God is omnipotent, yet He can do nothing for Israel till Israel put away their sins. Those sins, and not the people's captivity, are the Deity's chief concern. Sin has been at the bottom of their whole adversity. This is brought out with all the versatility of conscience itself. Israel and their God have been at variance; their sin has been, what conscience feels the most, a sin against love. Yet not upon Me hast thou called, O Jacob; how hast thou been wearied with Me, O Israel.... I have not made thee to slave with offerings, nor wearied thee with incense ... but thou hast made Me to slave with thy sins, thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities (xliii. 22-24). So God sets their sins, where men most see the blackness of their guilt, in the face of His love. And now He challenges conscience. Put Me in remembrance; let us come to judgement together; indict, that thou mayest be justified (ver. 26). But it had been agelong and original sin. Thy father, the first had sinned; yea, thy representative men—literally interpreters, mediators—had transgressed against Me. Therefore did I profane consecrated princes, and gave Jacob to the ban, and Israel to reviling (vv. 27, 28). The Exile itself was but an episode in a tragedy, which began far back with Israel's history. And so ch. xlviii. repeats: I knew that thou dost deal very treacherously, and Transgressor-from-the-womb do they call thee (ver. 8). And then there comes the sad note of what might have been. O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as the river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea (ver. 18). As broad Euphrates thou shouldst have lavishly rolled, and flashed to the sun like a summer sea. But now, hear what is left. There is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked (ver. 22).
Ah, it is no dusty stretch of ancient history, no long-extinct volcano upon the far waste of Asian politics, to which we are led by the writings of the Exile. But they treat of man's perennial trouble; and conscience, that never dies, speaks through their old-fashioned letters and figures with words we feel like swords. And therefore, still, whether they be psalms or prophecies, they stand like some ancient minster in the modern world,—where, on each new soiled day, till time ends, the heavy heart of man may be helped to read itself, and lift up its guilt for mercy.
They are the confessional of the world, but they are also its gospel, and the altar where forgiveness is sealed. I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of Me. I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins; turn unto Me, for I have redeemed thee. Israel shall be saved by Jehovah with an everlasting salvation; ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.[91] Now, when we remember who the God is, who thus speaks,—not merely One who flings the word of pardon from the sublime height of His holiness, but, as we saw, speaks it from the midst of all His own passion and struggle under His people's sins,—then with what assurance does His word come home to the heart. What honour and obligation to righteousness does the pardon of such a God put upon our hearts. One understands why Ambrose sent Augustine, after his conversion, first to these prophecies.
4. The fourth token, which these chapters offer for the religion of Jehovah, is the claim they make for it to interpret and to control history. There are two verbs, which are frequently repeated throughout the chapters, and which are given together in ch. xliii. 12: I have published and I have saved. These are the two acts by which Jehovah proves His solitary divinity over against the idols.
The publishing, of course, is the same prediction, of which ch. xli. spoke. It is publishing in former times things happening now; it is publishing now things that are still to happen. And who, like Me, calls out and publishes it, and sets it in order for Me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and that shall come, let them publish. Tremble not, nor fear: did I not long ago cause thee to hear? and I published, and ye are My witnesses. Is there a God beside Me? nay, there is no Rock; I know none (xliv. 7, 8).
The two go together, the doing of wonderful and saving acts for His people and the publishing of them before they come to pass. Israel's past is full of such acts. Ch. xliii. instances the delivery from Egypt (vv. 16, 17), but immediately proceeds (vv. 18, 19): Remember ye not the former things—here our old friend ri'shonôth occurs again, but this time means simply previous events—neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; even now it springs forth. Shall ye not know it? Yea, I will set in the wilderness a way, in the desert rivers. And of this new event of the Return, and of others which will follow from it, like the building of Jerusalem, the chapters insist over and over again, that they are the work of Jehovah, who is therefore a Saviour God. But what better proof can be given, that these saving facts are indeed His own and part of His counsel, than that He foretold them by His messengers and prophets to Israel,—of which previous publication His people are the witnesses. Who among the peoples can publish thus, and let us hear predictions?—again ri'shonôth, things ahead—let them bring their witnesses, that they may be justified, and let them hear and say, Truth. Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, to Israel (xliii. 9, 10). I have published, and I have saved, and I have shewed, and there was no strange god among you; therefore—because Jehovah was notoriously the only God who had to do with them during all this prediction and fulfilment of prediction—ye are witnesses for Me, saith Jehovah, that I am God (id. ver. 12). The meaning of all this is plain. Jehovah is God alone, because He is directly effective in history for the salvation of His people, and because He has published beforehand what He will do. The great instance of this, which the prophecy adduces, is the present movement towards the liberation of the people, of which movement Cyrus is the most conspicuous factor. Of this xlv. 19 ff. says: Not in secret have I spoken, in a place of the land of darkness. I have not said to the seed of Jacob, In vanity seek ye Me. I Jehovah am a speaker of righteousness,[92] a publisher of things that are straight. Be gathered and come in; draw together, ye survivors of the nations: they have no knowledge that carry about the log of their image, and are suppliants to a god that cannot save. Publish, and bring it here; nay, let them advise together; who made this to be heard,—that is, who published this,—of ancient time? Who published this of old? I Jehovah, and there is none God beside Me: a God righteous,—that is, consistent, true to His published word,—and a Saviour, there is none beside Me. Here we have joined together the same ideas as in xliii. 12. There I have declared and saved is equivalent to a God righteous and a Saviour here. Only in Jehovah are righteousnesses, that is, fidelity to His anciently published purposes; and strength, that is, capacity to carry these purposes out in history. God is righteous because, according to another verse in the same prophecy (xliv. 26), He confirmeth the word of His servant, and the advice of His messengers He fulfilleth.
Now the question has been asked, To what predictions does the prophecy allude as being fulfilled in those days when Cyrus was so evidently advancing to the overthrow of Babylon? Before answering this question it is well to note, that, for the most part, the prophet speaks in general terms. He gives no hint to justify that unfounded belief, to which so many think it necessary to cling, that Cyrus was actually named by a prophet of Jehovah years before he appeared. Had such a prediction existed, we can have no doubt that our prophet would now have appealed to it. No: he evidently refers only to those numerous and notorious predictions by Isaiah, and by Jeremiah, of the return of Israel from exile after a certain and fixed period. Those were now coming to pass.
But from this new day Jehovah also predicts for the days to come, and He does this very particularly, xliv. 26, Who is saying of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited; and of the cities of Judah, They shall be built; and of her waste places, I will raise them up. Who saith to the deep, Be dry, and thy rivers I will dry up. Who saith of Koresh, My Shepherd, and all My pleasure he shall fulfil: even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built, and the Temple shall be founded.
Thus, backward and forward, yesterday, to-day and for ever, Jehovah's hand is upon history. He controls it: it is the fulfilment of His ancient purpose. By predictions made long ago and fulfilled to-day, by the readiness to predict to-day what will happen to-morrow, He is surely God and God alone. Singular fact, that in that day of great empires, confident in their resources, and with the future so near their grasp, it should be the God of a little people, cut off from their history, servile and seemingly spent, who should take the big things of earth—Egypt, Ethiopia, Seba—and speak of them as counters to be given in exchange for His people; who should speak of such a people as the chief heirs of the future, the indispensable ministers of mankind. The claim has two Divine features. It is unique, and history has vindicated it. It is unique: no other religion, in that or in any other time, has so rationally explained past history or laid out the ages to come upon the lines of a purpose so definite, so rational, so beneficent—a purpose so worthy of the One God and Creator of all. And it has been vindicated: Israel returned to their own land, resumed the development of their calling, and, after the centuries came and went, fulfilled the promise that they should be the religious teachers of mankind. The long delay of this fulfilment surely but testifies the more to the Divine foresight of the promise; to the patience, which nature, as well as history, reveals to be, as much as omnipotence, a mark of Deity.