The Mystery of Ephraim

Many believe Russia was and still is the main threat to the United States. Others, like warmonger John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, give incredible speeches around the world saying China is the main enemy.

And Mearsheimer brilliantly emphasizes the United States are protected by fish to the left and fish to the right, but foolishly negates to address America’s broken border in the South; and that the Scriptures say that America’s main “enemy” comes from the porous South! (for more, click here)

^{Isaiah 45}

¹ “Thus saith the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut: — thus saith the Lord to his anointed; that is, Cyrus, who is called the Lord’s anointed because he was raised up and ordained by divine counsel to perform God’s good pleasure.

² I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron. — I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight; or “level the hilly places” as pioneers do. The sense is that he would remove all impediments and obstructions out of his way and cause him to surmount all difficulties.

³ And I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, who call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. — and I will give thee the treasures of darkness; the treasures which kings have amassed and which they have laid up in dark and secure places. The word ‘darkness,’ here, means that which was hidden, unknown, secret.

⁴ For Jacob My servant’s sake, and Israel Mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name; I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me. — UNBELIEVABLE! Even God says both “Jacob My servant’s sake, and Israel Mine elect” have not known him! This is a serious charge coming from God Almighty himself, so how?

— the house of Judah hasn’t come to term with what the Godhead is; it is composed of God the Father and God the Son, hence in Genesis, Elohim (God in the plural) created the heavens and the earth; but the Jews couldn’t identify the Son which is all over in the Scriptures, especially the Torah and later, the Prophets;

— and the lamb for Pascha was/is symbol of the death of the Messiah, our Moshiach or Saviour, our Redeemer, but the Orthodox still regard it only as an act of defiance to the Egyptians who regarded lamb as the Egyptians’ deity. The Scriptures nowhere say this, but is only a baloney figment of Jewish imagination;

— and the house of Israel is still indulging in idolatry; worshipping Easter, which is another form of worshipping Astarte, one of the titles of the Chaldean goddess, the queen of heaven, the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, fertility and sex. She is featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the “Ishtar Gate” was part of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon;

— and Mithra or Mitra (the Sun-God whose birthday many drunks honor and celebrate on December 25th which they christianised as Christmas), Zeus and others; called “gods of the earth” in distinction from the god of heaven; and men shall worship these earthly gods, acknowledging their supremacy, everyone from his place today, Protestants or Catholics alike;

— and those who persist in their blindness will be horsewhipped! Nar, those who resist would suffer judgement by the sword, by famine, by pestilence and spending years in captivity to reflect and repent there (for more see Ezekiel 4 – 390/40 Years and A Sword from the South!)

⁵ I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no God besides Me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me, — “though thou hast not known Me” is repeated to give double assurance, or the sake of emphasis or strong confirmation;

— they have not known nor understood Me; reaffirming emphatically that they are stupid, ignorant and blind.

⁶ that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. — I, Yehovah, beside me there’s no God: I equipped thee when you knew me not; that they may know from the rising of the sun, and its going down, that there is none without me.

⁷ I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things. — I Yehovah, and there is none else, former of light and creator of the darkness; founder of peace, and creator of evil.

⁸ “Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I, the Lord, have created it. — the Targum interprets this of the resurrection of the dead, paraphrasing as, “let the heavens from above minister, and the clouds flow with good; let the earth open, and the dead revive; and let righteousness be revealed together; I the Lord have created them.”

⁹ “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, ‘What makest thou?’ or thy work, ‘He hath no hands’? — woe unto him that strives with his Maker; that contends with him, enters into a controversy and disputes with him;

— or litigates or quarrels with his purposes and decrees; murmurs and repines at his providences and finds fault with his judgements: this seems to have respect to the murmurs, quarrels and contests of the Jews about the Son of God as the Messiah, the author of righteousness and the redeemer when he appears later.

¹⁰ Woe unto him that saith unto his father, ‘What begettest thou?’ or to the woman, ‘What hast thou brought forth?’ — Woe unto him; this implied wickedness and foolishness for a son to complain of his father or mother in regard to his birth or of his rank and condition of life. 

¹¹ “Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons, and concerning the work of My hands command ye Me. — instead of striving with Me in regard to My purposes, your wisdom is in prayer to ask and even command Me, in so far as it is for My glory and for your real good; ask me of things to come; that is, I alone can direct and order future events; and it is your privilege to make inquiry respecting those events.

¹² I have made the earth and created man upon it; I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. — God have made the earth and created man upon it: I, even my hands have stretched out the heavens and all their host, that is, the stars, have I commanded.

¹³ I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways; he shall build My city, and he shall let go My captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.” — I have raised him up in righteousness; though this may be said with some respect to Cyrus, yet chiefly to the Messiah of whom Cyrus was a type; him the Lord appointed and determined to be the Saviour and Redeemer of his people; him he sent forth in time for that purpose.

¹⁴ Thus saith the Lord: “The labor of Egypt and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine. They shall come after thee; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee; they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, ‘Surely God is in thee, and there is none else; there is no god.’” — Surely God is in thee; in thee only is God. These of course are words of all the Gentiles to Israel, expressing their acceptance of the true religion. Israel’s God has proved Himself to be the God of history, the only true God.

¹⁵ Verily Thou art a God who hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior. — the Septuagint renders this, ‘For thou art God, though we did not know it, O God of Israel the Saviour.’ We may be in the dark now, but in due time we shall be permitted to see his design and to witness results so glorious as shall satisfy us that his ways are all just and his dealings right.

¹⁶ They shall be ashamed and also confounded, all of them; they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols. — they shall be ashamed and confounded; that is, they shall find all their hopes fail and shall be suffused with shame that they were ever so senseless as to trust in blocks of wood and stone.

¹⁷ But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation; ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end. — or as the Targum says, “They are saved by the Word of the Lord.”

¹⁸ For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God Himself that formed the earth and made it—He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is none else. — not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited; Judah, lying waste during the Babylonish captivity, shall be peopled again by the exiles. The Jews, from this passage, infer that the earth shall be inhabited, for there can be no reason why the earth should then exist in vain any more than now.

¹⁹ I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I said not unto the seed of Jacob, ‘Seek ye Me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak righteousness; I declare things that are right. — God have not spoken in secret; the word rendered ‘secret’ (סתר sı̂ther) denotes a hiding or covering; and the phrase means secretly, privately. He did not imitate the pagan oracles by uttering his predictions from dark and deep caverns, and encompassed with the circumstances of awful mystery and with designed obscurity.

²⁰ “Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations. They have no knowledge, who set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. — and pray to a god that cannot save; itself, nor them; cannot hear their prayers, nor return an answer; cannot help and assist them in distress, nor deliver them out of their troubles; and therefore it must be the height of madness and folly to pray unto it.

²¹ Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient time? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord? And there is no God else besides Me, a just God and a Savior. There is none besides Me. — Tell ye, and bring them near and let them take counsel together; and gather their gods, their makers and their worshippers and let them lay their heads together and consult what proof they are able to give of their divinities, particularly by foretelling things to come.

²² “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.

²³ I have sworn by Myself; the word is gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. — that unto me every knee shall bow; not only the Jews, but all nations shall worship him and submit to his laws, statutes and ordinances: which is signified by the bowing of the knee, a posture of reverence and subjection, and by one eminent part of God’s worship, swearing by his name.

²⁴ Surely, shall one say, ‘In the Lord have I righteousness and strength. Even to Him shall men come, and all that are incensed against Him shall be ashamed. — shall be ashamed; the enemies of God shall see their own feebleness and folly; and they shall be ashamed that they have endeavored to oppose one so mighty and glorious as the Almighty God.

²⁵ In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.’” — all the seed of Israel; all the spiritual seed or descendants of Jacob; all who have a character resembling that of Israel or Jacob; all who are the true children and friends of God.

Isaiah 46

¹ Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth; their idols were upon the beasts and upon the cattle. Your carriages were heavy laden; they are a burden to the weary beast. — Bel boweth down; Bel or Belus (בל bēl, from בעל be‛ēl, the same as בעל ba‛al was the chief god of the Babylonians and was worshipped in the celebrated tower of Babylon.

² They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity. — the Targum understands this and the preceding clause; “they are cut off, and cut to pieces together, they could not deliver those that carried them.”

³ “Hearken unto Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who are borne by Me from the belly, who are carried from the womb: — hearken unto me; the prophet’s choice of words is emphatic: the false gods are borne away as a burden; the true God bears, that is, supports His people; he is able to bear their burden. 

⁴ And even to your old age I am He, and even to hoary hairs will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. — Even to your old age; the care of a mother ceases in the natural course of things before a man grows old but the fatherly, we might almost say the mother-like, maternal care of Yehovah for His chosen ones endures even to the end of life.

⁵ “To whom will ye liken Me and make Me equal, and compare Me, that we may be like?

⁶ They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith, and he maketh it a god: they fall down, yea, they worship. — they who pour gold out of the bag and weigh silver with the balance, hire a goldsmith to make it into a god that they may fall down, yea, throw themselves down;

⁷ They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him and set him in his place, and he standeth. From his place shall he not remove; yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer nor save him out of his trouble. — they lift it up, carry it away upon their shoulder and set it down in its place: there it stands; from its place it does not move: men also cry to it, but it does not answer; it saves no one out of distress.

⁸ “Remember this, and show yourselves men; bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. — O ye transgressors; ye who have violated the laws of God by the worship of idols. During the time of Manasseh, the Israelites were much addicted to idolatry, and probably this is to be regarded as addressed to them.

⁹ Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none other; I am God, and there is none like Me,

¹⁰ declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,’ — declaring the end from the beginning; foretelling accurately the course of future events; this is an argument to which God often appeals in proof that he is the only true God.

¹¹ calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth My counsel from a far country. Yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it. — calling a ravenous bird; Cyrus is thus described as ravenous as Nebuchadnezzar is in Jeremiah 49:22, Ezekiel 17:3. 

¹² “Hearken unto Me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness: — ye stouthearted; the word like analogous terms in Ezekiel 2:4; Ezekiel 3:7, implies at once obduracy and ignorance.

¹³ I bring near My righteousness; it shall not be far off, and My salvation shall not tarry; and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel My glory. — or Israel may be called his glory because he gives glory to them; not only grace here but glory hereafter when their salvation wilt be complete, that is, completely enjoyed.

~ by Joel Huan on April 1, 2022.

Posted in Isaiah