Isaiah 43 explained: You Are Mine, So Do Not Fear

Called by name (vv. 1-2)

Right after a harsh rebuke in the previous chapter, God surprisingly tells Israel not to fear, because he made them, bought them back and calls them his own. Floods and fire here are pictures of the worst dangers imaginable, and the promise is that God will be with them through both.

Nations as ransom (vv. 3-4)

Egypt, Cush (the land south of Egypt) and Seba (probably nearby) are pictured as a price paid so Israel could go free; some think this means Persia would gain these lands as a reward for freeing Israel, but no one is sure. It is a hard image of other peoples being given up for Israel's sake, and the text does not soften it.

Gathered from everywhere (vv. 5-7)

God promises to call his scattered people home from east, west, north and south. Naming both sons and daughters stresses that every last one is included.

A courtroom for the gods (vv. 8-13)

God calls the nations into a kind of trial and asks whether any of their gods ever foretold events and then made them happen. Readers have long differed on whether the blind and deaf people brought out are Israel or the nations, but either way Israel is named God's witness that he alone is God and the only one who saves.

Babylon falls, a new road (vv. 14-21)

God promises to send an army, likely the Persians, against Babylon, a river city proud of its ships, and he recalls how he once parted the sea and drowned Pharaoh's army. Then he says not to dwell on that past, because something new is coming: a road and streams through the desert, which most read as the journey home from Babylon.

Failure met with forgiveness (vv. 22-28)

God says Israel has not truly called on him or brought offerings, such as animals burned whole on the altar and fragrant cane; scholars differ on whether this reflects exile without a temple or worship that had gone empty. Instead they wore God out with their sins, yet he wipes them away for his own sake, even as he names the long record of failure, from a 'first father' whom scholars identify differently to their leaders, that he says led him to hand Israel over to ruin and disgrace.

Key verse: Isaiah 43:1

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether the promised gathering and new thing were fulfilled in the return from Babylon, are fulfilled in the church through Jesus, or still point to a future restoration of the Jewish people.

Something to think about

Can a person or a people truly start fresh, or does every new beginning still carry the past along with it?