Isaiah 46 Study Notes

46:1-4 A contrast is drawn in these verses between the idols that had to be carried and God who carried the burdens of his people.

46:1 Bel means “lord” and is likely a reference to Marduk, the chief god of Babylon. Nebo is the Hebrew name for Nabu, Marduk’s son and an important deity in his own right. Nabu was the god of wisdom, the god of the scribes. These gods, or more precisely the idols that represented them (see note at 44:12-20), had to be carried on carts to move from one place to another. They were a heavy burden for the draft animals that carried them.

46:2 When one ancient Near Eastern power defeated another, they would carry off the idols of the vanquished nation. The Gilgamesh epic contains a description of the gods cowering in the presence of the powerful force of the flood.

46:3-4 The remnant were those Israelites who would survive the coming judgment. God had carried (sustained) his people from their birth.

46:5-7 The gods of the surrounding nations were divinized portions of the creation; thus, Enlil was the god of war, Inanna the goddess of love, Ea the god of wisdom, etc. But God was not exactly like anything on earth. It is true that the great metaphors of the Bible taught about God’s nature and actions through comparing him to a king, a warrior, a rock, light, a storm, and so forth, but these metaphors throw light on who God is without identifying him with these objects or elements of creation. The idols, on the other hand, were associated with and even identified with the creation. There was nothing transcendent about them. They were human-made objects, a point that Isaiah had already made (see note at 44:12-13).

46:8-9 To remember means to draw strength by contemplating God’s past acts of power.

46:10-11 Cyrus—the king of Persia (45:1), a country east of Israel—was the bird of prey. This is the theme of the prediction. The Lord demonstrates his sovereignty by declaring the end from the beginning.

46:12-13 The hardhearted here are the same as the “transgressors” in v. 8. They are Israelites who refuse to trust the Lord for deliverance.