41:4 Who acts and carries out decrees? 4
Who 5 summons the successive generations from the beginning?
I, the Lord, am present at the very beginning,
and at the very end – I am the one. 6
43:24 You did not buy me aromatic reeds; 7
you did not present to me 8 the fat of your sacrifices.
Yet you burdened me with your sins;
you made me weary with your evil deeds. 9
1 tn Heb “Egypt.” For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, the present translation uses the pronoun (“they”) here.
2 tn Heb “will know the Lord.”
3 tn Heb “in that day” (so KJV), likewise at the beginning of vv. 23 and 24.
4 tn Heb “Who acts and accomplishes?”; NASB “Who has performed and accomplished it.”
5 tn The interrogative particle is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).
6 tn Heb “I, the Lord, [am with] the first, and with the last ones I [am] he.”
7 tn That is, “calamus” (so NIV); NCV, TEV, NLT “incense”; CEV “spices.”
8 tn Heb “you did not saturate me”; NASB “Neither have you filled Me.”
9 sn In vv. 22-24 the Lord appears to be condemning his people for failure to bring the proper sacrifices. However, this is problematic. If this refers to the nation’s behavior while in exile, such cultic service was impossible and could hardly be expected by the Lord. If this refers to the nation’s conduct before the exile, it contradicts other passages that depict Israel as bringing excessive sacrifices (see, e.g., Isa 1:11-14; Jer 6:20; Amos 4:4-5, 5:21-23). Rather than being a condemnation of Israel’s failure to bring sacrifices, these verses are better taken as a highly rhetorical comment on the worthlessness of Israel’s religious ritual. They may have brought sacrifices, but not to the Lord, for he did not accept them or even want them. See C. R. North, Second Isaiah, 127, and R. Whybray, Isaiah 40-66 (NCBC), 91.