Isaiah 45

Chap. XLV. Ver. 1—25. God calleth Cyrus to deliver his people, and encourages him to trust in him.—“The predictions of the prophets,” says Dr. J. Smith, “became always the Isaiah at length particularizes the very circumstances and manner of the taking of Babylon by Cyrus. He had already alluded to the drying up of the Euphrates, and now he mentions the gates of brass being opened before him, and that the [t]o [B]ape 42 should find there should be immense.” (Ver. 1—3. Accordingly, the historians of this event, (Herodotus and Xenophon,) with a most astonishing conformity to the prophecy tell us, that Cyrus contrived the stratagem of diverting the river Euphrates into a channel cut by the kings of Babylon to receive a part of its waters in times of an inundation; and of entering the city upon the night of an annual festival, in the empty channel, which ran in through the midst of it; that after he and his [army] had got into the bed of the river, they might have been taken there as in a net, if the brazen gates which led from the streets to the river had not on that night been providentially left open, by which means they got in; and then the gates of the palace were opened by the king’s orders, to inquire into the cause of the tumult.

So clearly are the most contingent circumstances foreseen by God!” (See note ver. 1.) The same historians mention, that the treasures which Cyrus found there and in Sardis (the court of Croesus) amounted to more than 550 millions of our money. That Cyrus might know to whom he was indebted for this wonderful success, and on what account, the prophet tells him that it was to the God of Israel; and then exposes the absurd opinion of the Persians, (of whom Cyrus was king,) that there were two supreme beings, an evil and a good one, represented by light and darkness, which are here declared to be both the work of the One great Supreme. From this the prophet, in his usual way, makes a transition to the still greater work of salvation displayed in the dispensation of the gospel, and calls, in a strain of sublime eloquence, for righteousness and truth to spring out of the peat and to drop down from heaven.

(See (Psalms 85)To this subject the latter part of the chapter is devoted; and the magnificent language employed respecting God, the Creator and Saviour of the world, is expressly applied to Jesus Christ, in St. Paul’s Epistles. (See (Romans 14:10-12). (Philippians 2:10-11).) Whether the passages were originally intended by the prophet in reference to the Messiah, or only accommodated to him by St. Paul, as Dr. Pye Smith observes, it equally affords a proof of his divine nature, since an inspired apostle would never apply to a mere creature the peculiar honours of the Creator.