The Book of Isaiah
Isaiah Chapter Forty-Three

INTRODUCTION TO THIS STUDY

The purpose of this work is to guide you in Spirit Filled interpretation of this "Selected Study". As necessary we will provide outlines, historical backgrounds, note the purpose and focus of the text, and also provide the original hebrew language definitions for the key words in the highlighted text. The English translation used is the King James (Authorized) Version, not because it is the best translation available, but because I just plain prefer it for study!

All Scripture text will be presented in normal cased lettering, and all notes within the text will be in TRUE TYPE FONT, as shown. This (I hope) will allow you to avoid confusion between God's Word and my notes. As I update this website, I will continue to embellish the text so that anyone using NETSCAPE 3.0 or MICROSOFT 3.0 or higher will be able to read the document easier.
 

An excellent site to study Biblical Hebrew is by Lee R. Martin, Biblical Hebrew. The following are excerpts from his Hebrew Dictionary (if you want more, go to his site):

ABSOLUTE: In Hebrew Greek grammar, a word is absolute when it stands independently and has no grammatical relation to other elements in the sentence. The most common instance in Greek is the genitive absolute. ABSOLUTE STATE: The Hebrew absolute together with a word in the construct state expresses the genitive. Do not confuse with the infinitive absolute. Heb: king (absolute); horse of (construct) the king (absolute), i.e., the king's horse (genitive). ACCIDENCE: That part of grammar that treats inflection; a sub category of morphology. ACCUSATIVE CASE: A substantive used as the direct object of a transitive verb is said to be in the accusative case. In Greek, the accusative is the case of extension. Heb: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gk: "He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). ACCUSATIVE ENDING: In Hebrew see DIRECTIVE h. ACTIVE VOICE: In the active voice, the subject is the doer of the action that is expressed by the verb. AKTIONSART: German for "kind of action." ANARTHROUS: A word that appears without the article is anarthrous. ARAMAIC: A branch of the northwest Semitic languages that is closely related to Hebrew. In the OT Masoretic text, Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4b-7:28; and Jer. 10:11 are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. Aramaic had become the common language of the Jewish people by NT times. CASE: Case shows the grammatical relation of inflected forms such as nouns and pronouns to other words (nominative, possessive, objective cases). CAUSATIVE VERB: A transitive verb that can be said to cause the action depicted in a corresponding intransitive verb. Ex: lay ("cause to lie") is the causative of lie; raise, the causative of rise. DIRECT OBJECT: The word, phrase, or clause that is the primary goal or result of the action of the verb (cf. accusative case); the person or thing is directly affected by the action of the verb. Heb: "God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). Gr: "He grabbed him and began to choke him" (Matt. 18:28). GENITIVE: The case that expresses possession or specifies a relationship that can be expressed in English by "of." In Hebrew this is called a construct relationship. The Greek genitive is the specifying case answering the question "What kind?" Heb: "the expanse of the sky" (Gen. 1:21). Gk: "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4). GUTTURALS: The mute consonants whose sounds are produced when the front of the tongue approaches the palate of the mouth. Four letters in Hebrew, a h j and [ are the guttural letters (r has some guttural characteristics). Hebrew gutturals cannot be doubled, prefer a-class vowels, and composite shevas. In Greek, the guttural letters are g k and c also called velars, laryngeals, or palatals. HITHPAEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action (classified by some grammars as causative action) and reflexive voice. For this emphasis in Greek, middle voice. Heb: "A group of adventurers gathered around [lit., gathered themselves around] him" (Judg. 11:3). HOPHAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses causative action and passive voice. Heb: "Let seven of his male descendants be given [hophal] to us" (2 Sam. 21:6). IMPERATIVE: A verb or verbal mood that expresses command or makes a request. IMPERFECT: In Hebrew, the form of the verb used to express action that is incomplete or unfinished. Heb: "What if they do not believe me" (Exod. 4:1). The Greek imperfect tense expresses incomplete, linear action in past time. Gk: "People were eating and drinking..." (Luke 17:28). Other regular uses of the tense include iterative, frequentative, inceptive, and conative. INFINITIVE: A verbal noun that has characteristics of both verbs and nouns. In English usually introduced by to. Hebrew has both infinitive absolute and infinitive construct forms. Heb: "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land" (Gen. 15:7). The Greek infinitive is used as a substantive, in subordinate clauses, with prepositions, and in epexegesis. Gk: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Phil. 1:21). INFINITIVE ABSOLUTE: A form of the Hebrew infinitive that may function in a number of ways: to express certainty or intensification ("you will surely die," Gen. 2:17); to express repeated or continued action ("Be ever hearing," Isa. 6:9); as a finite verb ("They...broke the jars," Judg. 7:19); to express an emphatic imperative ("Remember the Sabbath day," Exod. 20:8). MASORETIC TEXT: The vocalized text of the Hebrew Bible, prepared by a group of Jewish scholars around A.D. 700 to preserve the oral pronunciation of the Hebrew words.

MOOD: Mood indicates the manner in which the action is conceived (or its relation to reality). Moods are indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative. Mood may be expressed by finite verbs in Greek and by various means (form, words, or context) in Hebrew. Mode. NIPHAL: A verbal form (stem) in Hebrew that expresses simple action and passive or reflexive voice. Heb: "She was given in marriage to Adriel of Meholah" (1 Sam. 18:19). OPTATIVE MOOD: The mood of possibility and more doubtful assertion that expresses wish or desire. See also jussive and cohortative. Heb: "If only we had died in Egypt!" (Num. 14:2). Gk: "May the Lord direct your hearts into God's love and Christ's perseverance" (2 Thess. 3:5). PARTICIPLE: A verbal form that has characteristics of both noun and verb. In Hebrew it represents characteristic, continual, uninterrupted action. Heb: "The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Gen. 1:2). The Greek participle is widely used as a substantive, adjective, and adverb in phrases and clauses. Gk:"...in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him" (1 Peter 1:21). PARTICLE: A unit of speech that is ranked as an uninflected word but expresses some kind of syntactical relationship or some general aspect of meaning. Some grammarians classify all conjunctions, prepositions, and negatives as particles. PASSIVE VOICE: A voice form of the verb that represents the subject as receiver of the action. Heb: "This land was given to us as our possession" (Ezek. 11:15). Gk: "You were marked in him with a seal" (Eph. 1:13). PERFECT/PERFECT TENSE: In Hebrew, this form of the verb is used to express completed action, whether in reality or in the thought of the speaker or writer. Heb: rm'v; is a perfect form of the verb and would be translated "he guarded." The Greek perfect tense, by contrast, represents a state of completion with abiding results and is often translated as a present perfect. Gk: The perfect leluke would be rendered "he has released." PIEL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and active voice. Heb: "They destroyed the high places and the altars" (2 Chron. 31:1). PREPOSITION: A word that shows relationships between its object and some other word in the sentence. Some common English prepositions are in, to, from, with, above, for, by. PRETERITE: A Latin name for the past tense; it is the equivalent of the perfect in Hebrew and the aorist indicative in Greek. PUAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses intensive or emphatic action and passive voice. Heb: "There was Baal's altar, demolished" (Judg. 6:28). QAL: A verbal form in Hebrew that expresses simple action and active voice; it is sometimes spelled Kal. Ex:"Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew" (Gen.25:34). REFLEXIVE VOICE: Denotes an action that is directed back upon the agent or subject; expressed in Hebrew by the niphal and the hithpael, in Greek by the middle voice.Heb: "I have...kept myself from sin" (Ps. 18:23). Gk: "Then he went away and hanged himself" (Matt. 27:5). ROOT: That part of a word left when all affixes are removed; the morpheme that carries the minimal unit of meaning in a word and can be common to several different words. The three consonants in Hebrew that ordinarily compose the basic uninflected spelling of a word are called the root letters. Occasionally a Hebrew word may have two or four root letters. Gk: the root dik- is common to dikaio", "righteous," dikh, "justice," and dikaiow, "to acquit." Also called "Lexeme." STATIVE VERB, STATIC VERB: A stative verb is one that indicates a state of being or relationship rather than action. In Hebrew, its vowel pattern is different from that of verbs of action or motion. Greek statives include eijmi, ginomai, and uJparcw. Heb: "the hands...will be strengthened (2 Sam. 16:21). Gk: "Who, being in very nature God" (Phil. 2:6). STEM: The noun or verb base formed by the addition of derivational affixes to the root. Thus, in Greek, doro- is the stem of the noun doron, "gift"; do- is the root, ro is the affix (in this case, a suffix). Also called base in recent grammars. In Hebrew, the term is used to designate verb forms that express certain kinds of action and voice; the major Hebrew verbal stems are qal, niphal, piel, pual, hithpael, hiphil, and hophal. STRONG VERB: In Hebrew, the regular verb whose stem consonants do not change, i.e., remain unmodified in conjugation, in contrast to the weak verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed from the verb stem or root itself by vowel gradation. VOICE: Voice is a modification of a verb that tells whether the subject of the verb acts or is acted upon. There are three voices in English, Hebrew, and Greek: active, passive, and reflexive. WEAK VERB: In Hebrew, the verbs with gutturals or weak letters ( n in first root position, y and w in first or second root position, identical second and third root letters) as radicals, which produce modifications in the conjugation, in contrast to the strong verb. In Greek, a tense stem formed by adding a suffix to the verb stem or root.

If you discover obvious errors (as I am human, and do make mistakes), please let me know. Do not contact me to argue about the doctrinal differences that you may have with my teaching. I do not argue Theology with anyone, so all Legalists, cultists, and others with extremist views, please save your (and my) time. If you want to discuss your doctrinal differences, or share a viewpoint, please contact me at Didaskalos Ministries.

Isaiah 43:1

But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed (yatsar, to form something out of something. Israel the elect came out of Jacob the unsaved (Rom 9.4-14), which in turn came out of the saved Chaldean Abraham)

thee, O Israel, Fear not: (yare', Kal Imperative = stop being afraid)

for I have redeemed thee, I have called [thee] by thy name; thou [art] mine.

Isaiah 43:2

When thou passest through the waters, (the Red Sea experience stands as a memorial to God's faithfulness. Israel didn't deserve it, but God protected them anyway - Exo 14.10-14)

I [will be] with thee; and through the rivers, (figurative for the Assyrians. See Isa 28.15, 18)

they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, (1 Peter 1.7, trials)

thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

Isaiah 43:3

For I [am] the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior: (yasha`, Hophal Participle, Causative Active Voice = I am causing you to be saved)

I gave Egypt [for] thy ransom, (When a nation came to defeat Israel, for 150 years God caused that nation to go to Egypt, Ethiopia, or Seba - so these nations were, in fact, payment in kind for Israel)

Ethiopia and Seba (Ceba', a son of Cush, and the country settled by him)

for thee.

Isaiah 43:4

Since thou wast precious (yaqar, valuable)

in my sight, thou hast been honorable, (kabad, Niphal stem = received honor. Israel received honor or value from God, not because they were good on their own)

and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.

Isaiah 43:5

Fear not: for I [am] with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;

Isaiah 43:6

I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;

Isaiah 43:7

[Even] every one that is called by my name: for I have created (bara', to make something out of nothing)

him for my glory, I have formed (yatsar, to shape or design)

him; yea, I have made (`asah, to make out of existing materials)

him.

Isaiah 43:8

Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears.

Isaiah 43:9

Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, [It is] truth.

Isaiah 43:10

Ye [are] my witnesses, (`ed, testifiers, witnesses. Israel was called by God to be His witness of salvation to the world. They failed in this task, so the Church was formed)

saith the LORD, and my servant  whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe ('aman, Hophal stem = be caused to believe)

me, and understand (biyn, to be able to mentally distinguish because of the things you have learned)

that I [am] he: before me there was no God formed, (yatsar, to make something out of something)

neither shall there be after me.

Isaiah 43:11

I, [even] I, [am] the LORD; and beside me [there is] no savior. (see Acts 4.12)

Isaiah 43:12

I have declared, (nagad, Hophal Perfect = have caused it to be declared)

and have saved, (yasha`, Hophal Perfect = have caused it to be saved)

and I have shewed, (shama`, Hophal Perfect = have caused it to be shown)

when [there was] no strange [god] among you: therefore ye [are] my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I [am] God.

Isaiah 43:13

Yea, before the day (idiomatic = before time existed)

[was] I [am] he; and [there is] none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let (shuwb, stop, retreat from)

it?

Isaiah 43:14

Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, (the Babylonian captivity, though seen as a bad thing, was actually a good thing. Under Babylon Israel had 200 years of prosperity)

and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry [is] in the ships. (Babylon supposed itself indestructible, yet God used the Medo-Persian empire to destroy it in 539 BC. See Daniel 5. The Euphrates River ran under the great walls of Babylon to supply water to the people. Cyrus King of MedoPersian dammed the river, then marched his troops down the dry riverbed, under the wall, and into the city)

Isaiah 43:15

I [am] the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. (Romans 9.6-18)

Isaiah 43:16

Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, (again, God points to the Red Sea as a living memorial of His Grace in action)

and a path in the mighty waters;

Isaiah 43:17

Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; (God brought the Babylonians, then the MedoPersian)

they shall lie down together, they shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow. (pishtah, a combustible rag used to light things, a fuse. Something that utterly burns up)

Isaiah 43:18

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.

Isaiah 43:19

Behold, I will do (`asah, to make out of existing materials)

a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, (idiomatic spiritual prosperity)

[and] rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:20

The beast (chay, wild animal)

of the field shall honor me, (beautiful illustration of salvation by Grace. No animal, of itself, changes from ferocious to gentle, meat eater and predator to vegetarian - yet in the Millennium God will have the lion and the lamb lay down together)

the dragons (tanniyn, land monsters, serpents, jackals)

and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, [and] rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. (Isaiah 11.6-9; 65.25; Romans 8.19-22)

Isaiah 43:21

This people have I formed (yatsar, to mold something out of something)

for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.

Isaiah 43:22

But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. (the unsaved, Jacob, would not be saved, and the saved, Israel, were apathetic toward God)

Isaiah 43:23

Thou hast not brought (bow', Hophal stem = not been motivated to bring)

me the small cattle (cattle, sheep, goats, or fowl could be used for sacrificial burnt offerings- and the people refused to bring even the least of the offerings. See Lev 1.2-17)

of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou honored (kabad, Piel Stem, intensive use = absolutely did not honor)

me with thy sacrifices. (The Jews made five types of sacrifices: Burnt offerings {Lev 1} which were a picture of propitiation with emphasis on Christ; Meal offerings {Lev 2} which were also a picture of propitiation; Peace offerings {Lev 3} which taught the doctrines of reconciliation; Sin offerings {Lev 4} which emphasized forgiveness for unknown sins; and Trespass Offerings {Lev 5} which emphasized forgiveness for known sins)

I have not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied thee with incense. (God is not interested in ritual, but a relationship with His people)

Isaiah 43:24

Thou hast bought me no sweet cane (qaneh, a reed. Refers to the kalimos reed, which grows in the Holy land. They gave Jesus this type of reed as a mock scepter, then took it away and beat Him with it. See Mat 27.29-30; Mk 15.19)

with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve (`abad, to keep in bondage. God spent all His time trying to get them out of sin, so they were literally enslaving Him)

with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.

Isaiah 43:25

I, [even] I, [am] he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

Isaiah 43:26

Put me in remembrance: (zakar, Hophal Imperative = cause me to remember)

let us plead together: declare (caphar, to recount or confess. The Hebrew equivalent of the Greek metanoeo, see 1 John 1.7-8)

thou, that thou mayest be justified.

Isaiah 43:27

Thy first father (refers to Hezekiah, who paid tribute to Sennacherib {2 Kings 18.13-16}; depended on Egypt {Isa 30.1-6; 31.1-3}, committed the sin unto death {Isa 38.4}, negotiated with heathen rather than God {Isa 39}, and was guilty of terrible pride {2 Chron 32.22-26})

hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me.

Isaiah 43:28

Therefore I have profaned (chalal, destroyed. The false priests, preachers, and pastors are always the first to go when God punishes His people)

the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches.

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