The section begins with an announcement of the salvation that God would provide for His chosen people.
44:23 This verse concludes the thought expressed in the preceding one, so many translations and commentators regard it as the end of the preceding section. However, it is a hymnic call to praise similar to the one in 42:10-13, and it seems to introduce what follows, as that earlier call to praise did. The content of the praise also points ahead to what follows rather then backward to what has preceded. It provides a very smooth transition.
Isaiah again called on all the elements of the created universe to witness something. Earlier they witnessed Israel's rebellion (cf. 1:2), but now they witness Israel's salvation. As in the previous verse, redemption is spoken of as already complete. This is the translation of the Hebrew prophetic perfect tense verb that speaks of things in the future as though they had already happened in the past because they are certain to occur. A future redemption is in view that will manifest Yahweh's glory. This becomes clear in the verses that follow.
44:24 The Lord prefaced His stunning prediction with a reminder of who was making it. He was Yahweh, Israel's covenant God who had redeemed her and would yet redeem her. He had brought her into existence by Himself, as He had created all things including the heavens and the earth (cf. 40:12-14, 21-22). The often repeated phrase "Thus says the LORD"in this part of Isaiah engenders confidence in the promises of redemption that follow (cf. 45:1, 11, 14, 18).
44:25 God embarrasses astrologers, diviners, and fortune tellers by controlling history in ways that deviate from past patterns. Ancient and modern prognosticators usually base their predictions on the belief that things will work out in the future as they have in the past. But Yahweh can move future events in entirely new directions.469He can do things never before done.
44:26 Conversely, Yahweh could bring the predictions that He had revealed to His servant Isaiah (cf. 20:3) and His messengers the prophets to pass. Here he predicted that Jerusalem and the cities of Judah would be rebuilt, after their destruction by the Babylonians.
44:27 God is the one who dried up the Red Sea during the Exodus. Likewise He could dry up rivers in the future to bring His will to pass (cf. 48:21).470God's promises covered both the rebuilding of Judah's cities (vv. 26, 28) and the exiles' return home.
44:28 God announced that Cyrus would be the person who would allow Jerusalem to be rebuilt and the temple foundations relayed. The mention of his name climaxes this prophecy (vv. 24-28). Cyrus would be the Lord's shepherd, the one who would lead the Israelites back into their land by permitting its restoration. He would carry out all God's desire (cf. 41:2-3, 25).
The title "My Shepherd"was one that God used of the Davidic kings (cf. 2 Sam. 5:2; 1 Kings 22:17; Ezek. 34:23). The fact that He used it here of a pagan monarch shows that God would use pagans to fulfill His wishes since the Davidic kings had proved unreliable (cf. 7:13; 39:7). This was indeed a new thing that God had not done before (cf. 43:19).
"In a wonderfully ingenious way, just as the foreigner, Ruth, became an ancestress of David (Ruth 4:13-22), the foreigner Cyrus typifies the Davidic Messiah (Isa. 53:10; Zech. 11:4; 13:7; John 8:29; 10:11)."471
Cyrus (559-530 B.C.) issued his decree to allow the Jewish exiles to return and rebuild Jerusalem in 538 B.C. This happened about 190 years after Isaiah announced this prophecy.472The Persian monarch had not even been born at this time. When Isaiah made this prophecy his hearers probably said to one another, who did he say would do this? Who is Cyrus?
This prophecy is the primary reason destructive critics of Isaiah have insisted that Isaiah of Jerusalem could not possibly have written this prediction. It must have been written, they say, sometime after Cyrus issued his decree.473However, the point that Yahweh was making throughout this book was that He alone could predict and create the future.474
Motyer noted parallels between 44:24-48:22 and 49:1-53:12.475These sections provide the solutions to Israel's double need: national bondage (cf. 42:18-43:21) and spiritual sinfulness (cf. 43:22-44:22).
