Cyrus Is Called, and the Ends of the Earth Are Invited

The clay Cyrus Cylinder, found at Babylon in 1879, claims that Marduk took Cyrus by the hand, called his name, and let him enter Babylon without a battle. Isaiah gives the same credit to the LORD. “Loose the loins of kings” means ungird them, unbuckle the belts that held their swords, the opposite of the girding promised Cyrus in verse 5.

Herodotus (1.179) says Babylon’s walls had a hundred gates, all of bronze, with bronze posts and lintels. “Gates of brass” and “bars of iron” are the hardware of a fortified city. “Crooked places” is hadurim, swellings or rough ground; the Qumran scroll reads “mountains”.

“Treasures of darkness” are hoards stored in vaults and secret chambers. Cyrus’s conquests brought him the gold of Croesus of Lydia, whose wealth was proverbial, in 547 BC, and the treasuries of Babylon in 539. The aim is knowledge, not wealth: that Cyrus may learn who called him.

The account that begins with this commission ends the Hebrew Bible in its traditional order: 2 Chronicles closes on Cyrus’s decree, “Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up” (36:23). The reason for everything given to Cyrus is someone else, Jacob.

“There is none else” or “none beside me” rings through this chapter at verses 5, 6, 14, 18, 21 and 22. “Though thou hast not known me” is said a second time, now of the girding: the LORD strapped on Cyrus’s armour before Cyrus had any idea who was dressing him.

Sunrise and the west mark the span of Cyrus’s empire, from Persia to the Aegean coast. Malachi 1:11 uses the same horizon: “from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles.” The knowledge Cyrus is given is meant for the whole map.

“Form” is yatsar and “create” is bara, and the verbs are set against each other across light and dark. Amos 3:6 makes the same claim about disaster: “shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?” Many readers see the verse aimed at Persian dualism, with its separate gods of light and darkness; that is an inference.

“Drop down, ye heavens, from above” is the Latin Rorate caeli desuper, sung in churches during Advent for centuries. The earth is to “open” as a furrow opens to seed or a womb to birth. Righteousness comes down as rain and comes up as a crop.

“He hath no hands” is the pot telling the potter he is clumsy, all thumbs. Isaiah had used the image in 29:16: “shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not?” A potsherd is a broken shard of pottery; the scene has one broken shard arguing with the rest of the rubbish heap.

“What hast thou brought forth?” uses chul, to writhe in labour, the verb of birth pangs. The question is absurd: a child cannot interrogate its parents about the pains that bore it. The birth imagery of the book runs from 42:14 to the closing chapter (66:7-9).

“Things to come” are ha’otiyyot, the word the idols were challenged with in 41:23, “Shew the things that are to come hereafter.” The rivals could not answer; the LORD invites the question. The “work of my hands” prepares for 64:8: “we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”

“I, even my hands” answers the jibe of verse 9, “He hath no hands.” The potter’s hands stretched out the heavens. “All their host have I commanded” uses tsivvah, the verb of issuing orders, as a general to troops, the stars again treated as soldiers under command.

“In righteousness” links Cyrus back to 41:2, the one “whom righteousness calls”. “Not for price nor reward” is the reverse of how empires worked: Cyrus not only let the captives go without ransom but, according to Ezra 6:4, paid for the rebuilding from the royal treasury. 52:3 says the same of Israel: “ye shall be redeemed without money.”

The “thee” throughout is feminine singular, addressed to Zion. The Sabeans, “men of stature”, recall the tall people of Cush in 18:2 and 18:7. Paul borrows the confession in 1 Corinthians 14:25, where an unbeliever falls down and reports “that God is in you of a truth”.

“A God that hidest thyself” is mistatter, one who keeps himself concealed. The Latin Deus absconditus of this verse became a theme for Martin Luther, and later for Pascal. Who speaks is unclear: the foreign nations of verse 14, still marvelling, or the prophet himself.

Three words for shame fall on the idol makers in one line: bosh, to be ashamed, kalam, to be humiliated, and kelimmah, disgrace. “Makers of idols” is charashei tsirim, craftsmen of images, the same guild paraded through 44:9-20. They go to disgrace “together”, as they worked together.

“Everlasting salvation” is teshu’at olamim, a salvation of ages, with the plural of forever. “World without end” is the phrase the 1611 translators knew from the Book of Common Prayer; it renders the Hebrew “unto the ages of perpetuity”. Israel’s shame is cancelled on the same scale as the idol makers’ is imposed.

“Not in vain” is lo tohu. Genesis 1:2 said the earth “was without form”, tohu, and this verse reads that as a stage in the making, not its goal: God did not create it to stay tohu but formed it to be lived in. Four creation verbs lead up to it: created, formed, made, established.

“Seek ye me in vain” uses tohu again, the word of the previous verse: the world was not made for emptiness, and seeking the LORD is not an errand into emptiness either. “In a dark place of the earth” contrasts with oracles muttered from the dust by mediums (8:19; 29:4).

“Escaped of the nations” are survivors, those left after the empires fall. “Set up the wood” is literally “carry the wood”: images were carried in procession, a practice mocked again in 46:1 and 46:7, “they bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him.” The god has to be transported.

“A just God and a Saviour” is tsaddiq umoshia, righteous and saving. Zechariah 9:9 puts the same pair on the coming king: “he is just, and having salvation.” “From that time” is me’az, from long ago. The courtroom question is asked for the last time in this chapter and answered by the questioner himself.

“Look” is panah, to turn one’s face toward someone. In 41:5 “the ends of the earth were afraid” of Cyrus’s coming; now the same ends of the earth are asked to turn and be saved. The invitation carries no condition beyond turning.

“I have sworn by myself” is what the LORD told Abraham after the binding of Isaac: “By myself have I sworn” (Genesis 22:16). No higher name exists to swear by. “Every tongue shall swear” means swear allegiance, as a vassal swore loyalty to his overlord.

“Righteousness” is plural in the Hebrew, tsedaqot, righteous acts or victories, the word of Judges 5:11, “the righteous acts of the LORD”. The Hebrew is abrupt: “Only in the LORD, one says to me, are victories and strength.” Those who raged against him arrive ashamed.

“Justified” is yitsdequ, declared to be in the right, the outcome of the trial the chapters have been conducting. “Shall glory” is yithallelu, from halal, the root of hallelujah: they will boast, and the boast will be in the LORD. The chapter ends with Abraham’s “seed” again.