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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 43:3 - 43:3
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Just as in Isa 43:1, kı̄ (for), with all that follows, assigns the reason for the encouraging “Fear not;” so here a second kı̄ introduces the reason for the promise which ensures them against the dangers arising from either water or fire. “For I Jehovah am thy God; (I) the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I give up Egypt as a ransom for thee, Ethiopia and Seba in thy stead. Because thou art dear in my eyes, highly esteemed, and I loved thee; I give up men in thy stead, and peoples for thy life.” Both “Jehovah” and “the Holy One of Israel” are in apposition to “I” ('ănı̄), the force of which is continued in the second clause. The preterite nâthattı̄ (I have given), as the words “I will give” in Isa 43:4 clearly show, states a fact which as yet is only completed so far as the purpose is concerned. “A ransom:” kōpher (λύτρον) is literally the covering - the person making the payment. סְבָא is the land of Meroë, which is enclosed between the White and Blue Nile, the present Dâr Sennâr, district of Sennâr (Sen-ârti, i.e., island of Senâ), or the ancient Meriotic priestly state settled about this enclosed land, probably included in the Mudrâya (Egypt) of the Achaemenidian arrowheaded inscriptions; though it is uncertain whether the Kusiya (Heb. Kūshı̄m) mentioned there are the predatory tribe of archers called Κοσσαῖοι (Strabo, xi. 13, 6), whose name has been preserved in the present Chuzistan, the eastern Ethiopians of the Greeks (as Lassen and Rawlinson suppose), or the African Ethiopians of the Bible, as Oppert imagines. The fact that Egypt was only conquered by Cambyses, and not by Cyrus, who merely planned it (Herod. i. 153), and to whom it is only attributed by a legend (Xen. Cyr. viii. 6, 20, λἐγεται καταστρἐψσασθαι Αἰγυπτον), does no violence to the truth of the promise. It is quite enough that Egypt and the neighbouring kingdoms were subjugated by the new imperial power of Persia, and that through that empire the Jewish people recovered their long-lost liberty. The free love of God was the reason for His treating Israel according to the principle laid down in Pro 11:8; Pro 21:18. מֵאֲשֶׁר does not signify ex quo tempore here, but is equivalent to אֲשֶׁר מִפְּנֵי in Exo 19:18; Jer 44:23; for if it indicated the terminus a quo, it would be followed by a more distinct statement of the fact of their election. The personal pronoun “and I” (va'ănı̄) is introduced in consequence of the change of persons. In the place of וְנָתַתִּי (perf. cons.), וְאֶתֵּן commended itself, as the former had already been used in a somewhat different function. All that composed the chosen nation are here designated as “man” (âdâm), because there was nothing in them but what was derived from Adam. תַּחַת has here a strictly substitutionary meaning throughout.