of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. —Isaiah 44:6
The Exegesis
Thus saith the LORD ... ~ Here, the prophet Isaiah is introducing a saying of Yahweh. It is the Tetragrammaton1 (Hebrew: יהוה; Latinized: YHWH) that is, here, translated as “LORD” in the KJV, and most other English versions of holy Scripture. The translators of our KJV follow the tradition of the Hebrews of substituting the Hebrew word Adonai (Lord, in English) for the Tetragrammaton. The Hebrews did this for fear of taking the name of the Deity in vain (Exodus 20:7). However, where the word “LORD” is substituted for the name of God (Yahweh), our translators capitalized all letters in the word to inform the readers that this word “LORD” is a substitution for the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.
the King of Israel, ... ~ Yahweh is, here, proclaimed as the true “King of Israel”. Earlier, the prophet Isaiah had identified Yahweh as the “King of Jacob” (Isaiah 41:21). Moreover, the prophet records Yahweh saying, “I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King” (Isaiah 43:15). In that Jacob’s name was changed to Israel (Genesis 35:102) Isaiah is using these two names interchangeably to reference the same subject. What is more, he is employing
1Tetragrammaton: the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah. Greek, neuter of tetragrammatos ‘having four letters’, from tetra- ‘four’ + gramma, grammat- ‘letter’. The Tetragrammaton (/ˌtɛtrəˈɡræmətɒn/; from Ancient Greek τετραγράμματον (tetragrámmaton) '[consisting of] four letters'), or the Tetragram, is the four- letter Hebrew theonym יהוה (transliterated as YHWH or YHVH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are yodh, he, waw, and he. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass". While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally, though the vocalization Jehovah continues to have wide usage. The books of the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible except Esther, Ecclesiastes, and (with a possible instance of the short form יה in verse 8:6) the Song of Songs contain this Hebrew name.[4] Observant Jews and those who follow Talmudic Jewish traditions do not pronounce יהוה nor do they read aloud proposed transcription forms such as Yahweh or Yehovah; instead they replace it with a different term, whether in addressing or referring to the God of Israel. Common substitutions in Hebrew are אֲדֹנָי (Adonai, lit. transl. My Lords, Pluralis majestatis taken as singular) or Elohim (literally "gods" but treated as singular when meaning "God") in prayer, or HaShem ("The Name") in everyday speech.
2 Genesis 35:10, And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.
them in a personification3 for the nation to whom he is prophesying. This is seen in v1 of this 44th chapter: “Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen:” The personification aspect of the names Jacob and Israel is further seen in vv3 and 5. In v3 Yahweh speaks of the “seed” and “offspring” of Jacob/Israel; this is anthropomorphic4 language. Further, in v5 we read, “One ... shall call himself by the name of Jacob; another ... shall surname himself ... Israel.” Clearly, the nation is being personified as a person: i.e. Jacob/Israel. Thus, when Isaiah calls Yahweh the “King of Israel” the imagery is that of the nation being a person: i.e. the person Israel, the son of Issac. This type of personification is also employed by the prophet Hosea. In Hosea 11:1 that prophet wrote: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”
and his redeemer ... ~ The antecedent of the pronoun “his” is “Israel”, not “King”, as many suppose. This exegesis has already established that “Israel”, in this text, is a reference to the nation of Israel as though to one person, i.e. Isaac’s son. Thus, the redeemer of Israel is the “LORD (Yahweh) the King”. This interpretation of the text is born out when other respected English versions of the Bible are considered. Here, we will list five of them:
This is what the Lord, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, the Lord of Armies, says: I am the first and I am the last. There is no God but me. (Christian Standard Bible, CSB)
The Lord, Israel’s king and redeemer, the Lord of heavenly forces, says: I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there are no gods. (Common English Bible, CEB)
Thus says Adonai, Isra’el’s King and Redeemer, Adonai-Tzva’ot: “I am the first, and I am the last; besides me there is no God. (Complete Jewish Bible, CJB)
This is what the Lord, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts, says: I am the first and I am the last. There is no God but Me. (Holman Christian Standard Bible, HCSB)
“This is what the Lord says, He who is the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of armies: ‘I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me.’” (New American Standard Bible, NASB)
The LORD of hosts ... ~ Here, Yahweh is mentioned the second time in the text. This is not to indicate two Yahwehs, which would violate the Perimeter of Interpretation as established by Psalms 83:18, “That men may know that thou, whose name alone is Yahweh, art the most high over all the earth.” The Perimeter Marker that cannot be broken (John 10:35) is that only one has the name Yahweh. In the text Isaiah is simply identifying the “Yahweh King of Israel” as the “Yahweh of hosts”. The manner in which the prophet worded this text is purposeful. It raises Israel’s eyes from Yahweh being their King and Redeemer, to also being the Yahweh of the “hosts” of Heaven as well. This term “hosts” has the hosts of Heaven in view. The armies of Heaven, in particular. This is Isaiah’s message: Yahweh is not only a deity to whom earth must
3 personification: the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form; a person, animal, or object regarded as representing or embodying a quality, concept, or thing.
4 Anthropomorphic: having human characteristics.
give an answer; but is, moreover, the Deity to Whom all creation, earthly and Heavenly must submit. Just as terms “Jacob” and “Israel” are referencing the same subject throughout the text, so, too, are the two Yahweh references viewing the same subject. This point is underlined in bold color in the next statement of the text.
I am the first, and I am the last ... ~ Yahweh references Himself in the singular, as He always does. The personal singular pronoun “I” gives testimony, from the Deity Himself, that the previous two references to Yahweh, in this verse, by Isaiah, is a reference to the selfsame subject and not to two Yahwehs. This “First and Last” title for the God of holy Scripture was presaged by the prophet’s previous words, where he quotes the Deity as saying: “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me” (Isaiah 43:10). Both of these texts are sine wave tones5 that echo the Shema6. In the book of Revelation the “First and Last” title is claimed by Christ Jesus (Revelation 1:8, 17; 22:13). Whom John identifies in Revelation 1:8 as “κύριος ὁ θεός”: “the Lord God”.
and beside me there is no God ~ Apart from the speaker (Yahweh) there is no God that exists. The “First and Last” claim, previously considered, and this affirmation from Yahweh Himself, of exclusivity to God-ness, is the final word on biblical monotheism.
An Eisegesis
Above, we have given a biblical exegesis of Isaiah 44:6; but all will not agree with our exposition. I say this because during the friction between the Oneness and Trinitarian theologies, the Pluralists have seized upon this text and, through the process of eisegesis, have read into it a meaning that it does not have.
An eisegesis study of a written text is the opposite of exegesis. Exegesis means to draw out; whereas eisegesis means to draw in. An exegetic study is what we have done above. We have drawn out of the text its meaning without imposing our preconceived notions. On the other hand, an eisegetic commentator will import or draw in their own subjective interpretations into the text, that are unsupported by the text itself. The pluralists have done just that to Isaiah 44:6.
Their doctrine of plural persons in the Godhead pressures them to locate those persons in the Old Testament. According to many of them, Isaiah 44:6 fits the bill. They would posit that the text presents two Yahwehs, the second being the redeemer of the first. That is to say: The second Yahweh redeems fallen creation in behalf (at the behest) of the first Yahweh. In this view the antecedent to the pronoun “his” in the statement “and his redeemer the LORD of hosts” is “the LORD the King”, from the first part of the verse. This essay has already demonstrated how this cannot be the case.
How do the Pluralists come to such a view? The answer is: Eisegesis.
5 sine wave tone: a pure tone: an even Hertz frequency that forms an s-shaped sine wave; it transcends the human ability to produce.
6 Shema: Deut. 6:4, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
Concerning the theology of the Pluralists, Cardinal John Henry Newman7, when referencing Dr. E. Hawkins8 (with whom he agreed) stated: “the sacred text was never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that, if we were to learn doctrine we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church; for instance to the Catechism, and to the Creeds. ... after learning from them the doctrines of Christianity, the inquirer must verify them by Scripture.”9 This is a mandate from Newman and those of his ilk to study the Holy Bible by eisegesis. Through this means they “import” or “draw into” holy Scripture what they learned exterior to It.
This official hermeneutic (eisegesis) of the Pluralists creates the madness that is their interpretation Isaiah 44:6.
The Perimeter Markers of Interpretation that are violated by making the antecedent of the pronoun “his” to be “the LORD (Yahweh) the King” instead of “Israel” is troubling beyond measure, not the least of which is that such an understanding produces two Yahwehs—which is, indeed, their intention. The problem, however, is that that is one more Yahweh than holy Scripture allows. The Shema states it clearly enough: “Shema Ysrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Yahweh is ONE. Moreover, the Psalmist writes “Thou whose name along is Yahweh ...” (Psalm 83:18). Because of the Societal Trinitarian doctrine, which they learned from their Catechism and Creeds, they must hold that Yahweh is the family name of three god-persons. In fact they often speak of the “God family”. When they go to holy Scripture to attempt proof for what they were taught by the Catechism and Creeds, they do violence to God’s Word, as is demonstrated here.
One should wonder: If this text presents two Yahwehs, why it is that when they both spoke and said, “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God”, single, and not plural, pronouns were used? Notice, Yahweh the King of Israel, and Yahweh of hosts, did not say “We are the first, and we are the last; and beside us there is no God”. What is more, since the Pluralists posit two Yahwehs from our text, the second one being God the Son (they say), they have God the Son speaking through the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament: for the text says “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts... ”; so, both Yahwehs are speaking. This interpretation violates the Perimeter Marker of Interpretation that is Hebrews 1:1-2. The writer to the Hebrews opens his epistle (sermon really) by stating that it was Father God “who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by
7 Cardinal John Henry Newman: (21 February 1801–11 August 1890) English theologian, academic, intellectual, philosopher, polymath, historian, writer, scholar and poet, first as an Anglican priest and later as a Catholic priest and cardinal, who was an important and controversial figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s,and was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in 2019.
8 Edward Hawkins (27 February 1789 – 18 November 1882) was an English churchman and academic, a long-serving Provost of Oriel College, Oxford.
9 Apologia Pro Vita Sua, by John Henry Newman, Dover Publication, Inc. Mineola, New York, 2005 unabridged publication of the original 1908, page 6.
the prophets”.10 The Pluralists desperately need to find the Son speaking in the Old Testament. In spite of their great effort, they have found no such place in Isaiah 44:6. This should give the Pluralists pause, but it does not. Why are they willing to ignore and defy the context to present their pretext? Why can they not see the inconsistency of their position?
Jesus spoke of such darkness: “But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23.) Their illumination are beams of darkness. Thus, they walk in darkness compounded.
Unregenerate man has a propensity to create and worship many gods (theoi-ropê). The holy Scripture demands that we worship but one.
Apostolically Speaking,
Bp. Jerry L Hayes, D.D.
10 God (ὁ θεὸς ). God with the article, thus, the autotheos, namely, the Father. Throughout the New Testament the term "God" designates the Father, but especially when Theos (ὁ θεὸς ) carries the article as here. That Theos (θεὸς), here, designates the Father is emphasized by the mentioning of this God’s Son in verse two.
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