Isaiah 43
Isaiah 43 opens with two of the most reassuring words in Scripture - But now - and everything turns on them. The chapter just before this one ended in judgment, with a people who would not listen handed over to the consequences of their own deafness. But now the LORD speaks again, and the tone changes completely. Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine (v. 1). To people staring down exile - the loss of land, temple, and freedom - God does not offer a lecture; He offers Himself. He names the very things they dread, the deep waters and the consuming fire, and against each He sets a single promise: I will be with thee (v. 2). The danger is not removed, but it is no longer faced alone, and it will not have the last word.3
The chapter then widens out into one of Scripture's great courtroom scenes. The LORD summons the nations and their gods to produce any witness who can foretell the future or explain the past, and there is only silence on their side - while His own people are called to the stand: Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD… that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he (v. 10). Out of that scene comes the chapter's great declaration of who God is: the only true God, the only Saviour there is - I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour (v. 11). He is the One who made a way through the sea once, who is now bringing mighty Babylon down, and who announces something His people are not even to compare with the old deliverances: Behold, I will do a new thing… I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert (v. 19).
And then the chapter does something unexpected and deeply honest. Having promised so much, God turns to the truth about the people He is promising it to. They had not called on Him; they had grown weary of Him; they had, in His own aching words, made me to serve with thy sins and wearied me with thine iniquities (v. 24). The relationship was strained from their side, not His. The reader braces for the verdict - and instead receives the most astonishing line in the chapter: I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins (v. 25). Forgiveness comes not as something earned back but as something freely given, grounded in God's own character. The chapter that began thou art mine ends having shown exactly how costly, and how unconditioned, that belonging is.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 43:1-7Fear Not: Thou Art Mine
1But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. 2When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. 3For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. 4Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life. 5Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; 6I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; 7Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.
Everything in this chapter hangs on its first two words: But now. The previous chapter closed in judgment - a people who would not hear, given over to the fruit of their deafness. But now the LORD speaks again, and the whole register changes from sentence to comfort. The first word out of His mouth is the word He says more often than any other in Scripture: Fear not. And He grounds it not in a change of their circumstances but in a fact about who they are to Him: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine (v. 1). Notice how He names them - that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel. The God who tells them not to fear is the same God who made them in the first place; the Maker has not washed His hands of the work of His hands. Three claims land in a single breath. I have redeemed thee - you have been bought back, brought out of bondage. I have called thee by thy name - not as a number in a census but as a person, individually known. Thou art mine - you belong to Me. Against the terror of exile, where a person feels anonymous and abandoned, every one of these strikes at the root of the fear.3
Then God does something striking: He names the very dangers His people dread, and He does not promise to remove them. When thou passest through the waters… when thou walkest through the fire (v. 2). Notice the word: when, not if. Deep water and open fire - the two most elemental terrors, drowning and burning - are spoken of as things His people will pass through. What He promises is not exemption but companionship: I will be with thee… they shall not overflow thee… thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. This is a particular and hard-won kind of comfort. It does not pretend the waters are not real or the fire not hot. It promises two things instead. First, presence: whatever a person must walk through, they do not walk through it alone, for God Himself is in it with them. Second, preservation: the waters will not have the final say, the flame will not consume. The trial is real, and the trial is survivable, because the One who claimed them in verse 1 goes through it at their side. For a people about to lose everything familiar, this is the promise they most needed - not that the hard road would be cancelled, but that they would not be destroyed on it.
Verses 3 and 4 lift the curtain on the heart behind the rescue. God calls Himself the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour, and then says something that should stop a reader in their tracks: Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee (v. 4). These are not words of obligation; they are words of affection. The exiles might well have assumed they were a disappointment to God, a failed project He was tolerating at best. He tells them the opposite. They are precious to Him - literally weighty, of great worth in His eyes. They are honourable. And, plainest of all, I have loved thee. The basis for this is nowhere said to be their merit; the chapter will be brutally honest later about how little they have earned. The basis is His own love freely given. And that love is costly: I gave Egypt for thy ransom… therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life. The language is of a price paid, a treasure so prized that the LORD speaks of handing over whole nations to secure it. To be told, in the middle of one's lowest season, that one is precious and honoured and loved - this is the gift verse 4 presses into the reader's hands.
The first movement closes with a great gathering. God sweeps His hand across the compass - from the east… from the west… to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back - and calls His scattered people home from the ends of the earth (vv. 5-6). However far they have been driven, no distance is beyond His reach; He will bring His sons and daughters back from every direction. And He names what binds them to Him: they are called by my name, and - the climax of the section - I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him (v. 7). Three verbs pile up, the same three from verse 1: created… formed… made. This people is God's own handiwork, and they exist for my glory. That phrase reframes everything. The point of being redeemed and gathered is not merely the comfort of the redeemed - though that comfort is real and lavish. The deeper point is that a redeemed people puts the character of their Redeemer on display. They were made to reflect His worth, to be living evidence of what He is like. The God who knows them by name and walks through fire with them does so, in the end, for the sake of His own glory - and there is no kinder thing He could do, for His glory and their good turn out to be the same thing.
Isaiah 43:8-13Ye Are My Witnesses · Beside Me No Saviour
8Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears. 9Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth. 10Ye 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. 11I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour. 12I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God. 13Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?
The scene shifts to a courtroom, and God convenes the trial. Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled (v. 9). The case to be decided is the oldest one there is: who is truly God? The test God proposes is precise - who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? Can any of the nations' gods foretell what is coming, or rightly account for what has already been? Can any of them bring a witness to vouch that their word came true? The challenge exposes the idols at the one point they cannot meet: they cannot speak before the event and be proven right after it. They are mute. And into that silence God calls a surprising set of witnesses. Not angels, not the heavens - but the very people just described as the blind… that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears (v. 8). His people, dull and faltering as they are, have nonetheless seen what no idol's people ever saw: a God who said beforehand what He would do, and then did it. That experience is itself the evidence. They do not need to be eloquent; they only need to testify to what they have witnessed with their own eyes.
God names His people's vocation in a single phrase, repeated for emphasis: Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD… therefore ye are my witnesses… that I am God (vv. 10, 12). This is a role, not a feeling. A witness in court does one thing: tells what they have seen and heard. God's people are not asked to win the argument by cleverness; they are asked simply to bear true testimony to the God they have experienced - the God who declared, and have saved, and I have shewed (v. 12). And He states the purpose of it with care: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he (v. 10). The witnessing is not only for the watching nations; it is for the witnesses themselves. In the act of testifying to what God has done, His people come to know Him, to believe Him, to understand who He is. There is a quiet truth here worth carrying: faith is often strengthened in the telling. The one who recounts what God has done finds, in the recounting, their own grip on Him made surer. To be a witness is both a duty owed to the world and a gift given back to the witness.
At the heart of the trial stands the verdict God renders on Himself: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour (vv. 10-11). The doubled pronoun - I, even I - is emphatic in the Hebrew, the speech of One who will share His place with no other. Two claims are pressed together. First, He alone is God: there is none before Him and none after, no rival deity who ever was or ever will be. Second - and this is the pastoral point - He alone is Saviour: beside me there is no saviour. The idols of the nations cannot rescue; the powers His people might be tempted to trust cannot deliver. Salvation is found in the LORD or it is found nowhere. And He seals it with a word about His own unstoppable freedom to act: there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it? (v. 13) - that is, who can hinder Him? No one holds His people once He has claimed them, and no power can frustrate what He sets out to do. For a people facing an empire that looked invincible, this was the ground under their feet: the one true God, the only Saviour, whose purposes nothing in heaven or earth can reverse.
Isaiah 43:14-21Behold, I Will Do a New Thing
14Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships. 15I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. 16Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; 17Which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they shall lie down together, they shall not rise: they are extinct, they are quenched as tow. 18Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. 19Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. 20The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. 21This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.
God stacks His titles here like a column of credentials: the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel… I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King (vv. 14-15). Each one matters. He is their redeemer, the kinsman who buys them back; their Holy One, utterly set apart and pure; their creator, the maker of the very nation; and their King, the one who rightly rules them. And He proves these are not empty boasts by pointing to what He is doing to the superpower of the age: For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles (v. 14). The mightiest empire on earth, the one holding His people captive, is being toppled - and the LORD says it is happening for your sake. Here is a staggering thought for a small, defeated people: the rise and fall of empires is bent, in God's hand, toward the good of those He loves. The Chaldeans whose ships once carried their pride away will themselves cry out as their power collapses. The God speaking is not a local deity of a conquered people but the King who moves Babylon itself for the sake of His own.
Now God reaches back to His people's founding memory. Thus saith the LORD, which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters; which bringeth forth the chariot and horse, the army and the power; they shall lie down together, they shall not rise (vv. 16-17). Every Israelite would know instantly what this describes: the Red Sea, the night the LORD split the waters and led them through on dry ground, then closed the sea over Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen so they lie down together… they are extinct, they are quenched as tow - snuffed out like a smoldering wick. This was the central rescue of the nation's history, the event they told and retold, the proof that their God could save. God recalls it deliberately. He wants them to remember the kind of God He is: One who makes a road where there is no road, who drowns the armies that pursue His people, who has done the impossible before. And then - remarkably - He tells them this very memory is about to be eclipsed. The deliverance they treasure most is, He says, not even worth lingering on compared to what is coming.
Then comes one of the great turns in the book: Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? (vv. 18-19). It is almost shocking. God has just rehearsed the Red Sea - and now He says, in effect, do not get stuck there. Not because the past was unimportant, but because His mercy is not exhausted by it. He is not a God who did one great thing long ago and has been coasting since. Behold, I will do a new thing - and now it shall spring forth, like a seed breaking the soil, like a shoot pushing up where the ground looked dead. The new deliverance is described as the old one transfigured: where once He made a way in the sea, now I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert (v. 19). The first exodus was through water that threatened to drown; the new one is through desert that threatens to parch - and in both, God provides exactly what the wilderness lacks. So abundant is the provision that even the beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls (v. 20), the wild creatures of the waste joining the praise, because I give waters in the wilderness… to give drink to my people, my chosen. The reader is warned, gently, against living only in past deliverances. God's newest mercy is always springing forth.3
Verse 21 gathers the whole movement into a single purpose: This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise. It echoes verse 7 - created… formed… for my glory - and brings the new exodus to the same end as the first. Why does God make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert? Why bring His chosen through, refreshed and alive? For myself, He says - that this people, His own handiwork, might shew forth my praise. The redeemed life is not an end in itself; it is meant to overflow into praise that tells the world what God is like. There is a beautiful order in it. God provides the water; the people drink and live; and the living, watered people become a song about their Provider. Even the wild beasts honour Him for the rivers in the desert (v. 20) - how much more the people He formed with His own hands and called by name. The chapter has moved from thou art mine (v. 1) to formed for myself (v. 21): the belonging announced at the start has a purpose, and the purpose is praise. A people who know they have been redeemed, gathered, and refreshed cannot finally keep silent about the One who did it.
Isaiah 43:22-28I Blot Out Thy Transgressions for Mine Own Sake
22But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel. 23Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices. I have not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied thee with incense. 24Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities. 25I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. 26Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou, that thou mayest be justified. 27Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me. 28Therefore I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches.
After verse upon verse of promise, God turns to the truth about the people He has been promising it to - and the honesty is bracing: But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel (v. 22). The relationship has been strained, and not from His side. They had grown weary of Him - tired of God, as if He were a burden. The charge unfolds across the next verses: they had not honoured Him with their sacrifices, not brought Him the offerings of a glad and grateful heart (vv. 23-24). And then God says something almost startling in its tenderness, turning their own complaint inside out. He had not, He insists, made worship a crushing weight on them: I have not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied thee with incense (v. 23). God was never the exhausting one in this relationship. The truth was the reverse, and it is one of the most poignant lines in the chapter: thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities (v. 24). The God who never wearied them with demands was Himself wearied - worn down, made to labor - by their sin. The picture is of a God who has, in love, taken the weight of their wrongdoing and felt its drag. The relationship's exhaustion was real, but it ran the opposite direction from what they supposed.
And then, with no transition, no list of conditions, comes the verse the whole chapter has been building toward: I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins (v. 25). Read it against what comes just before. The previous verse had God wearied by their iniquities; one would expect the next line to demand repayment. Instead He announces free and total forgiveness. Look at the words. I, even I - the same emphatic doubling as in verse 11, the One who alone is Saviour is the One who alone forgives. Blotteth out - the image is of writing scrubbed clean off a page, a debt-record wiped away until nothing remains to be read. Will not remember thy sins - not that God forgets in weakness, but that He chooses, deliberately, to hold their sins against them no longer. And the ground of it is the most freeing phrase of all: for mine own sake. Not because they had earned it - the surrounding verses make plain they had not. Not because they bargained for it. He blots out their sins because of who He is, because forgiving is the kind of God He is, because His own name and character are bound up with mercy. Salvation rests on the Saviour's nature, not the sinner's worth - which is exactly why it cannot be lost. This is the gospel announced centuries before the Gospel.
The chapter ends on a sober, honest note that keeps the forgiveness from being mistaken for indifference to sin. God invites His people into the open: Put me in remembrance: let us plead together: declare thou, that thou mayest be justified (v. 26). It is courtroom language again - come, lay out your case, let us reason it through together. There is something almost gracious in the dare: if His people have any ground to stand on, let them bring it. But the reckoning that follows is unsparing. Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me (v. 27) - the sin is not a recent slip but runs back through the generations, through the very leaders and teachers who should have known better. And the consequences had been real: I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches (v. 28). The exile and humiliation they were suffering were not arbitrary; they were the just outworking of a long history of turning away. Yet set this beside verse 25 and the wonder of the gospel sharpens. God does not pretend the sin is small or the history clean. He sees all of it - the wearying iniquities, the sinning fathers, the failed teachers - and into that clear-eyed reckoning He has already spoken the word that changes everything: I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions. Forgiveness this honest is the only kind worth having.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 43 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the verb ga'al (v. 1, “redeemed,” the kinsman's buying-back), for the divine self-declaration ani hu (vv. 10, 13, “I am he”), and for the picture of God blotting out sin in verse 25.
- Isaiah 43 ↔ John 10 · Acts 4 · 2 Corinthians 5 · 1 John 1Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 43 to the rest of Scripture - the God who calls His own by name (v. 1) read alongside the Shepherd who calleth his own sheep by name (John 10:3); the only Saviour (v. 11) beside none other name… whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12); the new thing (v. 19) beside the new creature of 2 Corinthians 5:17.
- Isaiah 43 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 43 - the force of “redeemed” and “called by name” in verse 1, the courtroom summons of the nations in verses 8-13, the much-discussed “new thing” of verse 19, and the emphatic doubled pronoun behind “I, even I” in verses 11 and 25.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Fear Not: Thou Art Mine
- John 10:3-4he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out... and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.The Shepherd who calls His own by name - the very thing God does in verse 1.
- Matthew 28:20lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.The promise of presence in verse 2 - the One who is with His own through everything, to the end.
- Daniel 3:25I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire... and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.The promise of verse 2 made visible - a fourth figure with God’s people in the flame, and they are not burned.
- Ruth 4:9-10all that was Elimelech’s... have I purchased... Ruth... have I purchased to be my wife.The kinsman-redeemer (ga’al) of verse 1 at work - the near relative who pays the price to reclaim his own.
- Psalm 139:1-3O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me... thou understandest my thought afar off.The personal knowing behind “called thee by thy name” (v. 1) - a God who knows each person utterly.
Ye Are My Witnesses · Beside Me No Saviour
- Acts 4:12Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.The claim of verse 11 carried to one name - the one God who alone saves, met in the Saviour.
- John 8:58Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.The “I am he” of verses 10 and 13 taken onto the lips of the One sent to save.
- Isaiah 44:8Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.The same declaration as verses 10-11 - the LORD alone is God, and there is no other.
- Acts 1:8ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem... and unto the uttermost part of the earth.The vocation of verse 10 renewed - a people called to bear witness to what God has done.
- Deuteronomy 32:39See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me... neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.The very words of verses 11 and 13 - the one God whose saving hand none can pry open.
Behold, I Will Do a New Thing
- 2 Corinthians 5:17if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.The new thing of verse 19 - life springing up where there was only waste, in the one who is in Christ.
- Revelation 21:5And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.The promise of verse 19 brought to its end - the God who makes a new thing makes, at last, all things new.
- Exodus 14:21-22the LORD caused the sea to go back... and the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground.The “way in the sea” of verses 16-17 - the old deliverance God recalls before promising a greater one.
- John 7:37-38If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.The “rivers in the desert” of verses 19-20 - water freely given to the thirsty, held out in person.
- Isaiah 64:8But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.The forming (yatsar) of verse 21 - a people shaped by the Potter’s own hand for His purpose.
I Blot Out Thy Transgressions for Mine Own Sake
- 1 John 1:9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.The free forgiveness of verse 25 - grounded, as there, in God’s own faithful character, not the sinner’s worth.
- Hebrews 8:12I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.The promise of verse 25 in the new covenant - sins remembered no more.
- Colossians 2:14Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us... nailing it to his cross.The blotting-out of verse 25 made vivid - the record against us wiped clean at the cross.
- Psalm 51:1Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness... blot out my transgressions.The very plea verse 25 answers - the prayer to have transgressions blotted out, grounded in God’s mercy.
- Micah 7:18-19Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity... thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.The wonder of verse 25 - a God who delights in mercy and puts forgiven sins out of sight.