Isaiah 41:4-7

41:4 Who acts and carries out decrees? ¹ 

Who ²  summons the successive generations from the beginning?

I, the Lord, am present at the very beginning,

and at the very end – I am the one. ³ 

41:5 The coastlands ⁴  see and are afraid;

the whole earth ⁵  trembles;

they approach and come.

41:6 They help one another; ⁶ 

one says to the other, ‘Be strong!’

41:7 The craftsman encourages the metalsmith,

the one who wields the hammer encourages ⁷  the one who pounds on the anvil.

He approves the quality of the welding, ⁸ 

and nails it down so it won’t fall over.”

[41:4]  ¹ tn Heb “Who acts and accomplishes?”; NASB “Who has performed and accomplished it.”

[41:4]  ² tn The interrogative particle is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[41:4]  ³ tn Heb “I, the Lord, [am with] the first, and with the last ones I [am] he.”

[41:5]  ⁴ tn Or “islands” (NIV, CEV); NCV “faraway places”; NLT “lands beyond the sea.”

[41:5]  ⁵ tn Heb “the ends of the earth,” but this is a merism, where the earth’s extremities stand for its entirety, i.e., the extremities and everything in between them.

[41:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “each his neighbor helps”; NCV “The workers help each other.”

[41:7]  ¹⁰ tn The verb “encourages” is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).

[41:7]  ¹¹ tn Heb “saying of the welding, ‘It is good.’”