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Isaiah 44: What the Passage Says

139 claims across 28 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Isaiah 44 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD speaks to Israel as the servant he formed and chose, promising to pour water on dry ground and his Spirit on their descendants, so that people will claim his name. He declares that he alone is God, first and last, and then describes at length how an idol is made: a blacksmith hammering metal until he grows faint, and a woodworker who burns half a log for cooking and warmth and bows down to the rest. The chapter closes with the LORD naming himself the maker of all things, the one who overturns the signs of false prophets, and the one who says Jerusalem will be lived in again, the cities of Judah rebuilt, and the temple's foundation laid, with Cyrus called his shepherd.

Claim by Claim

  1. 44:1
    • The LORD tells Jacob to listen now.
    • The LORD calls Jacob his servant.
    • The LORD says Israel is the one he has chosen.
  2. 44:2
    • This is what the LORD says.
    • The LORD is the one who made Jacob.
    • The LORD formed Jacob from the womb.
    • The LORD will help Jacob.
    • The LORD tells Jacob not to be afraid.
    • The LORD calls Jacob his servant.
    • The LORD addresses Israel as Jeshurun.
    • The LORD says Jeshurun is the one he has chosen.
  3. 44:3
    • The LORD will pour water on the thirsty ground.
    • The LORD will pour streams on the dry land.
    • The LORD will pour his spirit on Jacob's seed.
    • The LORD will pour his blessing on Jacob's offspring.
  4. 44:4
    • Jacob's descendants will sprout up among the grass.
    • Jacob's descendants will be like willows beside flowing water.
  5. 44:5
    • One person will say, 'I belong to the LORD.'
    • Another will call himself by the name of Jacob.
    • Another will write on his hand that he belongs to the LORD.
    • Another will take for himself the name of Israel.
  6. 44:6
    • This is what the LORD says.
    • The LORD is the King of Israel.
    • The LORD of hosts is Israel's redeemer.
    • The LORD says he is the first.
    • The LORD says he is the last.
    • The LORD says there is no God apart from him.
  7. 44:7
    • The LORD asks who is like him, able to call out and declare it.
    • The LORD asks who can set the matter out in order before him.
    • The LORD says he appointed an ancient people.
    • The LORD challenges them to declare the things that are coming and that will come.
  8. 44:8
    • The LORD tells them not to dread.
    • The LORD tells them not to be afraid.
    • The LORD asks whether he has not told them long ago.
    • The LORD asks whether he has not declared it.
    • The LORD says they are his witnesses.
    • The LORD asks whether there is any god besides him.
    • The LORD says there is no Rock besides him.
    • The LORD says he knows of no other.
  9. 44:9
    • Those who form carved images are all emptiness.
    • The things they delight in bring no profit.
    • The idols' own witnesses do not see.
    • The idols' own witnesses do not know.
    • The result is that they are put to shame.
  10. 44:10
    • It is asked who would form a god or cast a carved image.
    • The idol is profitable for nothing.
  11. 44:11
    • All the idol's associates will be put to shame.
    • The craftsmen are merely human.
    • Let them all gather together.
    • Let them all take their stand.
    • They will be terrified.
    • They will be put to shame together.
  12. 44:12
    • The ironworker shapes his work with a cutting tool.
    • He labors over the coals.
    • He forms the idol with hammers.
    • He works it with the strength of his arm.
    • He grows hungry and has no strength.
    • He drinks no water and grows faint.
  13. 44:13
    • The woodworker stretches out a measuring line.
    • He marks the shape out with a marking tool.
    • He works it with chisels.
    • He marks it out with a compass.
    • He makes it in the form of a man.
    • He makes it according to the beauty of a man.
    • The image is made to sit in a house.
  14. 44:14
    • He cuts down cedars for himself.
    • He takes a holm tree and an oak.
    • He lets a tree grow strong for himself among the trees of the forest.
    • He plants a fir tree.
    • The rain makes it grow.
  15. 44:15
    • The wood serves a man for burning.
    • He takes some of it and warms himself.
    • He kindles a fire and bakes bread.
    • He also makes a god from it and bows down to it.
    • He makes it into a carved image and prostrates himself before it.
  16. 44:16
    • He burns half of the wood in the fire.
    • Over that half he eats meat.
    • He roasts a roast and is satisfied.
    • He also warms himself.
    • He says, 'Aha, I am warm.'
    • He says, 'I have seen the fire.'
  17. 44:17
    • From the remainder he makes a god, his carved image.
    • He prostrates himself before it.
    • He bows down to it.
    • He prays to it.
    • He says to it, 'Deliver me.'
    • He says to it, 'You are my god.'
  18. 44:18
    • They do not know.
    • They do not understand.
    • Their eyes are smeared shut so they cannot see (the text leaves it open whether God or someone else has shut them).
    • Their hearts are closed so they cannot understand.
  19. 44:19
    • No one takes it to heart.
    • No one has the knowledge or understanding to say it.
    • The man could say he burned half of the wood in the fire.
    • He could say he baked bread on its coals.
    • He could say he roasted meat and ate it.
    • He could ask whether he should make the rest of it into a detestable thing.
    • He could ask whether he should bow down to a block of wood.
  20. 44:20
    • He feeds on ashes.
    • A deceived heart has led him astray.
    • He cannot rescue himself.
    • He does not say, 'Is there not a lie in my right hand?'
  21. 44:21
    • The LORD tells Jacob and Israel to remember these things.
    • The LORD says Israel is his servant.
    • The LORD says he formed Israel.
    • The LORD says Israel is his servant.
    • The LORD says Israel will not be forgotten by him (the wording can also be read as telling Israel not to forget him).
  22. 44:22
    • The LORD has wiped away Israel's transgressions like a thick cloud.
    • The LORD has wiped away Israel's sins like a cloud.
    • The LORD tells Israel to return to him.
    • The LORD says he has redeemed Israel.
  23. 44:23
    • The heavens are told to sing for joy.
    • The reason given is that the LORD has done it.
    • The depths of the earth are told to shout.
    • The mountains are told to break out in song.
    • The forest and every tree in it are told to sing.
    • The LORD has redeemed Jacob.
    • The LORD will show his glory in Israel.
  24. 44:24
    • This is what the LORD says.
    • The LORD is Israel's redeemer.
    • The LORD formed Israel from the womb.
    • The LORD says he is the one who makes all things.
    • The LORD stretches out the heavens alone.
    • The LORD spreads out the earth (the text reads either 'by myself' or as the question 'who was with me?').
  25. 44:25
    • The LORD frustrates the signs of empty talkers.
    • The LORD makes diviners into fools.
    • The LORD turns wise men back.
    • The LORD makes their knowledge foolish.
  26. 44:26
    • The LORD confirms the word of his servant.
    • The LORD fulfills the counsel of his messengers.
    • The LORD says of Jerusalem that it will be inhabited.
    • The LORD says of the cities of Judah that they will be rebuilt.
    • The LORD says he will raise up their ruins.
  27. 44:27
    • The LORD says to the deep, 'Be dry.'
    • The LORD says he will dry up its rivers.
  28. 44:28
    • The LORD says of Cyrus that he is his shepherd.
    • The LORD says Cyrus will carry out all his pleasure.
    • The LORD says to Jerusalem that it will be built.
    • The LORD says of the temple that its foundation will be laid.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

44:1
"Jacob" and "Israel" here are names for the whole nation, not the individual. Israel was the second name given to Jacob, and both names were used for the people descended from him. Also, where the text prints LORD in capitals it stands for the personal name of God in Hebrew, four consonants usually written YHWH; Jewish practice was to say "Lord" instead of pronouncing it, and English translations follow that by printing LORD.
44:2
"Jeshurun" (spelled "Jesurun" in the King James) is a rare poetic nickname for Israel, used only four times in the Hebrew Bible. It appears to be built on a root meaning "upright" or "straight," so it works something like "the upright one."
44:3
The word translated "Spirit" is the Hebrew *ruach*, which also means breath and wind. The image runs continuously from the poured water of the first half of the verse into the poured spirit of the second. The King James "thy seed" means descendants; it has nothing to do with plant seed.
44:4
Willows are trees that grow beside water. Their long branches bend and hang down.
44:5
Writing a name on the hand was a public mark of belonging: servants and slaves could be marked with their owner's name, and the gesture also resembles signing one's name to a document. The point is that people will publicly enroll themselves as belonging to the LORD and to Israel, including, the wording suggests, people not born into the nation.
44:6
"Redeemer" (in the rendering, "the one who buys his people back") translates the Hebrew *go'el*, a legal term from family law. The *go'el* was the nearest relative, whose duty was to buy back a kinsman's land that had been sold, or to buy the kinsman himself out of slavery. Calling God Israel's *go'el* casts him in that family role toward a nation in exile. "LORD of hosts" / "LORD of Armies" is a standard title meaning commander of the heavenly armies.
44:7
The Hebrew of the middle clause is unclear and translators divide over it. It can mean "since I established an ancient, enduring people" (Israel, set up long ago), or "since I appointed the people of long ago," or even "since I set up the everlasting one." The rendering keeps the ambiguity rather than choosing.
44:8
"Rock" was a common title for a god, meaning a place of shelter and secure footing. The King James has "there is no God"; the Hebrew word is the ordinary word for rock. The talk of witnesses belongs to a courtroom scene running through this chapter: the LORD and the other gods are pictured as parties to a lawsuit, each summoning witnesses to prove they predicted events in advance.
44:9
This continues the courtroom scene. The idols' worshipers are called as the idols' witnesses, and the sarcasm is that these witnesses can neither see nor understand, the same defects the passage attributes to the idols themselves.
44:10
"Molten" meant melted. Metal was heated until it flowed like liquid, then poured into a mold to harden into shape.
44:12
The King James "the smith with the tongs" reflects a Hebrew word whose meaning is uncertain; it may be a tool such as an axe or chisel, or possibly mean that the smith works in iron. The hunger, thirst and faintness are the human craftsman's, contrasted with the god he is manufacturing.
44:13
"Compass" here does not mean a magnetic compass for finding direction. It means a pair of dividers or calipers, the drafting tool used to scribe circles and arcs. The "house" at the end of the verse is a shrine or small temple built to hold the finished image.
44:14
The tree the King James calls an "ash" cannot be identified with confidence; other translations guess laurel, pine or cedar. The detail that matters is that these are ordinary timber trees, planted and watered by rain like any other crop.
44:16
"I have seen the fire" is an idiom for enjoying its blaze and heat, roughly "I can feel the glow of it."
44:17
To worship means to bow down and show you think someone is great. People also asked their idols for help.
44:19
"Abomination" (rendered "something disgusting") translates a standard Hebrew word for something ritually repulsive; it is used so often of idols that it had become almost a synonym for them. The "stock of a tree" is a block or log of wood.
44:20
"He feeds on ashes" is an idiom for taking in something with no substance, as pointless as eating what is left after a fire. "A lie in my right hand" means the idol he is holding: the object itself is the falsehood.
44:22
"Blotted out" is the language of writing: ink washed or scraped off a document, as a debt is canceled by erasing the record. The two comparisons are to a heavy cloud and a thin mist, both of which burn off and leave nothing.
44:23
"Lower parts of the earth" translates a phrase that can mean the depths of the ground, the underworld of the dead, or simply the world below the sky as opposed to the heavens above. The verse calls the whole created order, top to bottom, to shout.
44:24
"Stretcheth forth the heavens" pictures God spreading out the sky the way a person spreads a tent over its poles.
44:25
"Tokens" means signs or omens. "Diviners" were professionals who read the future from physical signs, the markings on a sacrificed animal's liver, the movement of stars, the fall of arrows or lots. Such specialists were a normal and respected part of Babylonian public life, which is the setting these verses have in view.
44:26
"Messengers" here means the prophets, people sent to deliver a message on someone's behalf; the Hebrew word is the ordinary one for an envoy. "The decayed places" means the ruins of the towns.
44:27
"The deep" is the usual word for the sea or deep water. The same drying language is used elsewhere of the sea at the exodus from Egypt, and the mention of rivers alongside it also suits the canals and waterways that defended Babylon.
44:28
Cyrus was the Persian king who took Babylon in 539 BC and afterwards permitted deported peoples, Judeans among them, to return home and rebuild their sanctuaries. "Shepherd" was a standard royal title across the ancient Near East, meaning a ruler who feeds and protects his people; it is not a religious title. "The temple" is the temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC.

Read Isaiah 44