Bring here your case, saith Jehovah; apply your strong grounds, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring out and declare unto us what things are going to happen; the first things[64] announce what they are, that we may set our heart on them, and know the issue of them; or the things that are coming, let us hear them. Announce the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods. Yea, do good or do evil, that we may stare and see it together. Lo! ye are nothing, and your work is of nought; an abomination is he who chooseth you.
Which great challenge just means, Come and be tested by facts. Here is history needing an explanation, and running no one knows whither. Prove your divinity by interpreting or guiding it. Cease your ambiguities, and give us something we can set our minds to work upon. Or do something, effect something in history, be it good or be it evil,—only let it be patent to our senses. For the test of godhead is not ingenuity or mysteriousness, but plain deeds, which the senses can perceive, and plain words, which the reason and conscience can judge. The insistance upon the senses and mental faculties of man is remarkable: Make us hear them, that we may know, stare, see all together, set our mind to them.
But as we have learned from Herodotus, there was nobody in the world to answer such a challenge. Therefore Jehovah Himself answers it. He gives His explanation of history, and claims its events for His doing.
I have stirred up from the north, and he hath come; from the rising of the sun one who calleth upon My Name: and he shall trample satraps like mortar, and as the potter treadeth out clay.
Who hath announced on-ahead[65] that we may know, and beforehand that we may say, "Right!" Yea, there is none that announced, yea, there is none that published, yea, there is none that heareth your words. But a prediction—or predicter, literally a thing or man on-ahead (r'ishôn corresponding to the me-r'osh of ver. 26)—a prediction to Zion, "Behold, behold them," and to Jerusalem a herald of good news—I am giving. The language here comes forth in jerks, and is very difficult to render. But I look and there is no man even among these, and no counsellor, that I might ask them and they return word. Lo, all of them vanity! and nothingness their works; wind and waste their molten images.
Let us look a little more closely at the power of Prediction, on which Jehovah maintains His unique and sovereign Deity against the idols.
Jehovah challenges the idols to face present events, and to give a clear, unambiguous forecast of their issue. It is a debatable question, whether He does not also ask them to produce previous predictions of events happening at the time at which He speaks. This latter demand is one that He makes in subsequent chapters; it is part of His prophet's argument in chs. xlv.-xlvi., that Jehovah intimated the advent of Cyrus by His servants in Israel long before the present time. Whether He makes this same demand for previous predictions in ch. xli. depends on how we render a clause of ver. 22, declare ye the former things. Some scholars take former things in the sense, in which it is used later on in this prophecy, of previous predictions. This is very doubtful. I have explained in a note, why I think them wrong; but even if they are right, and Jehovah be really asking the idols to produce former predictions of Cyrus' career, the demand is so cursory, it proves so small an item in His plea, and we shall afterwards find so many clearer statements of it, that we do better to ignore it now and confine ourselves to emphasizing the other challenge, about which there is no doubt,—the challenge to take present events and predict their issue.[66] Crœsus had asked the oracles for a forecast of the future. This is exactly what Jehovah demands in ver. 22, declare unto us what things are going to happen; in ver. 23, declare the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods; in ver. 26 (spoken from the standpoint of the subsequent fulfilment of the prediction), who declared it on-ahead that we may know, and beforehand that we may now say, "Right!" Yea, there is none that declared, yea, there is none that published, yea, there is none that heareth your words. But a prediction unto Zion, "Behold, behold them," and to Jerusalem a herald of good news—I give. I give is emphatically placed at the end,—"I Jehovah alone, through my prophets in Israel, give such a prediction and publisher of good news."
We scarcely require to remind ourselves, that this great challenge and plea are not mere rhetoric or idle boasting. Every word in them we have seen to be true to fact. The heathen religions were, as they are here represented, helpless before Cyrus, and dumb about the issue of the great movements which the Persian had started. On the other hand, Jehovah had uttered to His people all the meaning of the new stir and turmoil in history. We have heard Him do so in ch. xl. There He gives a herald of good news to Jerusalem,—tells them of their approaching deliverance, explains His redemptive purposes, proclaims a gospel. In addition, He has in this chapter accepted Cyrus for His own creation and as part of His purpose, and has promised him victory.