Isaiah 43:5 - Exposition

Fear not: for I am with thee (comp. Isaiah 41:10 ). I will bring thy seed from the east … from the west . The actual extent of the Jewish diaspora in Isaiah's day has been greatly exaggerated by some modern critics, who say that there were at that date "bands of Jewish exiles in the far lands of the Mediterranean, and even in China" (Cheyne). Israel had been carried captive into Mesopotamia and into Media ( 2 Kings 17:6 ; 1 Chronicles 5:26 ), perhaps, also, into other regions belonging at the time to Assyria, as Babylonia, Assyria Proper, Syria. Two hundred thousand Jews had been taken to Nineveh by Sennacherib, and planted probably by him m outlying portions of his dominions. But such transplantation would not carry the dispersion further than Cilicia and Cyprus towards the west, Armenia towards the north, Media towards the east, and the shores of the Persian Gulf towards the south. Any scattering of the nation into regions more remote than these, as into [Egypt, Ethiopia, Elam ( Isaiah 11:11 ), and China—if Sinim is China ( Isaiah 49:12 )—must have been seen by Isaiah in vision, or made known to him by revelation. It had not taken place in his day. The expression, "ends of the earth" (verse 6), must not be pressed in Isaiah any more than in Herodotus, where the ἐσχατίαι τῆς οἰκουμέης are India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Scythia (3:106-116).