But I am the Lord thy
God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts is his name.
And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of
mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth,
and say unto Zion, Thou art my people. (Isa 51:15-16)
Commenting on these verses, John Watts wrote:
Yahweh introduces
himself again, but this time in terms of his control of the raging sea. He addresses the one he is using,
putting his words in his mouth and protecting him very carefully.
The purpose of this care is to allow him to
plant heavens and earth. That makes no sense if it refers to the original creation.
A similar phrase in the Vision has become a standard way of describing Yahweh’s
work in creation. It uses נטה “to stretch out” while here the verb נטע “plant.”
In the other instances God acts alone, using no agent. Here the one he has
hidden in the shadow of his hand is his agent. Heavens and land here
must refer metaphorically to the totality of order in Palestine, heavens meaning the broader overarching
structure of the Empire, while land (ארץ) is the
political order in Palestine itself. The assignment is then focused more
precisely: to say to Zion: you are my people.
The two pronouns are challenges for the interpreter. Does my refer to God or to the speaker? Throughout this larger section
God’s work and that of Darius seem fused together. It is often difficult to
separate the two, as will be seen in the following verses. Because God has
chosen Darius and uses him, loyalty to Darius is viewed as equivalent to
loyalty to God. To be Yahweh’s obedient people is to be Persia’s loyal people
too. Zion is usually referred to with a feminine pronoun. Here it is masculine,
apparently because it refers to the people of the city rather than to the city
itself. This last clause defines Darius’s main task which had so far (49:6, 8)
been less precise than it had been for Cyrus (44:28b; 45:13b-c). (John D.W.
Watts, Isaiah 34-66 [Word Biblical
Commentary 25; Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1987], 212-13, italics in original)