Introduction: Context is always important. The beginning of this prophecy is speaking directly to Cyrus. God tells Cyrus how He will use him, a ‘foreigner’, to perform His divine will. The last words before today’s passage are, ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.’
8 “Shower, O heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain down righteousness;
let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit;
let the earth cause them both to sprout;
I the LORD have created it. – God’s will is that the the earth (presumably people) will sprout the seeds of righteousness and salvation which God pours out in a thunderstorm from heaven, expecting a great crop!
9 “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him,
a pot among earthen pots!
Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles’?
10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’
or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’” – Two woes are pronounced. The first on those who query God on the way He fashions His pottery – the way He runs His Creation.The second for me is harder to understand. Perhaps both the father and the mother represent God and the woe is upon those who seek to tell God that He doesn’t know what He is doing by using Cyrus as a tool in His Hands!
11 Thus says the LORD,
the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him: – here the underlined him I’m sure refers to the nation of Israel. There is no neuter ‘it’ in Hebrew.
“Ask me of things to come;
will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? – Don’t tell me what I should do’, God says! ‘If you ask Me, I may tell you!’
12 I made the earth
and created man on it;
it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
and I commanded all their host. – God reminds us, and I think that we need reminding often, that He made the earth and the heavens. I fancy that God wants us to extend our thinking! He made both Time (earth) and Eternity (the heavens)!
13 I have stirred him up in righteousness,
and I will make all his ways level; – Here the ‘him’ and ‘his’ refer to Cyrus.
he shall build my city
and set my exiles free,
not for price or reward,”
says the LORD of hosts. – The three books of Daniel, Nehemiah and Ezra are well worth reading! Cyrus does what God commands him to do!
Ezra 1: 1-3 – In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:
“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. –Unbelievable but true!
Prayer: Please help my understanding and submission to You keep growing, Father. You amaze me!