts, as the camel and the ass. חַיָה as designation of the animalia agrestia and בְּהֵמָה as designation of animalia domestica recur often conjoined: Gen_1:24-25; Gen_3:14; Gen_7:14; Gen_7:21; Gen_8:1; Lev_25:7, etc. The cattle have therefore the chief work to do with them, which consists in toilsome bearing. What a shame for a god to be so heavy! A god ought to be spirit and light, and therefore imponderable! There is frequent mention of carrying forth the gods of a conquered nation, partly as spoil, partly out of religious policy: Isa_10:10 sq.; Jer_48:7; Jer_49:3 (comp. 1Sa_5:1 sqq.). Comp. also the inscription of Sargon quoted under Isa_20:1. נשׂאות , “gestata, gestamina, carried images,” comp. Isa_46:7; Isa_45:20; Amo_5:26; Jer_10:5. נָשָׂא means carrying in general. עָמַם only “to carry, load up a heavy burden (freight);” comp. Gen_44:13; Psa_68:20; Zec_12:3. Thus the Prophet says, “your נשׂאות are become עמסות, and designates thereby a progress in deterius. How this is so he says by the appositional clause a burden to the weary, viz.: beast.
What is said Isa_46:1 of Bel and Nebo is generalized in Isa_46:2. All the gods together must bow and fall down. They are not able to slip off, let go the load. (See Text, and Gram.). In these words and in the following their soul (person) is gone into captivity (see Text, and Gram.), the Prophet proceeds on the distinction between the idols themselves, the (relatively) transcendent numinibus and the simulacris representing these; a distinction that heathen belief made in thesi at least originally, but gradually in praxi carried out with as little consistency as does the Romish church with its images of the saints (comp. Friedr. Naegelsbach,Nachhomer, Theol. des griech. Volksglaubens, I. § 3, and V. §11). Thus the meaning of our passage is they are not able to bring it about that the burden of the images shall slip away (viz.: from the hands of the enemy) as some smooth, slippery object. Were the gods of the heathen really gods, the Prophet would say, then they would be able to effect this, massive as they are. In that case the distinction between the god and his image would be justified. But as the gods do not deliver their images, it results that there is no distinction between them, and the gods are not something better and higher. They are in fact אלילים, nothings. If the image goes into captivity, then in fact the idol himself is dragged forth, all that belongs to his substance, for out of the image he does not exist. Babylon was especially rich in extraordinarily costly images of the gods. Bead e.g., in Herodotus (I. 183) the description of the colossal, golden images in the temple of Bel, which moreover neither Cyrus nor Darius Hystaspis touched, notwithstanding the Persian religion recognized no worship of images. It was Xerxes that first took away the massive golden image twelve yards high (Herod. l. c.).
3. Hearken unto me——deliver you.
Isa_46:3-4. These verses form an admirable contrast with Isa_46:1-2. The gods are carried to their disgrace; Jehovah carries His people. And He, the strong One, carries them as tenderly and lovingly as a mother her child. Because He would say something earnest and important, He summons the people to give special heed: hearken unto me. It is little probable, in my opinion, that “house of Jacob” means Judah, while all the remnant of the house of Israel means Israel that in the Assyrian Exile was already for the most part denationalized. First, כֹּל seems to me to conflict with that, and then the Prophet no where else designates the Israel exiled in Assyria as שׁארית. This expression (“remnant”) is an honorable title designating the quintessence of the whole nation, without distinction of tribe, that remains after all siftings (comp. Isa_6:13; Isa_10:20 sqq.). This quintessence belongs to the last time, the old age of the nation. I find, therefore, a reference in the expression to Isa_46:4 a, and that by כֹּל the thought is expressed that we find e.g., Jer_3:14, viz.: that no one belonging to the “remnant.” even though he may dwell most concealed and solitary, will be forgotten. In what follows, the motherly love of God is described. For God is Father and Mother in one person, and His love bears not only a masculine but also a feminine character (comp. Isa_42:14; Isa_49:15; Isa_66:9; Isa_66:13). All Israel, at once after its birth, “from the belly” or “womb,” thus immediately after its entrance on history as a nation (Jer_2:2), has been born in the arms by the Lord, as a mother carries her little child (comp. Isa_63:9). The form: מִגִּי (only here in Isaiah comp. מִנֵּי30:11) is meant likely to impart an emphasis to the notion involved in the preposition: as if from the mother’s womb. But Jehovah was not a mother only to the youthful Israel; He continues so when it has become old; and even to old age (Israel’s of course) I am the same, Isa_46:4 (comp. Isa_41:4). This is something that does not otherwise happen. Only small children are carried, not men and the old. But Jehovah devotes to Israel this maternal care, mutatis mutandis, to the very last. Did He not make Israel, as He repeatedly assures them (Isa_43:7, comp. Isa_43:1; Isa_43:21; Isa_44:2; Isa_44:21; Isa_44:24; Isa_45:11)? The Lord, says the Prophet, will not forsake His own work. As a mother at one moment lifts her child over an obstacle, at another even carries it a stretch in her arms, until every difficulty and danger is overcome, so the Lord will do to His people even to their old age, i.e., till they have reached the end of their course. Therefore what a difference between Jehovah and idols! The latter let themselves be borne by their worshippers, and then they are borne on beasts of burden to go into captivity. But Jehovah carries His people with maternal tenderness from the beginning to the end. Now who is God? Whom shall one fear and love? Whom trust?
2. ISRAEL SHALL LEARN TO KNOW ITS GOD BY THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIM AND THE IMAGES THAT REPRESENT HIM, WHICH ALSO MUST BE CARRIED
Isa_46:5-7
5 To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal,
And compare me, that we may be like?
6 They lavish gold out of the bag,
And weigh silver in the balance,
And hire a goldsmith; and he maketh it a god:
They fall down, yea, they worship.
7 They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him,
And set him in his place, and he standeth;
From his place shall he not remove:
Yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer,
Nor save him out of his trouble.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
See List for the recurrence of the words: Isa_46:5. מָשַׁל Isa_46:6. זָלִם.
Isa_46:5. The suffix of תדמיוני is to be supplied for תשׁוו; also למי relates to ונמה .ותשׁלני has for common subject the Lord and the image that represents Him.
Isa_46:6. The entire first half of the verse is subject, only that with ישׁקלו there is a return from the participle to the finite verb זָלִים is derived from זוּל, “to pour out, pour away, throw away,” from which there comes only a Hiphil form (Lam_1:8), and the substantive זוּלָה “remotio” (hence זוּלַת praeter).
Isa_46:7. תחתיו (comp. Isa_25:10) is conceived of substantively=inferiora ejus, the place lying under it. The accusative is the acc. loci, denoting whither.—יִצְעַק has an ideal, indefinite subject (“one” or “they”) to which the suffixes in צרתו and יושׁיענו relate.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Now the Prophet shows up the folly of that idolatry, which would make images of Jehovah Himself. The prohibition of this was impliedly contained in the general prohibition of images (Exo_20:4; comp. Deu_4:12; Deu_4:15; Deu_5:8). Even Aaron trangressed this by setting up the golden calf, which pretended to be a symbol of Jehovah Himself (Exo_32:5). The image of Gideon (Jdg_8:27) and of Micah (Jdg_17:4; Jdg_17:13) and the two golden calves of Jeroboam at Bethel and Dan (1Ki_12:26 sqq.) were trangressions of the same sort. Comp. Michaelis, Laws of Moses, V., § 245. Hengstenberg, Introduc. to O. Test. II. All these symbolical figures of beasts were of gold or silver. It was only exceptional where, according to Isa_40:20, poorer people contented themselves with wooden images. But all were in conflict with the eternal truth that it is impossible to make a likeness of the incomparable, invisible God.
It is worthy of note that the Prophet began in Isa_40:17 sqq. his polemic against idolatry by an attack on this finer form of it, and here concludes with just such an attack. For in the Ennead 40–48, after our passage, there does not occur again any actual polemic against idolatry. The words of Isa_46:5 recall Isa_40:18; Isa_40:25. The words hire a goldsmith and he maketh,etc., Isa_46:6, recall Jdg_17:4.
In Isa_46:7 the idea of carrying is emphasized, not without reason: that image, too, made in the likeness of Jehovah is nothing but heavy, vulgar matter, that needs as much to be carried as those Babylonian images of imaginary gods. Manifestly the Prophet would here obviate the objection that images of Jehovah were not to be regarded like other idol images. He answers: Since they must be borne, they are no better than the others.
__________________________
3. ISRAEL SHALL LEARN TO KNOW THE TRUE GOD FROM HIS PROPHESYING AND FULFILLING
Isa_46:8-11
8 Remember this, and 4show yourselves men:
Bring it again to mind, O ye 5transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old:
6For I am God, and there is none else
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times the things that are not yet done,
Saying, My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all my pleasure:
11 Calling a ravenous bird from the east,
7The man that executeth my counsel from a far country:
Yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass;
I have purposed it, I will also do it.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
See List for the recurrence of the words: Isa_46:8. פשׁעם–זָכַר. Isa_46:10. רֵאשִׁית—and comp. מֵרֹאשׁ. Isa_46:11עַיִט.
Isa_46:8. התאשׁשׁו is any way ἅπ. λεγ. It is certain that it does not come from אֵשׁ, as Jos. Kimchi maintains, and after him Vitringa, Rosenmueller (ed. II.), etc. For what can “inflammamini, incendimini” mean? The meanings “confundamini” “be ashamed” (Jerome), or “be full of zeal” (Vitringa) are certainly much forced. The derivation from אִישׁ (ἀνδρίζεσθε, comp. 1Co_16:13) is, grammatically and as to sense, not impossible. For if התאשׁשׁ be taken as a denominativum, it does not matter that no trace remains in it of the original נ (אִנְשְׁ=אִישׁ, comp. אִשָׁה). In the case of weak roots Hithpalel (הִתְקַוְּמֵם, becomes הִתְקוֹמֵם) is the usual formation. And the Prophet might fittingly say, that Israel ought at last to be a man, to press on to ἡλικία, and no longer waver between Jehovah and idols (1Ki_18:21). But הִתְֹאשֵׁשׁ cannot be made out of אִישׁ just as well הִתְבּוֹנֵן may be made from בִּין, because in the latter there was actually at first a ו, whereas there was not in אִישׁ. I agree, therefore, with those (D. Kimchi, Hitzig, Knobel, Delitzsch, comp. Olsh., § 272, a, and 274) who derive התאשׁשׁ from אָשַׁשׁ (Arabic assa) “fundavit, stabilivit.” Of this אָשַׁש Isaiah uses also the substantive אֲשִׁישִׁים16:7—fundamenta, i.e., the foundations lying bare as ruins.
Isa_46:9. כִּמֹנִי stands after אֵפֶם only here. Comp. Isa_45:6.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
We have had what I may call two negative arguments for the divinity of Jehovah from the case of the Babylonian idols (Isa_46:1-4), and from the symbolic images of Jehovah, that are no better (Isa_46:5-7). Here that positive argument is pressed very emphatically, which, by its being five times repeated, prepared for the mention of the name of Cyrus, and is now finally mentioned as the chief result gained by that naming. This argument is based on the assumption that only God can prophesy and fulfil (Isa_46:8-10), and He will certainly bring into existence that bird of prey that He has called out of the East to be the executor of His counsel. Because the Prophet passes to another kind of argument, he makes here a (relative) conclusion by exhorting the people to impress well on their memory what they have just heard (Isa_43:18; Isa_44:21), and to lay it to heart. This they were to do in order to be fixed. (See Text. and Gram.). For Israel in the Exile it was assuredly the chief task, to whose accomplishment our chaps. 40–66 were greatly to contribute, to be at last firmly grounded in the knowledge of Jehovah and in His exclusive worship. On bring it again to mind see on Isa_44:19. By a second Remember, Isa_46:9, the Prophet requires one to recall the old prophecies in the sense of the argumentation often used by him (comp. Isa_41:21 sqq.; Isa_42:9; Isa_43:8-13; Isa_43:19-21; Isa_44:6-10; Isa_44:24-28), by which as here, he infers the divinity of Jehovah from His ability to foretell the future, and that idols are nothing because of their inability in this respect. By ראשׁנות and מעולם, therefore, I understand things that occurred in the period of the ראשׁית (comp. Isa_46:10) which look over hither from an immeasurably distant past (מעולם). But by these old things the Prophet understands ancient prophecies (comp. on Isa_41:22), as clearly appears from Isa_46:10. The clause with כִּי contains what will be verified by looking back to those old prophecies, viz., that Jehovah alone is God. כִּי is thus no causal particle, but=that. The participial clauses Isa_46:10-11, declaring from the beginning the issue,etc., contain the proofs: remember what is old, viz., that I am God, as He that announces from the beginning and fulfils in its time. If then the clause with כִּי Isa_46:9 b is explanatory of “remember,” etc., and if this explanation consists in this, that the divinity of Jehovah should be known from His prophesying and fulfilling, then it is manifest that one must actually tear the words “remember the former things of old” from the context if he would have them mean an exhortation to “earnestly search out history” in general, ואין עור see Isa_45:5-6; Isa_45:14; Isa_45:18; Isa_45:21. אֵל and אלהים correspond here in parallelism as they do often not in parallelism (Exo_20:5; Num_16:22; Jos_22:22; Psa_1:1, etc.). Apart from the meaning of the word in itself, the plural has more an abstract meaning=divinity, highest being (comp. אֲדֹנִים קָשֶׁה19:4). Isa_46:10. The participles קדא ,אמד ,מגיר depend on the chief notion to be proved, thus on אל and אלהים, not on the secondary notion כָּמוֹנִי. For Jehovah is God as He who from the beginning (before it germinated Isa_42:9; Isa_43:19) announced the issue.
The second part of Isa_46:10 enhances what precedes by declaring the firm purpose of carrying out what has been announced. Finally Isa_46:11 presents to view this execution. He that is called from the East (Isa_41:2; Isa_41:25) is Cyrus. He is compared to a bird of prey that swoops on its quarry. Doubtless the noblest of the kind, the eagle is meant. It is possible that עַיִט is radically kindred to ἀετὸς, but it is not proved. The eagle was a sacred bird to the Persians. According to Xenophon (Cyrop.VII. 1, 4) the standard of Cyrus and also of his successors was an “ἀετὸς χρουσοῦς ἐπὶ δόρατος μακροῦ ανατεταμένος” Still in the time of the younger Cyrus the royal standard of the Persians was an ἀετὸς χρουσοῦς ἐπὶ πέλτης (ἐπὶ ξύλου) ἀνατεταμένος (Xenoph. Anab. I. 10, 12). Aeschylus also (Pers. 205–210), into a portentous sign that Atossa sees, introduces the Persians under the image of an eagle, the Greeks under the image of a falcon. Comp. DunckerGesch. d. Alterth. II. p. 368 sq. אישׁ עצתו is not here as in Isa_40:13 the fellow-counsellor, but the one called by God Himself to execute His counsel. In conclusion, by a double disjunctive clause, the assurance is emphatically given, that what the Lord has said and projected (יצר37:26; Isa_22:11) in spirit He will surely bring to pass. Here again, also, the Lord pledges His honor that His prophecy, long before announced, shall be fulfilled by Cyrus, and that thereby His, Jehovah’s divinity will be proved.
4. GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS AND SALVATION MUST COME SPITE OF ISRAEL’S HARDNESS OF HEART
Isa_46:12-13
12 Hearken unto me, ye stout hearted,
That are far from righteousness:
13 I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off,
And my salvation shall not tarry:
And I will 8place salvation in Zion
9For Israel my glory.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
These two verses respond briefly but plainly to an objection or doubt that might be raised against the representations of Isa_46:1-11. Will Israel suffer itself, to be led to the right knowledge of God by the positive and negative proofs just presented (Isa_46:1-7), or even by the positive demonstration, when the prophecy about Cyrus is fulfilled (Isa_46:8-11)? The Lord knows that Israel is stout-hearted. This is meant in a bad sense, like that described Isa_48:4, ‘ ‘because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;” comp. Isa_56:11. The obstinate, haughty, self-righteous heart is naturally far from the righteousness of God, for it has, for the purpose of being right, not the objective, divine norm, but only a subjective, self-made norm. There were many such hard, proud hearts in Israel. Proud self-righteousness characterizes the nation (Rom_10:3). Still the Lord, whose gifts and calling are without repentance (Rom_11:29), will fulfil His promises. Note that Isa_46:12 begins with hearken unto me, as does Isa_46:3. Thus it appears that the two verses are co-ordinated. With Isa_46:3 begins the proof of the threefold gain that shall come to Israel by the destruction of Babylon. Isa_46:12 mentions the doubt that may be raised against it. This close relation to Isa_46:3 is indicated by their beginning in the same way. Isa_46:13 resolves the doubt briefly and effectively. The almighty, gracious will of God toward Israel as a whole is not to be frustrated by the unworthiness of individuals. Spite of the evil condition referred to, Isa_46:12, He will bring in his righteousness. As the Prophet here expressly distinguishes between righteousness and salvation, we must take ‘ ‘righteousness” here in the sense of the “quality of righteous,” conformity to the divine will. [“One denotes the cause and the other the effect, one relates to God, and the other to man. The sense in which salvation can be referred to the righteousness of God is clear from Isa_1:27. (See Vol. I., p. 93.) The exhibition of God’s righteousness consists in the salvation of His people and the simultaneous destruction of His enemies. To these two classes it was therefore at the same time an object of desire and dread.—J. A. Alex.] The Lord will yet, spite of the natural unrighteousness of Israel, raise up in Israel the righteousness that avails with Him. But this is the precedent condition of salvation.—Both will come at the right time; if perhaps late, still not too late. Then the city of Zion will be full of salvation, and the people full of the glory of Jehovah. Thus God’s gracious will toward Israel will be fulfilled under all circumstances. Even Israel’s sins will not be able to prevent its salvation.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. On Isa_46:3-4. “It is something that God will be with us, will strengthen us, help and preserve us by the right hand of His righteousness (Isa_41:10); it is something that He calls us by our name, and is with us in water and fire (Isa_43:1); it is something that He holds us as a seal and signet ring (Hag_2:23); it is something that He holds us as the apple of His eye (Psa_17:8), that He carries us on His wings (Deu_32:11), yea, that He gathers us under His wings (Mat_23:37),—but this exceeds all, that God is willing to be so nearly related to us, that He will carry us under His heart, like a mother does the fruit of her body, and that not only like a mother, who carries the fruit no longer than nine months, but to the greatest and grayest age. Thus the love, fidelity, and services of God far exceed all motherly love, fidelity and services, great as these may be (Isa_49:15).”—Cramer.
2. On Isa_46:5-8. It is remarkable how deep-seated in the natural man is the desire to comprehend the divinity visibly, in a corporeal form. But God forbids it. First, because it is impossible to represent divinity under any adequate and worthy image; second, because the danger is so great that the image will be taken for the divinity itself. God would be worshipped as a spirit in spirit (Joh_4:24). The Son of God appeared in the flesh, and if there ever was a corporeal form that was worthy and able to be to divinity the medium of its visible manifestation, then it was the corporality of Christ. But this was only visible to His contemporaries. Were it necessary to the church ever to have before its eyes the bodily figure of the Lord, the Lord would surely have provided for that, as He has indeed provided that His Spirit and word shall continue preserved to us. But men would certainly have made an idol of the image of the Lord. The Roman Catholic Church has succeeded in heathenizing what is most Christian of all, by making the host in the Lord’s Supper to be a transmutation into the visible body of the Lord. There that deep-seated heathen tendency finds then its gratification. There we have a visible image, that would however represent the Lord as an object of worship. There God Himself is made an idol!
3. On Isa_46:12 sq. Were it necessary for us men to deserve the coming of the Redeemer He would never come. Can the physician only come when the sick man has disposed himself to recovery (Luk_5:31)? No, it is just sinners that attract the Lord. They need Him. He calls them to repentance, with them His righteousness finds a place. But a distinction is to be made here between the heard-hearted sinners that will not hear of the righteousness of God, and those sinners that would willingly be quit of it. Were we men only of the former sort, the door would be closed here on earth against all God’s purposes of salvation.
HOMILETICAL HINTS
1. On Isa_46:3-4. “Every Christian ought to believe that God will do this for Him. For His mercies, promised to us in Christ, are neither small nor few. Far as the heaven is from the earth, and the east from the west, such is the mercy of God, if we only abide therein and do not tear ourselves away from it by wanton sinning. For we were not baptized that we might have a gracious God for ten or twenty years. He would be our God in eternity, and forever and ever, most of all when we are in distress and need a God and Helper, as in the straits of death and other danger. Therefore we should be afraid of nothing, but have the certain hope: the greater the distress we encounter, the more will God be near us with His help.” Veit Dietrich.
2. On Isa_46:3-4. The maternal love of God. 1) It provides for all (great and small). 2) It ever provides (even to old age).
3. On Isa_46:5. “What we are and what we are not we ever best learn when we men contrast ourselves with God. Who can measure how small our time is compared with His eternity. He can and will challenge us in everything and say: ‘to whom will ye compare me, that we may be like?’ Yet the Psalm attempts it: ‘A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past,’ and what to Him is the succession of generations of men?” Tholuck.
4. [On Isa_46:10. My counsel shall stand. This proves, (1) That God has a purpose or plan in regard to human affairs. If He had not, He could not predict future events; (2). That God’s plan will not be frustrated. He has power enough to secure the execution of His designs, and He will exert that power in order that all His plans may be accomplished. We may observe, also, that it is a matter of unspeakable joy that God has a plan, and that it will be executed. For (1) if there were no plan in relation to human thing, the mind could find no rest. If there was no evidence that One Mind presided over human affairs; that an infinitely wise plan had been formed, and that all things had been adjusted so as best to secure the ultimate accomplishment of that plan, everything would have the appearance of chaos, and the mind must be filled with doubts and distractions. But our anxieties vanish in regard to the apparent irregularities and disorders of the universe, when we feel that all things are under the direction of an Infinite Mind. (2) If His plans were not occomplished there would be occasion of equal doubt and dismay. If there was any power that could defeat the purposes of God; if there was any stubbornness of matter, or any inflexible perverseness in the nature of mind; if there were any unexpected and unforeseen extraneous causes that could interpose to thwart His plans, then the mind must be full of agitation and distress. But the moment it can fasten on the conviction that God has formed a plan that embraces all things, and that all things which occur will be in some way made tributary to that plan, that moment the mind can be calm in resignation to His holy will.” Barnes].
5. On Isa_46:12-13. The righteousness that avails with God. 1) Who brings it about (Isa_46:13 a); 2) who lays hold on it (not the proud and self-righteous Isa_46:12, but the believing); 3) what are its effects (Isa_46:13 b, salvation and glory).
Footnotes:
[1]are to the beast and to the cattle.
[2]Your carried images are loaded up.
[3]Heb. their soul.
[4]be firm.
[5]apostates.
[6]That.
[7]Heb. The man of my counsel.
[8]give.
[9]To.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–13 deliver--from the enemies' hands.
deliver--from the enemies' hands.
burden--their images laid on the beasts (Isa 46:1).
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themselves--the gods, here also distinguished from their images.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12 1, 2. Bel — The same as Baal (lord…
1, 2. Bel — The same as Baal (lord or master) of the Phoenicians, and Jupiter of the Greeks. Used with
Nebo — the Mercury of the Greeks — it indicates the worship of the sun and planets.
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As Hebrew great names took fragments of the names Elohim and Jehovah, for example, Joshua, Elihu, etc., so Babylonian monarchs and chief men were similarly named from “Bel” and “Nebo” — as Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar. The prophet here pictures these images as fallen, and being carried off to captivity. Tutelar deities are often so represented when captivity and distress come upon their worshippers. See Jer_48:7; Jer_49:3; Hos_10:5-6.
Carriages — This means, not vehicles, but things carried. See in Act_21:15, “We took up our carriages.”
Heavy laden — To wit, camels, asses, oxen, etc.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–13 1, 2. The ignominious flight of the gods of…
1, 2. The ignominious flight of the gods of Babylon.—Bel and Nebo are the Jupiter and Mercury of the Babylonian pantheon (they are represented by these planets), and were the supreme deities in Babylon at this time. Bel (Bîlu) is the Babylonian form of the Hebrew Ba‘al (= lord), and like that word is a generic name applicable to any deity. When used as a proper name it usually denotes Merodach (Marduk), the tutelary divinity of the city of Babylon (so Jer_50:2; Jer_51:44); although there was an older Bel, who is spoken of as his father. The elevation of Bel-Merodach to the chief place among the older gods, as recorded in the mythical Chaldæan account of the Creation (Tablet IV., 1 ff.), is the legendary counterpart of the ascendency acquired by Babylon over the more ancient cities of the Euphrates Valley. Nebo (Nabu) was the son of Merodach; the chief seat of his worship being Borsippa, in the vicinity of Babylon. His name, which is supposed to be from the same root as the Hebrew nâbî’, “prophet,” seems to mark him out as the “speaker” of the gods (another point of contact with Mercury, “the chief speaker,” Act_14:12). He was also regarded as the inventor of writing. The frequency with which the Chaldæan kings are named after him (Nabo-polassar, Nebu-chadnezzar, Nabo-nidus) has been thought to shew that he was the patron deity of the dynasty.
boweth down … stoopeth (better croucheth)] The second verb to be pointed, like the first, as perfect (prophetic pf.).
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their idols (ch. Isa_10:11) are (R.V.) upon the beasts, and upon the cattle] The allusion is hardly to the custom of carrying away the idols of a conquered nation (Jer_48:7; Jer_49:3; Hos_10:5 f.), but rather to an attempt of the Babylonians to carry off their images on the approach of the Persians (see Isa_46:2). Similarly, Merodach-Baladan packed his idols on ships and carried them off, at the approach of Sennacherib (Schrader, Cuneiform Inscr., Vol. ii. p. 36.) Beasts and cattle usually mean respectively “wild beasts” and “domestic animals”; here, however, they both denote beasts of burden simply.
your carriages were heavy loaden] Rather as R.V. the things that ye carried about, i.e. in religious processions (ch. Isa_45:20), are made a load. “At the New Year’s festival the images of Merodach and his son Nebo were carried through Babylon in solemn procession on sacred barques of great magnificence, and along a promenade prepared for this purpose since Nabopolassar” (Fried. Delitzsch, quoted by Delitzsch, Comm. p. 403). Such scenes must have been familiar to the prophet and his readers, and gave additional point to the contrasted picture here imagined.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 (1) Bel boweth down, Nebo Stoopeth.—Bel or Belus (“Lord…
XLVI.
(1) Bel boweth down, Nebo Stoopeth.—Bel or Belus (“Lord “), is perhaps identical with Marduk or Merôdach, but see Note on Jer_1:2. Nabu (“ the Revealer”) was a kind of Assyrian Hermes. Isaiah sees the idols carried off as spoil, at the command of Cyrus, a heavy burden for the beasts that drag them. An inscription recently deciphered by Sir H. Rawlinson (Journal of Asiatic Society, Jan. 1880, quoted by Cheyne) presents the conduct of the conqueror under a somewhat different aspect. In that inscription he describes himself as a worshipper of Bel and Nebo, and prays to them for length of days. The king would seem from this to have been as wide in his syncretic liberalism as Alexander the Great was afterwards. How are we to reconcile the two? May we say that the prophet idealises the policy and character of the king, or that the monotheistic element which appears in his treatment of the Jews (2Ch_36:22-23; Ezr_1:1-2) was, after all, dominant in his action, in spite of episodes like that indicated in the inscription. It is possible that the recognition of the Babylonian deities may have followed on the submission of the people, and been preceded by some rougher treatment. Anyhow the contrast makes it probable that the prophecy was not written after the inscription.
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Your carriages.—Here, as elsewhere (1Sa_17:22; Act_21:15) in the sense of things carried; i.e., in this case, the images of the gods, which used to be carried in solemn procession, but are now represented as packed into a load for transport. So Herod. (1:183) states that Xerxes carried off from Babylon the golden image of Zeus (sc. Bel), the grandson thus fulfilling the prediction which his grandfather apparently had left unfulfilled.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Vers. 1, 2. THE FALL OF THE GODS OF…
Vers. 1, 2. THE FALL OF THE GODS OF BABYLON. Among the direct consequences of the victories of Cyrus will be the downfall, in a certain sense, of the Babylonian idolatry. The prophet expresses the downfall by material imagery, graphically describing the fate of the idols themselves. But we must regard him as exulting mainly in the thought of the blow that would be dealt to idolatry in general, and to the Babylonian fond of it in particular, by the substitution of the non-idolatrous and almost monotheistic Persians for the polytheistic and grossly idolatrous Babylonians, in the sovereignty of the Asiatic world. The Babylonian religion no doubt maintained itself at Babylon until and beyond the time of Alexander; but it had lost all its prestige. From the state religion of the chief empire of Western Asia, it had sunk to the position of a provincial cult.
Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth. In the later Babylonian period, to which Isaiah"s prophetic vision transports him, Bel and Nebo (if we understand by Bel, Bel-Merodach) were decidedly the two principal gods. Of the seven kings of the last dynasty, three had names in which Nebo, and two names in which Bel or Merodach, wad an element. Bel-Merodach and Nebo are the chief gods worshipped by Nebuchadnezzar and Neriglissar. Bel, Nebo, and Merodach are the only three Babylonian gods that receive acknowledgment from Cyrus in the so-called "Cyrus Cylinder." Bel is, in the Babylonian, "Bil," or "Belu," and means simply "lord." There was an ancient god of the name, one of the First Triad (Anu, Bel, and Hen or Hod), who came by degrees to be identified with Merodach, the tutelary deity of Babylon. Bel-Merodach was the Bhlov (Belus) of the Greeks and Romans, who was worshipped in the great temple of Babylon, now represented by the ruin called Babil ." His name forms an element in those of Bel-lush, Bel-kudur-azur, Bel-ipni. Bel-zakir-isknn, and Belshazzar, all of them kings or viceroys of either Babylonia or Assyria. Nebu was the Babylonian god of learning, and has therefore been compared to Mercury. He was the special deity of Borsippa. The name is thought to be etymologically connected with the Hebrew nabi, prophet. The "bowing" and "stooping" of Bel and Nebo has primary reference to the overthrow of their images by the conqueror; but includes also the idea of the fall of the gods themselves in the opinions of men. Their idols were upon the beasts. The Chaldean images generally not only those of Bel-Merodach and Nebo, but also of Ann, and Hen, and Beltis, and Ishtar, and Nergal, and Sin, and Shamas, and Gula, and others would be torn from their shrines, and placed upon the backs of beasts of burden, to be carried off by the conquerors. No doubt this was the case with a large number of the images, which were among the most precious of the spoils seized by the soldiers. But it appears that numerous exceptions were made. Neither Cyrus nor Cambyses touched the famous golden image of Bel-Merodach at Babylon, which was first carried off from the great temple by Xerxes (Herod., 1:183). Cyrus, moreover, restored various idols, which Nabonidus had taken to Babylon from provincial towns, to the temples to which they of right belonged (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, January, 1880, art. it.). But though their fate was in tiffs way often delayed, ultimately it is probable every valuable idol was carried off and committed to the melting-pot. Your carriages were heavy loaden; rather, the things that ye carried (in procession) are now borne along heavily. The allusion is to the contrast between the light-hearted carrying of the images on festal occasions by their votaries, (Isa_45:20) and their slow transport to foreign lands on the backs of wearied beasts.
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Vers. 1-11. The effect of God"s temporal judgments upon nations on the religious history of the world.
In the ancient world, where religions had no revealed or historic basis, but had been evolved by degrees from the thought or imagination of each people, the fate of a religion depended greatly upon the course of secular history, and the success or failure that attended upon the arms of the nation professing it. As no people could have a rational, or, consequently, a firm belief in a system based upon imagination, each was ready to adopt any other which seemed to prove its superiority by triumphs and victories. The downfall of an empire involved, for the most part, the downfall of the system which its rulers had made the state religion; or, if not its absolute downfall, its depression and gradual decay. When God raised up a conquering power, he gave an impetus to its religious system, which was either imposed by force upon conquered tribes, or, in many cases, voluntarily accepted by them. The gross and sensuous idolatry of Assyria and Babylon had obtained almost exclusive possession of Western Asia through the conquests of the Assyrians and Babylonians between the twelfth century B.C. and the sixth. When Cyrus captured Babylon and shattered the Babylonian empire, this idolatry received its death-blow. The subject nations either reverted to their ancient creeds or adopted the belief of the new conquerors. Zoroas-triauism became the predominant religion of civilized Asia. In Babylon itself and its neighbourhood a small knot of believers clung to the old superstition; but, generally speaking, it was discredited, and had to make way for the dualism of Persia. Dualism suffered in its turn when the Persian empire was overthrown by Alexander the Great, and continued under a cloud during the Parthian period, at the close of which (A.D. 226) it once more reasserted itself under Artaxerxes, son of Babek, who brought the Parthian empire to an end. Military success, similarly, established Mohammedanism as the religion of Syria and Egypt, Asia Minor, Persia, Upper India, Turkestan, Turkey, and North Africa, even Christianity suffering when God"s judgments fell on the effete and debased Byzantine empire. The only religion that has been but slightly affected by military success and failure is the religion of Christ. Originally spreading, like leaven, silently and gradually, without any help from conquerors or from the secular arm, till, having become the religion of the mass of his subjects, it was adopted as the state religion by Constantine; it resisted the great influx of the barbarians into the Roman empire; and, instead of disappearing before Teutonic and Scandinavian heathenism, converted its conquerors. Unarmed missionaries spread it through Central and Northern Europe, through Georgia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia, and again into Abyssinia and the African desert, in America alone was it propagated by the sword. Gradually progressive in almost every quarter, once only and in one quarter has it retrograded through a Divine judgment. The followers of the Arabian prophet were allowed to sweep it from the greater part of the East, from Egypt and from Northern Africa, for a time from part of Spain; but this judgment, provoked by immorality, coldness, and heresies of various kinds, was not a final judgment already, in all the regions temporarily lost to it, the religion of the cross has recovered a footing, and is gaining ground. Propagandism by the sword has now ceased; but everywhere the course of secular history is so ordered that Christianity comes more and more to the front. Islam is dying out; Brahminism is shaken to its basis; Buddhism has well-nigh spent itself. The religion on which God has set, and is each year more clearly setting, the seal of success is Christianity.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-13. The religion of Jehovah contrasted with idolatry.
I THE HUMILIATION OF BEL AND NEBO. These were the tutelar gods of Babylon and its suburb, Borsippa. Merodach, or Marduk, (Jer_50:2) is another name of a being closely related to or identical with Bel. The idols of the Chaldeans are given up to the beasts, and the images once carried in solemn procession by the priests and nobles are put upon the backs of beasts of burden. Herodotus and Diodorus tell us of the golden statue of the great god at Babylon (the Greeks called him after their own, Zeus), and the great golden table in front of it a "table of demons and the golden altar. The image was said to have been carried away by Xerxes (Herod., 1:183). These gods, then, once held as mighty, tutelar, delivering saviours in one of the greatest cities in the world, have themselves gone into captivity. Themselves they could not save. Had these gods been really Divine, they would surely have rescued their own images. Conceived as persons by the heathen, they are, in the prophet"s arguments, convicted of being without any of the proper ability of personality. "It is difficult not to think of the last strange journey of these desecrated images," remarks a commentator (cf. Layard"s picture of the "Procession of the Bull beneath the Mound of Nimrod"). The power of the heathen god depended on the faith, i.e. the imagination, of his worshippers. The overthrow of Babylonian power was a great shock to the heathen imagination. It showed that the power in which they had believed was an illusion and a lie from the Hebrew point of view. And so ever; the powers of this present world and its princes and its illusions are seen passing away before the prevalence of true religion.
II THE PROVIDENCE OF JEHOVAH OVER HIS PEOPLE. He is what the gods counterfeited a wise superintending Being, a faithful supporting Being, to his people, alike in war and in peace; the gods of conquered peoples had failed to be this, according to the prophet, and according to ancient thought generally. Jehovah is this. Note the extreme tenderness of the representations of him in this attitude to his folk. Not a timid and trembling captive but may appropriate the truth to his own consolation. He is as the Nurse, they as the little helpless infant. (cf. Isa_63:9 Deu_1:31 Exo_19:4 Psa_28:9 Hos_11:3) But the thought of the human parent and nurse reminds us of mortality and of transiency belonging to human conditions. "The devoted watchfulness of the parent dies away when his child has come to maturity; and he is commonly removed by death when his offspring has attained to old age." Not so with Israel and Jehovah. Israel is always the object of the motherly care and affection of God. (Isa_42:14 Isa_49:15 Isa_66:9, Isa_66:13) "Even to old age I am the same". (see Psa_71:18, where the people speak as one person) "Even to grey hairs I will bear; I have made, and g will carry, and I will bear and will rescue.
III HIS APPEAL TO THE REASON OF THE PEOPLE. Ever we seem to hear him saying, "Come now, and let us reason together. " There are "rebellious ones" (ver. 8), yet Jehovah still reasons with them. Once more the piece of manufactured helplessness called an idol is placed before their thought. What can it do for men? They "cry unto it, but it cannot answer, nor save them out of trouble." Is Jehovah to be compared with that thing? And then the positive argument is again brought forward. Jehovah alone has the power of prediction. "From the very beginning of a period of history he can announce the far-off issue, utterly incalculable to human eyes." If, then, now he has announced his purpose, it will stand. If the bird of prey, the eagle Cyrus, has been called from the east, it will be to the certain execution of a mission from Jehovah. To trust in him is to have all difficulties solved, all confidence restored. To believe in Providence; to be assured that the world"s history at any moment, at this moment, is not a mere play of passion, caprice, and chance, but that things are working together to an end foreseen; this is strength, because this is reason. And God would have his people understand what true reason brings to religion; that religion is reason and sense, while idolatry is weakness, folly, and unreason.
IV THE NEARNESS OF GOD"S SALVATION. This, too, is an emphatic thought. (cf. Isa_56:1) Righteousness and salvation are but two aspects of the same blessing. Yet men may be "far off." How? It is not space, it is not time, that separates from God. It is in the heart that men are near or far. The power of imagination must not be forgotten. In one sense God is no more near or distant at one time than another, nor to one person than another; that our reason assures us. Yet the evidence of feeling and of imagination is otherwise. They tell us that he may be "near" or "far." It is, then, in ourselves that the cause must be sought. The warm affection, the lively fancy, the open and lowly intelligence, these bring him near. The obdurate heart which means the dull intelligence, the sluggish fancy, the state of coldness in the affections this may place him wide as the poles asunder from man. What is needed in religion, alike in its intellectual and its practical aspects, is simplicity, yielding childlikeness, impressionableness to great and obvious truths. J.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-4. Men bearing gods, and God bearing his people.
The pitiable and even ludicrous insufficiency of idolatry is admirably drawn in this picture. We see the beasts bowed down with the images of the helpless deities of Chaldea In what striking and glowing contrast does the relation of Jehovah to his people appear! From the very infancy of Israel God had borne them in the arms of his faithfulness and power; and his tender kindness in the past would extend to the furthest future. Even to old age he would bear them; they might confidently lean on his strength; they might count with absolute assurance on his protecting care, on his delivering grace. "I will carry, and will deliver you." We learn
I THAT FALSE TRUSTS, SO FAR FROM LIGHTENING OUR BURDENS, ARE A HEAVY WEIGHT TO CARRY. Men make mistakes now which are as serious in their consequences as that made by the Babylonians. They put their trust in things which prove to be delusive and even burdensome. This is trite of unwise friendships; of ill-gained or excessive wealth; of exalted positions, which we have not strength to fill, or high honours which we have not grace to carry; of learning in one direction, unbalanced by knowledge in other directions. You see men who thought to bless themselves with these "idols," who expected to be enriched and sustained by them, staggering under their weight, blinded and misled by them, betrayed and ruined by them. Instead of their gods carrying them, they have to carry their gods.
II THAT TRUST IN GOD WILL BE JUSTIFIED BY THE LONGEST LIFE. (Ver. 4.)
1. God continued his mercies to us from our birth to our regeneration; though we knew him not, he girded us. (Isa_45:5) He fed and clothed and sheltered us.
2. He undertook to befriend us when we gave ourselves to him, and he has done so. He has made good to us his kindest words of promise.
3. A time of special trial may confront us: the pillar and mainstay may have fallen; unfriendly seasons or adverse circumstances may have stripped us; sickness may have weakened us, or infirmity may be visibly advancing on us. Our human powers, our earthly prospects, may be failing and waning.
4. But we may go on undaunted, untroubled. "The Lord will provide." We have a strong consolation we whose hope is in the Lord our God.
(1) His word of promise cannot be broken.
(2) We, men, do not desert our servants in their age or their sickness: how much less will he! (Psa_71:18 Isa_55:9)
(3) Our very weakness and distress are a strong guarantee that the compassionate and considerate Father will befriend and sustain us.
(4) The unchangeable One will not begin without concluding his work; he will "perfect that which concerns us;" he will "not forsake the work of his own hands." To old age, to hoar hairs, he will carry us along the path of life, till we reach the home of unfailing health and unbroken joy. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13 Bel boweth down
Isa_46:1-4
Bel boweth down
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Bel and Nebo
Bel and Nebo are the Jupiter and Mercury of the Babylonian pantheon (they are represented by these planets), and were the supreme deities in Babylon at this time.
Bel (Bilu) is the Babylonian form of the Hebrew Baal (= lord), and like that word is a generic name applicable to any deity. When used as a proper name it usually denotes Merodach (Marduk), the tutelary divinity of the city of Babylon (Jer_50:2; Jer_51:44); although there was an older Bel, who is spoken of as his father. The elevation of BelMerodach to the chief place among the older gods, as recorded in the mythical Chaldean account of the Creation (Tablet 4.1 ff.), is the legendary counterpart of the ascendency acquired by Babylon over the more ancient cities of the Euphrates valley. Nebo (Nabu) was the son of Merodach; the chief seat of his worship being Borsippa, in the vicinity of Babylon. His name, which is supposed to be from the same root as the Hebrew nabi, prophet, seems to mark him out as the speaker of the gods (another point of contact with Mercury, the chief speaker-- Act_14:12). He was also regarded as the inventor of writing. The frequency with which the Chaldean kings are named after him (Nabo-polassar, Nebu-chadnezzar, Nabo-nidus) has been thought to show that he was the patron deity of the dynasty. (Prof. J. Skinner, D. D.)
A contrast--idols and God
1. This is an incident in the fall of Babylon. Cyrus has broken in, and the mighty city lies open to the Persian army, exasperated by long waiting at her gates. The blood of her nobles has flowed freely over the marble floors of her palaces; most of her defenders are slain. Women and children are cowering in the inmost recesses of their homes, or filling the streets with screams of terror and appeals for help, as they fly from the brutal soldiery. The final and most sanguinary conflicts have taken place within the precincts of the idol temples; but all is still now. The priests have fallen around the altars which they served; their blood mingling with that of their victims, and their splendid vestments are become their winding sheets. And now, down the marble staircases, trodden in happier days by the feet of myriads of votaries, 1 o, the soldiers are carrying the helpless idols. The stern monotheism of Persia would have no pity for the many gods of Babylon; there are no idol-shrines in the land of the sun-worshippers where they could find a niche: but they are borne away as trophies of the completeness of the victory. There is Bel, whose name suggested that of the capital itself. How ignominiously it is handed down from its pedestal! And Nebo follows. The hideous images, lavishly inset with jewels and richly caparisoned, are borne down the stately steps, their bearers laughing and jeering as they come. The gods get little respect from their rude hands, which are only eager to despoil them of a jewel. And now, at the foot of the stairs, they are loaded up on the backs of elephants, or pitched into the ox-waggons. In more prosperous days they were carried with excessive pomp through the streets of Babylon, wherever there was plague or sickness. Then the air had been full of the clang of cymbals and trumpets, and the streets thronged with worshipping crowds; but all that is altered. The things that ye carried about are made a load, a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity (Isa_46:12, R V). So much for the gods of Babylon being borne off into captivity.
2. Close on this graphic picture of the discomfiture of the gods of Babylon, we are invited to consider a description of Jehovah, in which the opposite to each of these items stands out in clear relief. He speaks to the house of Jacob, and to all the remnant of the house of Israel, as children whom He had borne from the birth, and carried from earliest childhood. Their God needed not to be borne, He bore; needed no carriage, since His everlasting arms made cradle and carriage both. Such am He had been, He would be. He would not change. He would carry them, even to hoar hairs. He had made and He would bear; yea, He would carry and deliver.
3. This contrast is a perpetual one. Some people carry their religion; other people are carried by it. Some are burdened by the prescribed creeds, ritual, observances, exactions, to which they believe themselves to be committed. Others have neither thought nor care for these things. They have yielded themselves to God, and are persuaded that He will bear them and carry them, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that they go, until they come to the place of which God has spoken to them Deu_1:31; Isa_63:9). (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Israels infancy and maturer life
From the womb and from the lap point back to the time when the nation whose existence began with Abraham, marching from Egypt, was born, so to speak, to the light of the world; from that time it has lain like a willingly assumed burden on Jehovah, who carries it as a nurse the babe (Num_11:12); as a man his son (Deu_1:31); as an eagle its young (Deu_32:11). The seneetus and canities in Isa_46:4 are self-evidently the nations, but not as if this were at present in a senile state, but the yet future and latest days of its history. Up to that moment Jehovah is He, i.e the Absolute One, and always the same (chap. 41:4). As He has done hitherto, He will act in the future--bearing and saving. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
National life--its stages
The general analogy between the life of individuals and that of nations, is sufficiently obvious, and is finely expressed by Florus, in his division of the Roman history into the periods of childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. (J. A. Alexander.)
Idols found wanting, but Jehovah found faithful
The confidence of Babylon is buried among her heaps of rubbish, for her gods have fallen from their thrones. As for us, our trust is in the living God, who lives to carry His chosen.
I. FALSE CONFIDENCES PASS AWAY.
1. The Lord has made a full end of false gods and their worship. Bel boweth down, &c. Not only concerning Bel and Nebo, but concerning many a set of heathen deities, a note of exultant derision may be taken up. The idols He shall utterly abolish.
2. The like thing has happened unto false systems of teaching. If you are at all readers of the history of religious thought, you will know that systems of philosophy, and philosophical religions, have come up, and have been generally accepted as indisputable, and have done serious injury to true religion for a time; and yet they have vanished like the mirage of the desert.
3. It will be just the same with us if we trust in false confidences of any sort; such, for instance, as our experiences, or attainments, or services, or orthodox belief.
II. OUR GOD ABIDES ALWAYS THE SAME. Even to your old age I am He. He is always the same in Himself, and always the same to His people.
1. We rightly expect trials between here and heaven; and the ordinary wear and tear of life, even if life should not be clouded by an extreme trial, will gradually wear us out. What saith our God concerning the days of decline and decay? He says to us, I am He. He will not grow weak. His eye will not be dim. His ear will not be heavy.
2. If life should flow never so smoothly, yet there are the rapids of old age, and the broken waters of infirmity, and the cataract of disease--and these we are apt to dread; but why? Is it not sure that the Lord changes not?
3. In the course of years, not only do we change, but our circumstances change. If you are where you ought to be, your confidence is in God now, and you will have the same God then, and He will still be your guardian and provider. His bank will not break, nor His treasury fail.
4. Ah! say you, but what I most mourn is the death of friends. Yes; that calamity is a daily sorrow to men who are getting into years. But the Lord says, I am He, as much as to say, I am left to you, and will not fail you.
5. Some trouble themselves more than there is need concerning prophetic crises which are threatened. We know so little of the future that to worry about it will be the height of unwisdom. The Lord took care of the world before we were here to help Him, and He will do it just as well when we are gone. We can leave politics, religion, trade, morals, and everything else with Him. What we have to do is to obey Him, and trust Him, and rejoice in Him.
6. Still, says one, there are such evil tokens in the Church itself as must cause serious apprehension to godly men. But never despair of the Church of God, for of her it is true, Even to hoar hairs will I carry you; to your old age I am He. The Head of the Church never alters. His choice of His Church is not reversed. His purpose for His Church is not shaken. We shall see better days and brighter times yet, if we have but faith in God and importunity in prayer.
III. WHILE FALSE CONFIDENCES PASS AWAY, GOD WILL FOR EVER BE THE SAME. His former mercies guarantee to us future mercies.
1. He says, I have made. It is well to remember the mercy of God to us in our formation, and in the first days of our birth and infancy. But God made us in another sense. He new-made us.
2. Then He also tells us that He has carried us; and if we have been carried by Him, He will carry us the rest of the way. What a great care has our gracious God, since none of His children can run alone without His power, His love, His grace!
3. Practically, Gods mercies through life are always the same. Notice two things which are always here--the same God and the same mercy. There is nobody else here but the Lord alone with His people. You and your God; and you are nobody but a poor thing that has to be carried. Gods great I, and that alone, fills up the whole space. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Isaiah 46
CHAPTER XI
BEARING OR BORNE
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Isaiah 46
CHAPTER 46. is a definite prophecy, complete in itself. It repeats many of the truths which we have found in previous chapters, and we have already seen what it says about Cyrus. But it also strikes out a new truth, very relevant then, when men made idols and worshipped the works of their hands, and relevant still, when so many, with equal stupidity, are more concerned about keeping up the forms of their religion than allowing God to sustain themselves.
The great contrast, which previous chapters have been elaborating, is the contrast between the idols and the living God. On the one side we have had pictures of the busy idol-factories, cast into agitation by the advent of Cyrus, turning out with much toil and noise their tawdry, unstable images. Foolish men, instead of letting God undertake for them, go to and try what their own hands and hammers can effect. Over against them, and their cunning and toil, the prophet sees the God of Israel rise alone, taking all responsibility of salvation to Himself-"I, I am He: look unto Me, all the ends of the earth, and be ye saved." This contrast comes to a head in chapter 46.
It is still the eve of the capture of Babylon; but the prophet pictures to himself what will happen on the morrow of the capture. He sees the conqueror following the old fashion of triumph-rifling the temples of his enemies and carrying away the defeated and discredited gods as trophies to his own. The haughty idols are torn from their pedestals and brought head foremost through the temple doors. "Bel crouches"-as men have crouched to Bel; "Nebo cowers"-a stronger verb than "crouches," but assonant to it, like "cower" to "crouch." "Their idols have fallen to the beast and to the cattle." Beast, "that is, tamed beast, perhaps elephants in contrast to cattle, or domestic animals." The "things with which ye burdened yourselves," carrying them shoulder high in religious processions, "are things laden," mere baggage-bales, "a burden for a hack, or jade." The nouns are mostly feminine-the Hebrew neuter-in order to heighten the dead-weight impression of the idols. So many baggage-bales for beasts backs-such are your gods, O Babylonians! "They cower, they crouch together" (fall limp is the idea, like corpses); "neither are they able to recover the burden," and "themselves!"-literally "their soul," any real soul of deity that ever was in them-"into captivity are they gone."
This never happened. Cyrus entered Babylon not in spite of the native gods, but under their patronage, and was careful to do homage to them. Nabunahid, the king of Babylon, whom he supplanted, had vexed the priests of Bel or Merodach; and these priests had been among the many conspirators in favour of the Persian. So far, then, from banishing the idols, upon his entry into the city, Cyrus had himself proclaimed as "the servant of Merodach," restored to their own cities the idols that Nabunahid had brought to Babylon, and prayed, "In the goodness of their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant me length of days. May they bless my projects with prosperity, and may they say to Merodach, my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and Kambyses, his son (deserve thy favour)."
Are we, then, because the idols were not taken into captivity, as our prophet pictures, to begin to believe in him less? We shall be guilty of that error, only when we cease to allow to a prophet of God what we do allow to any other writer, and praise him when he employs it to bring home a moral truth-the use of his imagination. What if these idols never were packed off by Cyrus, as our prophet here paints for us? It still remains true that, standing where they did, or carried away, as they may have been later on, by conquerors, who were monotheists indeed, they were still mere ballast, so much dead-weight for weary beasts.
Now, over against this kind of religion, which may be reduced to so many pounds avoirdupois, the prophet sees in contrast the God of Israel. And it is but natural, when contrasted with the dead-weight of the idols, that God should reveal Himself as a living and a lifting God: a strong, unfailing God, who carries and who saves. "Hearken unto Me, O House of Jacob, and all the remnant of the House of Israel; burdens from the womb, things carried from the belly. Burdens, things carried," are the exact words used of the idols in Isa_46:1 "Even unto old age I am He, and unto grey hairs I will bear" - a grievous word, used only of great burdens. "I have made, and I will carry; yea, I will bear, and will recover." Then follow some verses in the familiar style. "To whom will ye liken Me, and match Me, and compare Me, that we may be like? They who pour gold from a bag, and silver they measure off with an ellwand"-gorgeous, vulgar Babylonians-"they hire a smelter, and he maketh it a god"-out of so many ells of silver!-"they bow down to it, yea, they worship it! They carry him upon the shoulder, they bear him,"-again the grievous word, -"to bring him to his station; and he stands; from his place he never moves. Yea, one cries unto him, and he answers not; from his trouble he doth not save him. Remember this, and show yourselves men"-the playing with these gilded toys is so unmanly to the monotheist (it will be remembered what we said in chapter 3 about the exiles feeling that to worship idols was to be less than a man)-"lay it again to heart, ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old: for I am God," El, "and there is none else; God," Elohim, "and there is none like Me. Publishing from the origin the issue, and from ancient times things not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and all My pleasure shall I perform; calling out of the sunrise a Bird-of-prey, from the land that is far off the Man of My counsel. Yea, I have spoken; yea, I will bring it in. I have purposed; yea, I will do it. Hearken unto Me, ye obdurate of heart"-that is, "brave, strong, sound," but too sound to adapt their preconceived notions to Gods new revelation; -"ye that are far from righteousness," in spite of your "sound" opinions as to how it ought to come. "I have brought near My righteousness," in distinction to yours. "It shall not be far off," like your impossible ideals, "and My salvation shall not tarry, and I will set in Zion salvation, for Israel My glory." It is evident that from the idolaters Jehovah has turned again, in these last verses, to the pedants in Israel, who were opposed to Cyrus because he was a Gentile, and who cherished their own obdurate notions of how salvation and righteousness should come. Ah, their kind of righteousness would never come, they would always be far from it! Let them rather trust to Jehovahs, which He was rapidly bringing near in His own way.
Such is the prophecy. It starts a truth, which bursts free from local and temporal associations, and rushes in strength upon our own day and our own customs. The truth is this: it makes all the difference to a man how he conceives his religion-whether as something that he has to carry, or as something that will carry him. We have too many idolatries and idol manufactories among us to linger longer on those ancient ones. This cleavage is permanent in humanity-between the men that are trying to carry their religion, and the men that are allowing God to carry them.
Now let us see how God does carry. Gods carriage of man is no mystery. It may be explained without using one theological term; the Bible gives us the best expression of it. But it may be explained without a word from the Bible. It is broad and varied as mans moral experience.
1. The first requisite for stable and buoyant life is ground, and the faithfulness of law. What sends us about with erect bodies and quick, firm step is the sense that the surface of the earth is sure, that gravitation will not fail, that our eyes and the touch of our feet and our judgment of distance do not deceive us. Now, what the body needs for its world, the soul needs for hers. For her carriage and bearing in life the soul requires the assurance that the moral laws of the universe are as conscience has interpreted them to her, and will continue to be as in experience she has found them. To this requisite of the soul-this indispensable condition of moral behaviour-God gives His assurance. "I have made," He says, "and I will bear." These words were in answer to an instinct, that must have often sprung up in our hearts when we have been struggling for at least moral hope-the instinct which will be all that is sometimes left to a mans soul when unbelief lowers, and under its blackness a flood of temptations rushes in, and character and conduct feel impossible to his strength-the instinct that springs from the thought, "Well, here I am, not responsible for being here, but so set by some One else, and the responsibility of the life, which is too great for me, is His." Some such simple faith, which a man can hardly separate from his existence, has been the first rally and turning-point in many a life. In the moral drift and sweep he finds bottom there, and steadies on it, and gets his face round, and gathers strength. And Gods Word comes to him to tell him that his instinct is sure. "Yea, I have made, and I will bear."
2. The most terrible anguish of the heart, however, is that it carries something, which can shake a man off even that ground. The firmest rock is of no use to the paralytic, or to a man with a broken leg. And the most steadfast moral universe, and most righteous moral governor, is no comfort - but rather the reverse-to the man with a bad conscience, whether that conscience be due to the guilt, or to the habit, of sin. Conscience whispers, "God indeed made thee, but what if thou hast unmade thyself? God reigns; the laws of life are righteousness; creation is guided to peace. But thou art outlaw of this universe, fallen from God of thine own will. Thou must bear thine own guilt, endure thy voluntarily contracted habits. How canst thou believe that God, in this fair world, would bear thee up, so useless, soiled, and infected a thing?" Yet here, according to His blessed Word, God does come down to bear up men. Because mans sunkenness and helplessness are so apparent beneath no other burden or billows, God insists that just here He is most anxious, and just here it is His glory, to lift men and bear them upward. Some may wonder what guilt is or the conviction of sin, because they are selfishly or dishonestly tracing the bitterness and unrest of their lives to some other source than their own wicked wills; but the thing is mans realest burden, and mans realest burden is what God stoops lowest to bear. The grievous word for "bear," "sabal," which we emphasised in the above passage, is elsewhere in the writings of the Exile used of the bearing of sins, or of the result of sins. "Our fathers have sinned, and are not, and we bear their iniquities," {Lam_5:7} says one of the Lamentations. And in the fifty-third of Isaiah it is used twice of the Servant, "that He bore our sorrows," and "that He bare their iniquities." Here its application to God-to such a God as we have seen bearing the passion of His peoples woes-cannot fail to carry with it the associations of these passages. When it is said, God "bears," and this grievous verb is used, we remember at once that He is a God, who does not only set His peoples sins in the awful light of His countenartce, but takes them upon His heart. Let us learn, then, that God has made this sin and guilt of ours His special care and anguish. We cannot feel it more than He does. It is enough: we may not be able to understand what the sacrifice of Christ meant to the Divine justice, but who can help comprehending from it that in some Divine way the Divine love has made our sin its own business and burden, so that that might be done which we could not do, and that lifted which we could not bear?
3. But this gospel of Gods love bearing our sins is of no use to a man unless it goes with another-that God bears him up for victory over temptation and for attainment in holiness. It is said to be a thoroughly Mohammedan fashion, that when a believer is tempted past common he gives way, and slides into sin with the cry, "God is merciful"; meaning that the Almighty will not be too hard on this poor creature, who has held out so long. If this be Mohammedanism, there is a great deal of Mohammedanism in modern Christianity. It is a most perfidious distortion of Gods will. "For this is the will of God, even our sanctification"; and God never gives a. man pardon but to set him free for effort, and to constrain him for duty. And here we come to what is the most essential part of Gods bearing of man. God, as we have seen, bears us by giving us ground to walk on. He bears us by lifting those burdens from our hearts that make the firmest ground slippery and impossible to our feet. But He bears us best and longest by being the spirit and the soul and the life of our life. Every metaphor here falls short of the reality. By inspired men the bearing of God has been likened to a father carrying his child, to an eagle taking her young upon her wings, to the shepherd with the lamb in his bosom. But no shepherd, nor mother-bird, nor human father ever bore as the Lord bears. For He bears from within, as the soul lifts and bears the body. The Lord and His own are one. "To me," says he who knew it best, "To me to live is Christ." It is, indeed, difficult to describe to others what this inward sustainment really is, seating itself at the centre of a mans life, and thence affecting vitally every organ of his nature. The strongest human illustration is not sufficient for it. If in the thick of the battle a leader is able to infuse himself into his followers, so is Christ. If one mans word has lifted thousands of defeated soldiers to an assault and to a victory, even so have Christs lifted millions: lifted them above the habit and depression of sin, above the weakness of the flesh, above the fear of man, above danger and death and temptation more dangerous and fatal still. And yet it is not the sight of a visible leader, though the gospels have made that sight imperishable; it is not the sound of Anothers Voice, though that Voice shall peal to the end of time, that Christians only feel. It is something within themselves; another self-purer, happier, victorious. Not as a voice or example, futile enough to the dying, but as a new soul, is Christ in men; and whether their exhaustion needs creative forces, or their vices require conquering forces, He gives both, for He is the fountain of life.
4. But God does not carry dead men. His carrying is not mechanical, but natural; not from below, but from within. You dare not be passive in Gods carriage; for as in the natural, so in the moral world, whatever dies is thrown aside by the upward pressure of life, to rot and perish. Christ showed this over and over again in His ministry. Those who make no effort-or, if effort be past, feel no pain-God will not stoop to bear. But all in whom there is still a lift and a spring after life: the quick conscience, the pain of their poverty, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, the sacredness of those in their charge, the obligation and honour of their daily duty, some desire for eternal life-these, however weak, He carries forward to perfection.
Again, in His bearing God bears, and does not overbear, using a man, not as a man uses a stick, but as a soul uses a body, -informing, inspiring, recreating his natural faculties. So many distrust religion, as if it were to be an overbearing of their originality, as if it were bound to destroy the individuals peculiar freshness and joy. But God is not by grace going to undo His work by nature. "I have made, and I will bear-will bear" what I have made. Religion intensifies the natural man.
And now, if that be Gods bearing-the gift of the ground, and the lifting of the fallen, and the being a soul and an inspiration of every organ-how wrong those are who, instead of asking God to carry them, are more anxious about how He and His religion are to be sustained by their consistency or efforts!
To young men, who have not got a religion, and are brought face to face with the conventional religion of the day, the question often presents itself in this way: "Is this a thing I can carry?" or "How much of it can I afford to carry? How much of the tradition of the elders can I take upon myself, and feel that it is not mere dead weight?" That is an entirely false attitude. Here you are, weak, by no means. master of yourself; with a heart wonderfully full of suggestions to evil; a world before you, hardest where it is clearest, seeming most impossible where duty most loudly calls; yet mainly dark and silent, needing from us patience oftener than effort, and trust as much as the exercise of our own cleverness; with death at last ahead. Look at life whole, and the question you will ask will not be, Can I carry this faith? but, Can this faith carry me? Not, Can I afford to take up such and such and such opinions? but, Can I afford to travel at all without such a God? It is not a creed, but a living and a lifting God, who awaits your decision.
At the opposite end of life, there is another class of men, who are really doing what young men too often suppose that they must do if they take up a religion, -carrying it, instead of allowing it to carry them; men who are in danger of losing their faith in God, through over-anxiety about traditional doctrines concerning Him. A great deal is being said just now in our country of upholding the great articles of the faith. Certainly let us uphold them. But do not let us have in our churches that saddest of all sights, a mere ecclesiastical procession, -men flourishing doctrines, but themselves with their manhood remaining unseen. We know the pity of a show, sometimes seen in countries on the Continent, where they have not given over carrying images about. Idols and banners and texts will fill a street with their tawdry, tottering progress, and you will see nothing human below, but now and then jostling shoulders and a sweaty face. Even so are many of the loud parades of doctrines in our day by men, who, in the words of this chapter, show themselves "stout of heart" by holding up their religion, but give us no signs in their character or conduct that their religion is holding up them. Let us prize our faith, not by holding it high, but by showing how high it can hold us.
Which is the more inspiring sight, -a banner carried by hands, that must sooner or later weary; or the soldiers face, mantling with the inexhaustible strength of the God who lives at his heart and bears him up?
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5 Isa_46:1-2. Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, &c.
THE DIFFICULTY OF DELIVERING THE DELUDED FROM THEIR DELUSIONS
Isa_46:1-2. Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, &c.
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I want to fix your attention on the point where this prophecy stops. In vision Isaiah sees the gods whom the mightiest nations had long worshipped manifestly enfeebled, unable to protect, not merely their worshippers, but also the costly images in and through which they had been worshipped. These, which had been reverently carried in solemn procession by their priests, he sees ignominiously included among the spoils of the conqueror, and packed in common with other spoil on his beasts of burden. The idols to which prayers and sacrifices had been offered, in the hope of thereby securing deliverance from the invader, he beholds carried away into a foreign land. And all that he saw in vision literally occurred. Doubtless he saw much more than this, but he says nothing more. He does not add, “And those that worshipped these captured idols worshipped them no more; they acknowledge that Jehovah is the only living and true God, and Him only do they serve.” This he does not say, because he knew the idolaters would go on worshipping such images as those their own hands had made, and to which they had in vain offered prayers for deliverance. How strange that men should be guilty of such folly under such circumstances! But the folly has not been of rare occurrence. It is not yet a thing of the past. E.g., Her Majesty’s Hindoo subjects worshipping the very same gods whose help their fathers sought in vain when the power of Great Britain was being exerted for their subjugation.
What an extraordinary fact! What other fact is there behind it? For behind every extraordinary fact there is an explanatory fact. This, that it is a supremely difficult thing to deliver the deluded from their delusions.
I. Of this fact the history of idolaters is not the only illustration; there are others in almost every realm of human thought and action.
1. The political realm, e.g., the delusion that “protection” is a good thing for a nation.
2. The social realm. How long it took to convince even a Christian people that slavery is an evil, a crime which Scripture condemns! In like manner, how difficult it is to deliver even intelligent Christian people from the delusion that strong drink used in “moderation” is a good thing, notwithstanding
(1.) that they admit that to those who use it immoderately it is an evil thing;
(2.) that it has been scientifically placed beyond dispute that alcohol is neither food nor fuel; that used in any degree it unnaturally and undesirably increases the work of the heart; and that there is no medical benefit that can be secured by it which cannot be secured by other drugs to which no such moral peril belongs;
(3.) that more moral as well as material evil is caused by its use than by any other destructive force at work in society. In spite of the clear demonstration of all these things, many intelligent and religious people go on using alcohol without compunction of conscience!
3. The scientific realm, e.g., the delusion that vaccination is an evil.
4. The ecclesiastical realm, e.g., the delusion that connection between Church and State is necessarily a blessing to both, or that disestablishment would necessarily be mischievous.
5. The religious realm, e.g., the delusion that Romanism is not a vast unscriptural and superstitious scheme. Its hold upon the Irish; upon many educated English people. Or the delusion that happiness of heart and peace of soul can be found in any other path than that of humble and earnest service of God—in the pursuit of wealth, or rank, or fame, or amusement. Or the delusion that those blessings can be secured by diligence in religious ceremonialism and stern asceticism. Look where we will upon our fellow-men, we see parallels to that which struck us with surprise when we first looked upon idolaters who continued to worship idols the inability of which to help them had been placed beyond doubt.
II. In view of this fact, what are the duties that press upon us?
1. Honest personal examination of our own beliefs and practices (1Th_5:21).
2. The maintenance of hope for the future of the great human family to which we belong. The fact we have been thinking about must not be allowed to smite us with despair. Difficult as it is to deliver the deluded from their delusions, one by one the delusions do lose their hold upon them—e.g., idolatry to a large extent, witchcraft, slavery; and in the future truth will achieve still greater triumphs (chap. Isa_45:23).
3. Consequently, it is the duty of those to whom any truth has been revealed to go on declaring it, in spite of the seemingly hopeless stupidity of most of those whom they address. By their faithful proclamation of it, they do really, however imperceptibly, further the dispersal of the mists and fogs in which the minds of their fellow-men are enshrouded, and hasten on the day when the unclouded light of truth shall shine upon all men. In that proclamation let us do our part!
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 In these words, as in other and similar passages…
Isa 46:5
In these words, as in other and similar passages of Scripture, God asserts an immeasurable difference between Himself and all created beings.
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I. We distinguish the Creator from every creature by declaring Him self-existent. There is no way of accounting for the origin of everything except by supposing something which never had origin. Nothing could have begun to be unless there had been something which never began to be. Here is the grand distinction between the Creator and the creature: the being of the one is underived, and that of the other derived. The existence of all creatures is a dependent existence; it has been imparted by another, and may be withdrawn by that other. The existence of the Creator is a necessary existence, altogether independent, indebted to none for commencement, and resting on none for continuance. It is by His name Jehovah—that name which breathes self-existence—that God proclaims Himself inscrutable and unimaginable.
II. We learn from this the vanity of all attempts to explain or illustrate the Trinity in Unity. If we were able to produce exact instances of the union of three in one, we should have no right to point it out as at all parallel with the union of the Godhead. We ought to know beforehand that the created can furnish no delineation of the uncreated; so that it shows a forgetfulness of the self-existence of God to seek His resemblance in what he hath called into being. He best shows the workings of a sound judgment and ripened intellect who, in such a matter as the doctrine of the Trinity, submits to the disclosures of revelation, and receives it on the authority of God, though unable to explain it through any reasoning of his own. The doctrine of the Trinity is above reason, but it is not against reason.
III. Consider the paramount importance of the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is so bound up with the whole of Christianity, that to think of removing it and yet of preserving the religion is to think of taking from the body all its sinew and its bone, and yet leaving it all its symmetry and its strength. The whole falls to pieces if you destroy this doctrine. The short but irresistible way of proving that the doctrine of the Trinity is in the largest sense a practical doctrine is to remind you that if this doctrine be false, Jesus Christ is nothing more than a man and the Holy Spirit nothing more than a principle or quality. To remove the doctrine of the Trinity is to remove whatever is peculiar to Christianity, to reduce the religion to a system of loftier morals and stronger sanctions than the world before possessed; but nevertheless having nothing to deserve the name of Gospel, because containing no tidings of an expiation for sin. Without a Trinity I must save myself; with a Trinity I am to be saved through Christ.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1731.
Reference: Isa 46:5.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 299.
Isa 46:12-13
I. God’s dealings with mankind have all been of a character which may be called unexpected. We do not know in the whole of Scripture a more beautiful transition than that of the text, one less to have been anticipated where there was no acquaintance with redemption. The very circumstance that men are addressed as stouthearted, and far from righteousness, prepares you for an announcement at which the boldest should tremble; it is as the prelude to the storm, and you can look for nothing but a burst of thunder which shall make the mountains rock. But that instead of the thunder should succeed the sweet and gentle music of love; that those who are called stouthearted should be summoned to listen, not to a threatening of destruction, but to a promise of deliverance; that they should be told of the approach, not of a ministry of anger, but of a ministry of mercy,—in this it is that we find cause for wonder, this it is we could not have expected, could not have explained, if we did not know of arrangements through which God can be just, and yet the justifier of sinners.
II. We may be sure that, having summoned the stouthearted to hearken, the words which immediately follow are such as God knows to be specially adapted to the case of the stouthearted; that is, to contain the motives which are most likely to bring them to contrition and repentance. The nearness of salvation is made an argument with the ungodly why they should turn from evil courses—just as preached the Baptist, "Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." There is a motive to repentance in the approach of a Deliverer. There is a motive in our standing within the possibility of forgiveness. Hitherto we could only despair; now we may hope.
III. It is salvation which God declares He will place in Zion, and we must connect this salvation with the righteousness which He is said to bring near. You have here the most faithful description of the deliverance provided through the mediation of Christ. Sum it up in one word, and that deliverance is righteousness. God placed salvation in Zion when in Zion stood the Mediator who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2147.
Isa 46:13
(Isa 51:5)
I. What are these two things—Jehovah’s righteousness and Israel’s salvation? How are they related to one another and connected with one another? And what in particular is the meaning of the precedence or priority assigned to the one as coming before the other—My righteousness, My salvation? (1) It is very evident that the Lord’s righteousness must mean, not a Divine attribute, but a Divine work, or effect or manifestation of some kind. (2) A judicial dealing with His enemies, on the part of God, precedes and prepares the way for the deliverance or salvation of His people; and when He brings near the one, the other will not tarry. (3) God must first consult for His own righteous name before He can consult for His people’s complete safety; He must first right Himself before He can consistently and conclusively deliver them. Only in the train of the righteousness of God can His salvation go forth.
II. It may be said that the Lord brings His righteousness near, or that it is near, in three senses. (1) It is near, the Lord brings it near, in the Gospel offer as a free gift, wholly of grace, not of works at all. (2) The Lord bringeth near this righteousness in the powerful striving and working of His Spirit. (3) The Lord brings near His righteousness in the believing appropriation of it which His Spirit enables you to make.
R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness, p. 246.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v12 Isa 46:12 - Isa 46:13.
Isaiah
A RIGHTEOUSNESS NEAR AND A SWIFT SALVATION
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Isa 46:12 - Isa 46:13.
God has promised that He will dwell with him that is humble and of a contrite heart. Jesus has shed the oil of His benediction on the poor in spirit. It is the men who form the exact antithesis to these characters who are addressed here. The ‘stout-hearted’ are those who, being untouched in conscience and ignorant of their sin, are self-reliant and almost defiant before God. That temper is branded here, though, of course, there is a sense in which a stout heart is a priceless possession, but that sort of stoutness of heart is best secured by the contrite of heart. Those who are far from righteousness are those who are not only sinful in act, but do not desire to be otherwise, having no approximation or drawing towards a nobler life, by aspiration or effort.
To such men God speaks, as in the tone of a royal proclamation; and what should we expect to hear pealing from His lips? Words of rebuke, warning, condemnation? No; His voice is gentle and wooing, and does not threaten blows, but proffers blessings: ‘I will bring near My righteousness. It shall not be far off,’ though the stout-hearted maybe ‘far from’ it. Here we have a divine proclamation of a divine Love that will not let us away from its presence; of a divine Work for us that is finished without us; of an all-sufficient Gift to us.
I. A divine proclamation of a divine Love that will not let us away from its presence.
There is a great contest between God and man: man seeking to withdraw from God, and God following in patient, persistent love.
1. In general terms God keeps near us, however far away we go from Him.
Think of our forgetfulness of Him and His continual thought of us. Think of our alienated hearts and His unchanging love.
We cannot turn away His care, we cannot exhaust His compassion, we cannot alienate His heart. All men everywhere are objects of these, as in every corner of the world the sky is overhead, and all lands have sunshine.
What a picture of divine patience and placability that truth points for us! It shows the Father coming after His prodigal son, and so surpasses even the pearl of the parables.
2. The special reference to Christ’s work.
That work is the exhibition in manhood and to men of a perfect righteousness.
It is the implanting in the corrupt world of a new beginning. It is the clothing us with Christ’s righteousness, for which we are forgiven and in which we are sanctified.
So Christ’s work is God’s coming to bring near His righteousness, and now ‘it is nigh thee in thy mouth and in thy heart.’
II. A divine proclamation of a divine Work which is finished without us.
The divine righteousness and its consequence are here represented as being brought near while men are still ‘stout-hearted.’ We must feel the emphasis laid on ‘I will bring near My righteousness,’ and the impression of merciful speed given by ‘My salvation shall not tarry.’ The whole suggests such thoughts as these:-
The divine love is not drawn out by anything in us, but pours out on us, even while we are far off and indifferent to it. His bringing near of righteousness, and setting His salvation to run very swiftly side by side with it, originates in Himself. It is the self-impelled and self-fed flow of a fountain, and we need no pump or machinery to draw it forth.
The divine work is accomplished without man’s co-operation.
‘It is finished,’ was Christ’s dying cry. But what is finished?- Bringing the righteousness near. What still remains to be done?-Making it mine. And that is accomplished by faith.
It is mine if by faith I claim it as mine, and knit myself with Him who is righteousness and salvation for every man that they may be accessible to and possessed by any man.
A man may be far from righteousness though it is near him and all around him. Like Gideon’s fleece, he may be dry when all is wet, or like some rock in a field, barren and sullen, while all around the corn is waving.
III. The proclamation of an all-sufficient Gift.
Righteousness, salvation, glory, are here brought together in significant sequence. They are but several names for the same divine gift, looked at from different angles. A diamond flashes varying prismatic hues from its different facets.
That encyclopaedical gift, which in regard to man considered as sinful brings pardon and a new nature ‘in righteousness and holiness of truth,’ brings deliverance from peril and from every form of evil and death, to him considered as exposed to consequences of sin both physical and moral, and a true though limited participation in the divine glory, even now, with the hope of entering into the blaze of it hereafter, to him as considered as made in the divine image and having lost it.
And all this wonderful triple hope, rapturous and impossible as it seems when we think of man as he is, and of each of ourselves as we each feel ourselves to be, is for us a sober certainty and a fact sufficiently accomplished, to give firm ground for our largest expectations if we hold fast by Jesus who brings that all-sufficient gift of God within reach of each of us. The divine patience and love follow us in all our wild wanderings, praying us ‘with much entreaty that we should receive the gift.’ Jesus, who is God’s righteousness and love incarnate, beseeches us to take Him, and in Him righteousness, salvation, and glory.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The Contrast between Jehovah and the Deities of Babylon
The Contrast between Jehovah and the Deities of Babylon
1, 2. The idols of Babylon will be borne away by the conquerors amongst the spoil, the gods being powerless to save their images. i. Bel] the chief Babylonian deity (Jer_50:2).
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Boweth.. stoopeth] before the conqueror.
Nebo] son of Bel, the Babylonian Mercury. The name means 'revealer.' Your carriages, etc.] RV 'the things that ye carried about in processions are made a load,' of spoil for the conquerors: see on Isa_10:28.
3, 4. So far from being thus ignominiously carried about, Jehovah, on the other hand, carries His people.
5-7. The argument against idolatry renewed (Isa_40:18.; Isa_44:9).
8f. These vv. are addressed to those amongst the Jews who were inclined to object to God's manner of deliverance (cp. Isa_45:9); they are bidden to remember the things He has done for His people in the past (Isa_46:9), and how He has shown by prophecy that He orders events according to His purpose (Isa_46:10); they may accordingly rely on the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning Cyrus (Isa_46:11).
11. A ravenous bird] i.e. Cyrus. The conqueror is compared to a bird of prey as in Jer_49:22; Eze_17:3. The image is the more appropriate, because the standard of Cyrus was a golden eagle.
12. Stouthearted] i.e. stubborn.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 1. Babylon Is to Fall The Babylonian idols carried…
CHAPTER 46
1. Babylon Is to Fall The Babylonian idols carried by the beasts (Isa 46:1-2) 2. How Jehovah carries His people (Isa 46:3-4) 3. The divine reproach (Isa 46:5-7) 4. A ravenous bird (Cyrus) to come from the east (Isa 46:8-11) 5. Salvation in Zion (Isa 46:12-13) The opening verses are comforting. The helplessness of the Babylonian idols is described. They have to be carried. They cannot deliver out of captivity, for they themselves have gone in to captivity. But Jehovah carries His people from birth to old age. The last verse takes us beyond the fall of the Babylon of the past. When the final Babylon described in Revelation is accomplished then it will be true “I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 8 The Fall of Babylon’s Idols
The Fall of Babylon’s Idols
v. 1. Bel, the highest deity of Babylon, boweth down, is fallen, Nebo, another Babylonian idol, the tutelary deity of the reigning house of Chaldea, stoopeth, collapsing, or falling prostrate, namely, in the plundering of the city; their idols were upon the beasts and upon the cattle, when the beasts of burden dragged them away as a part of the conqueror’s booty. Your carriages were heavy loaden, they are a burden to the weary beast, that is, the statues of their idols, otherwise carried about by the priests in solemn procession, were seen by the prophet as loaded upon pack-animals, which dragged along, weary with the heavy load.
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v. 2. They, the idols, stoop, they bow down together, they are entirely collapsed; they could not deliver the burden, they were unable to save the burden of their own statues, they could not bring them to a place of safety, but themselves are gone into captivity, the very gods of the Babylonians captured and led away into exile, a sarcastic thrust at their helplessness. This introduction prepares the way for a sharp reproof of Israel for its idolatrous leanings.
v. 3. Hearken unto Me, O house of Jacob and all the remnant of the house of Israel, all those whom the Lord has chosen to be his own peculiar people, which are borne by Me from the belly, which are carried from the womb, sustained and protected by the loving-kindness of the Lord since the time when lie chose them as His people;
v. 4. and even to your old age I am He, the same faithful, dependable God; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you, to the most advanced age of their history, to the very end of their national existence. I have made, and I will bear, the fact of his having sustained them in the past being their guarantee for the future; even I will carry and will deliver you, this deliverance being the surest proof of his divinity.
v. 5. To whom will ye liken Me, and make Me equal, and compare Me, that we may be like? Cf. Isa 40:18-25. The heaping of expressions again stresses the uniqueness of the true God, the fact that He alone merits the designation of God. How is it possible for Israel even to think of placing the true God on a level with the heathen idols after the manifestations of His power and mercy which they have witnessed? To make this thought stand out still more clearly, the vanity of the idolaters is once more described.
v. 6. They lavish gold out of the bag, paying it out in large quantities, or producing it in heaps as material for the craftsman, and weigh silver in the balance, cheerfully opening their treasures, and hire a goldsmith, and he maketh it, the precious metal which is delivered to him, a god; they fall down, in foolish adoration of the idol, yea, they worship.
v. 7. They bear him, lifting their idol up from the place where he was cast, upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, on the pedestal, in the niche intended for him, and he standeth, a dead thing unable to move; from his place shall he not remove; yea, one shall cry unto him, trusting to obtain help from the idol, yet can be not answer nor save him, the worshiper who places his confidence in him, out of his trouble. Thus the helplessness, nothingness, of the idols is once more set before the people.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12 Bel bows down, Nebo stoops; their idols ... for…
Bel bows down, Nebo stoops; their idols ... for weary animals
Isaiah speaks of people placing the idols of Bel and Nebo into a cart for animals to transport as if these gods were made to "bow down" and "stoop." These are both postures of humiliation. (See: Metaphor)
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Bel ... Nebo
These were the two primary gods whom the Babylonians worshiped. (See: How to Translate Names)
their idols
the idols that represented Bel and Nebo
they cannot rescue the images
"Bel and Nebo cannot rescue their images"
they themselves have gone off into captivity
Isaiah speaks of people carrying off these idols as if the false gods whom they represent are being carried off to captivity. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
bow
false god
image
captive
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 46:1-2 This taunt was against the self-contradiction of Babylonian…
46:1-2 This taunt was against the self-contradiction of Babylonian religion.
46:1 Marduk-bel was the most important god in the Babylonian pantheon. Bel (similar to “Baal”) designated lordship. • Nebo (Nabu, Nebu), the patron deity of Babylonian scribes, was thought to be the son of Marduk-bel. • Instead of being paraded in glory at a Babylonian festival, these gods would be hauled away on ox carts and disposed of, rejected by the Babylonian people.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.