Isaiah 46

Today’s Passage: Isaiah 46

The chapter opens with a scene of humiliation. Bel and Nebo, the great gods of Babylon, are hauled down from their high places and loaded onto pack animals, and the beasts stagger under the dead weight of them. These are the idols a whole empire trusted, and now they must be carried off into captivity because they cannot so much as lift a foot to save themselves. Against that sad picture the LORD lifts His own voice and says the exact opposite of everything the idols are: He is not carried, He carries. He has borne His people since the womb, He will bear them still when their hair turns gray, and He alone declares the end from the beginning and brings His whole purpose to pass. The chapter sets two kinds of god side by side, the burden that must be lifted and the God who lifts, and it asks every reader plainly which one they are leaning on.

As you read, hold this: Idols are dead weights their worshipers must carry, but the living God carries His people from the womb to gray old age, and His sovereign purpose will surely stand.

Isaiah 46:1–2 (BSB)

¹ Bel crouches; Nebo cowers. Their idols weigh down beasts and cattle. The images you carry are burdensome, a load to the weary animal. ² The gods cower; they crouch together, unable to relieve the burden; but they themselves go into captivity.

See how the chapter begins with the mighty gods of Babylon brought low. Bel crouches and Nebo cowers, the two great names of the empire bending under their own dead weight, and their images are heaved onto the backs of oxen and donkeys until the poor animals sag beneath the load. There is something almost pitiable in it, and Isaiah means us to feel the irony to the full. Here are the gods the people bowed to for safety, and they cannot lift a finger; instead they must be lifted, and the beasts that carry them grow weary under the burden. Worse still, when the trouble comes they cannot rescue even themselves. They crouch together, helpless, and go off into captivity along with the people who trusted them. This is the first thing to notice about every false god a heart can make: it is a weight you carry, and it will never once carry you.

Isaiah 46:3–4 (BSB)

³ “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been sustained from the womb, carried along since birth. ⁴ Even to your old age, I will be the same, and I will bear you up when you turn gray. I have made you, and I will carry you; I will sustain you and deliver you.

And now, against that picture of gods being hauled about, the LORD lifts His voice and says the very opposite of everything an idol is. Listen to Me, He says, and the contrast could not be sharper. Babylon carries its gods; the true God carries His people. He has sustained them from the womb, borne them along since the day they were born, and, He promises, He will not set them down when the years grow heavy. Even to your old age I am He, He says, and when your hair turns gray I will still be carrying (נָשָׂא) nasa, pronounced nah-SAH. Strong's H5375, to lift, raise, carry, bear. The word means to lift, to bear, to carry, and it is doing quiet, deliberate work all through this chapter. In the opening verses the idols are a load the beasts must bear; here in verse four the LORD takes that same idea of carrying and turns it completely around, declaring “I have made you, and I will carry you.” The idol is the thing that gets lifted onto a groaning animal; the LORD is the One who lifts His people and holds them up. It is the very word Scripture uses when God tells Israel He bore them on eagles’ wings out of Egypt, and the word behind the great promise that the Servant would bear our sorrows and carry our griefs. To trust an idol is to spend your strength holding up a god who does nothing; to trust the LORD is to be held up by the God who does everything, from the womb to the gray head, and at last all the way home. you. There is such tenderness here that we should slow down and let it warm us. The same God who made us is the God who will bear us up all the way to the end, sustaining and delivering, never once handing us off to a weary animal or leaving us to lift Him. A manufactured god is a burden from the first day; the living God is a Bearer from before we drew breath and will be still when we take our last. This is the difference between all religion of our own making and the God who actually is.

Isaiah 46:5–7 (BSB)

⁵ To whom will you liken Me or count Me equal? To whom will you compare Me, that we should be alike? ⁶ They pour out their bags of gold and weigh out silver on scales; they hire a goldsmith to fashion it into a god, so they can bow down and worship. ⁷ They lift it to their shoulder and carry it along; they set it in its place, and there it stands, not budging from that spot. They cry out to it, but it does not answer; it saves no one from his troubles.

Then the LORD asks the question that exposes the whole folly of idolatry: to whom will you compare Me? And He answers it by simply describing how an idol is made, letting the plain account do the work of the argument. Watch the sequence of it. Men pour out their own gold, weigh out their own silver, and pay a craftsman to hammer the metal into the shape of a god. Then they bow down and worship the very thing they just bought and built. They heave it onto their shoulders and lug it to a chosen spot, and there it stands, unable to move an inch from where they set it. And when trouble comes and they cry out to it, it does not answer, for it cannot; it saves no one from anything. Set that beside the God of verse four and the comparison collapses of its own weight. One god you must finance, fashion, lift, and place, and it stands there mute in the day of need; the other God fashioned you, lifts you, and answers when you call. There is no likeness between them at all.

Isaiah 46:8–11 (BSB)

⁸ Remember this and be brave; take it to heart, you transgressors! ⁹ Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. ¹⁰ I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish.’ ¹¹ I summon a bird of prey from the east, a man for My purpose from a far-off land. Truly I have spoken, and truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, and I will surely do it.

Now the LORD presses His people to remember, and to take courage from the remembering. Look back, He says, at what I have done through all the long years, for I am God and there is no other, none like Me in all the earth. And then He tells us the one thing no idol could ever say: I declare the end from the beginning. Before a thing happens, God has already spoken it, for He stands over all of time at once and nothing surprises Him. Hear how firmly He sets it down: My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish. He is not hoping His plans work out; He is announcing that they will, because He is the one who both plans and performs. As proof He points to the bird of prey summoned from the east, the man He will raise up from a far country to do His bidding, a promise of the very deliverer He would send to break Babylon and free His people. Truly I have spoken, He says, and truly I will bring it to pass; I have planned it, and I will surely do it. This is bedrock to stand on. The God who carries us is the God whose every purpose is certain, and nothing in heaven or earth can turn it aside.

Isaiah 46:12–13 (BSB)

¹² Listen to Me, you stubborn people, far removed from righteousness: ¹³ I am bringing My righteousness near; it is not far away, and My salvation will not be delayed. I will grant salvation to Zion and adorn Israel with My splendor.

And now, wonderfully, the chapter ends not with a threat but with a gift. He calls out one more time to the very people who are hardest to reach, the stubborn of heart, the ones so far from righteousness that they seem past hope, and to them He says: I am bringing My righteousness near. Do not miss the grace of that. They cannot climb up to His righteousness, so He brings it down to them; it is not far off, and His salvation will not be delayed. He will place salvation in Zion and clothe His people with His own splendor. Here is the God who carries His people shown at His fullest: He does not wait for the stubborn to make themselves worthy, He draws near with a righteousness and a salvation that are His own to give. It is the same movement the whole Bible makes toward us, for in the end the righteousness God brought near came near in a Person, and the salvation that would not be delayed was accomplished at the cross. The chapter that began with dead gods being carried off ends with the living God bringing His salvation home.