Isaiah 43:3 - Exposition

The Holy One of Israel (comp. Isaiah 41:14 , Isaiah 41:20 , with the comment). Thy Saviour. He who had saved them front Pharaoh ( Exodus 14:23-31 ), from Jabin ( 4:1-24 .), from Midian ( 7:1-25 .), from the Philistines ( 2 Samuel 8:1 ), from Zerah ( 2 Chronicles 14:9-15 ), from Sennacherib ( Isaiah 37:36 ). The term is first used of God by David in 2 Samuel 22:3 and Psalms 106:21 (if that psalm be Davidical). It is also applied to God once in Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 14:8 ), and once in Hosea ( Hosea 13:4 ). With Isaiah, in these later chapters it is a favourite epithet, being used of God no fewer than eight times (see verse 11; Isaiah 45:15 , Isaiah 45:21 ; Isaiah 47:15 ; Isaiah 49:26 ; Isaiah 60:16 ; Isaiah 63:8 ) With his eye fixed on the deliverance of Israel out of the double captivity of sin and of Babylon, he naturally had much before him this aspect of Jehovah. I gave Egypt for thy ransom , etc.; rather, I have given ; that is to say, "In my counsels I have already assigned to the Persians, as compensation for their letting thee go free, the broad countries of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba." Even the latest date assigned by sceptical critics to "the Second Isaiah" would make this a most remarkable prophecy. Egypt was not reduced, nor was Ethiopia made tributary to Persia until several years after the death of Cyrus, whose son, Cambyses, effected the conquests about b.c. 527-6. Human foresight could not, in the lifetime of Cyrus, have predicted with any certainty what would be the result of collision between Egypt and Persia; much less could it have ventured on the improbable supposition that the remote Ethiopia would submit itself to the Achae-menisn yoke. Yet this was the result of the invasion of Cambyses, who made Egypt a Persian province, and forced the Ethiopians to submit to the payment of an annual tribute (see Herod; 3.97; 7.69). And Seba . If "Seba" is "the land of Meroe, which is enclosed between the White and Blue Niles" (Delitzsch), it may be questioned whether really this ever formed a portion of the Persian empire. But Isaiah has probably no very distinct knowledge of the geographical position of Seba, or of the relations between the Sabaeans and the rest of the Ethiopians. He couples the two together, both here and in Isaiah 45:14 , as forming two portions of one nation. The subjection of the Ethiopians involves, in his eyes, the subjection of the Sabaeans. And we cannot say that he is wrong, since it is not at all clear that the Sabaeans were not generally spread through Ethiopia, or at any rate scattered in various parts of the country.