Isaiah 45
Isaiah 45 is built around one claim, sounded so often it becomes the chapter's heartbeat: I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me (v. 5). But it opens with a surprise that no Israelite would have seen coming. The LORD addresses a foreign emperor - Cyrus the Persian - and calls him his anointed (v. 1), the very title reserved for kings and priests set apart by God, the word that elsewhere becomes Messiah. Cyrus does not know the God of Israel (vv. 4-5), yet God takes him by the right hand, subdues nations before him, and raises him up for one purpose: to set the captive people free and rebuild the holy city, not for price nor reward (v. 13). The God who does this wants something understood through it - that thou mayest know that I, the LORD… am the God of Israel (v. 3); that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me (v. 6).3
From that commission the chapter widens into a sweeping declaration of who this God is. He is the Maker of all that exists - I form the light, and create darkness… I the LORD do all these things (v. 7); I have made the earth, and created man upon it (v. 12). He is the Potter against whom it is folly for the clay to strive (vv. 9-10). He formed the earth… to be inhabited (v. 18), not as a waste. And though He is a God that hidest thyself (v. 15), He has not spoken in secret or told His people to seek Him in vain (v. 19). Over against Him stand the idols and those who carry them - gods of wood that cannot save (v. 20), leaving their makers ashamed and confounded (v. 16).
Then the chapter rises to its summit and throws the doors open to the whole world. The same God who commands empires turns to every nation with the plainest invitation in the book: Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else (v. 22). The salvation is not for Israel alone; it reaches to the ends of the earth. And God seals the promise with an oath sworn on Himself, a word gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return: That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear (v. 23). It is among the most quoted lines in the New Testament - the apostle takes this very self-declaration of the one true God and writes it of Jesus, before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 45:1-7Thus Saith the LORD to His Anointed
1Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; 2I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: 3And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. 4For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. 5I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me; 6That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. 7I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
The chapter opens by doing something that would have stopped an Israelite reader cold: Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden (v. 1). Cyrus was a Persian emperor, a worshipper of foreign gods - and the LORD names him his anointed, the sacred title given to Israel's own kings and priests, the word that elsewhere becomes Messiah. God lays His hand on a pagan conqueror and calls him His own instrument. The picture is of total mastery over history: the LORD will hold Cyrus by the right hand as a king leads a chosen servant, subdue nations before him, loosen the belts of opposing kings so their strength fails, swing open the great two-leaved bronze gates of a city so they shall not be shut against him (vv. 1-2). The mighty defenses of Babylon - gates of brass, bars of iron - God will break in pieces. And He hands Cyrus the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, the hoarded wealth of conquered nations. But all of it serves one stated purpose, repeated like a refrain: that thou mayest know that I, the LORD… am the God of Israel (v. 3). The conquests are not finally about Cyrus at all. They are God signing His name across world events so plainly that even the king who profits from them will have to reckon with the God who arranged them.3
Then God reveals the reason behind the reason. Why raise up Cyrus, why topple Babylon, why all this reshaping of the map? For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name (v. 4). The whole vast machinery of empire is set in motion for the sake of one small, exiled, seemingly forgotten people. God calls Cyrus by name and even gives him an honorific title - I have surnamed thee - and yet twice over comes the arresting qualifier: though thou hast not known me (vv. 4, 5). Here is a striking truth about how God works in the world. He can take up a man who does not know Him, does not serve Him, does not even believe in Him as the one true God, and accomplish through that man His deepest purposes for His people. Cyrus is not rewarded for his faith; he has none toward the LORD. He is simply used - girded for battle by a God he does not recognize, I girded thee, though thou hast not known me (v. 5). The God of Israel is not confined to those who acknowledge Him. He governs the willing and the unwilling alike, and bends even the ambitions of unbelievers toward the rescue of His own.
At the heart of these verses stands the claim the whole chapter exists to press: I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me (v. 5), and again, there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else (v. 6). It is sounded twice in two verses, and it will return repeatedly before the chapter ends. This is the central confession of Israel's faith stated in its most absolute form: not that the LORD is the greatest god, or the god of this particular people, but that there is, simply, no other. And the reach of the knowledge God intends is worldwide - from the rising of the sun, and from the west (v. 6), from the farthest east to the farthest west, the whole span of the inhabited earth. The freeing of the exiles by an emperor named generations in advance is meant to be a demonstration on a global stage, evidence so public that nations who never knew Israel's God will be forced to see His hand. The exclusivity is not a small or sectarian claim; it is the largest claim there is. If there is truly no God beside this One, then every other allegiance, every idol, every rival power, is finally empty - and the whole earth has only one place to look.
God grounds His claim to be the only God in His being the maker of everything that exists: I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things (v. 7). The verse sweeps up opposite pairs - light and darkness, peace and its opposite - to say that the entire range of what comes to pass is under the LORD's hand, with no second power dividing the rule with Him. This was a pointed word in a world that imagined a god of light forever at war with a god of darkness, two rival deities locked in struggle. Isaiah will have none of it: there is one God, and He is sovereign over both day and night, blessing and adversity. A word of care is needed on what is rendered evil here. The Hebrew word is ra, and it set deliberately against peace - against shalom, the word for wholeness, welfare, and well-being. Across the Hebrew Bible ra very often means not moral wickedness but calamity, disaster, adversity, trouble - the hard providences that break in upon a life or a nation. That is its sense here: the LORD is declaring that both the times of peace and the times of disaster, both the prosperity and the catastrophe that befall the nations, come within His sovereign ordering. The verse is not saying God authors sin or delights in wickedness - Scripture elsewhere is plain that He is of purer eyes than to behold evil (Hab. 1:13) and that God cannot be tempted with evil (Jas. 1:13). It is saying, against every notion of a rival power, that nothing - not the worst calamity, not the deepest darkness - falls outside the reach of the one God who doeth all these things.
Isaiah 45:8-13Woe to Him That Striveth with His Maker
8Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it. 9Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands? 10Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth? 11Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me. 12I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. 13I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts.
After the great self-declaration, the chapter breaks into something like a prayer or a song: Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it (v. 8). The imagery is agricultural and lovely. Righteousness is to fall like rain from the sky; the earth is to open like soil after a shower and bring forth salvation as a field brings forth its crop; righteousness is to spring up like a green shoot pushing through the ground. Heaven and earth are summoned to cooperate in producing a harvest - and the harvest is righteousness and salvation together, the two so closely bound that they grow from the same seed. This is one of Isaiah's great themes: when God acts to put things right, deliverance comes with it. His justice is not opposed to His mercy; His setting-right of the world is the very thing that saves it. And the verse ends by claiming the whole harvest as God's own doing - I the LORD have created it. The rain of righteousness, the springing salvation, is not something the earth produces on its own; it is created, brought into being, by the same God who made the heavens. Salvation is His crop, sown and watered and raised by Him.
Then comes a sharp turn, and two solemn woes. Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands? (v. 9). The image is the potter and the clay, one Isaiah and the prophets return to often. A piece of broken pottery - a potsherd - is in no position to argue with the potter who shaped it; it might quarrel with other shards of its own kind, but never with the hand that made it. How absurd, then, for the clay to interrogate the potter mid-work: What makest thou? - what do you think you are doing? Or to scoff that the potter is unskilled, He hath no hands? The second woe presses the same folly through the image of birth: Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? (v. 10). It is unnatural for a child to upbraid the parents who gave it life. The context is pointed. Some in Israel were objecting to God's plan - scandalized, perhaps, that deliverance would come through a pagan king like Cyrus rather than in the way they expected. God answers not with a debate but with a question about standing. The creature does not get to put the Creator in the dock. This is not the silencing of a tyrant; it is the right order of things. The clay was made by the Potter, and the Potter knows what He is making.
And then, having established that the clay may not contend with the Potter, God turns and says something unexpectedly warm: Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me (v. 11). The clay may not strive with the Maker - but it is invited to ask. There is all the difference in the world between the two. To strive is to challenge God's right to do as He does; to ask is to come as a child to a father, bringing concerns about things to come and about my sons. The God who will not be cross-examined by a rebellious creature opens His ear wide to a trusting one. The Creator is not distant or unapproachable; He is intimately engaged with the people He calls my sons and the world He calls the work of my hands. Then He restates His credentials as Maker of all: I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded (v. 12). The same hands that fashioned the clay made the earth, formed humanity, unrolled the heavens like a great canopy, and marshalled the stars - all their host - at His command. The verses do not pause to explain the manner of that making; they simply stand in awe that the LORD did it, and did it by His own hand. And from those credentials the section returns to Cyrus: I have raised him up in righteousness… he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward (v. 13). The Maker of heaven and earth has raised up a deliverer, and the captives will go free for nothing - no ransom required, only the will of the God whose hands made it all.
Isaiah 45:14-19A God That Hidest Thyself, the Saviour
14Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God. 15Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. 16They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols. 17But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end. 18For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. 19I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.
A remarkable scene unfolds: The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine… and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God (v. 14). The wealth and the people of distant Gentile nations - Egypt, Ethiopia, the tall traders of Seba - come over to Israel and acknowledge her God. The picture is not finally about Israel's conquest of others; it is about the conversion of the nations. They come confessing the very words that have echoed through the chapter: there is none else, there is no God. What God has been declaring of Himself - that He alone is God - the Gentiles here come to confess of their own accord. This is one of Isaiah's great horizons: the day when the peoples of the earth, who served their own gods, turn and acknowledge the God of Israel as the only God. The riches once spent on idols are brought to the place where the true God dwells. And the confession is wrung not by force of arms but by recognition - Surely God is in thee. The nations see, at last, where the living God is to be found.
In the middle of this scene a voice breaks out in wonder: Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour (v. 15). It is one of the most arresting confessions in the book. The God who has just been thundering I am the LORD, and there is none else is, in the same breath, a God that hidest thyself. Both are true at once. He is unmistakably at work - raising up Cyrus, freeing captives, turning the nations - and yet His ways are veiled, His hand often unseen, His purposes unfolding in a manner no one would have predicted. Who would have guessed that salvation for Israel would come through a Persian emperor? God works behind the events of history like someone moving behind a curtain: the effects are plain, the worker hidden. And yet - this is the point of the verse - the hidden God is the Saviour. His hiddenness is not absence or indifference; it is the mystery of a God whose saving work runs deeper than the surface of things. By contrast, those who trusted in idols are left with nothing: They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols (v. 16). The gods you can see, that you carve and carry, end in shame. The God you cannot see is the one who saves.
Over against the shame of the idol-makers stands the security of those who trust the LORD: But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end (v. 17). The contrast is total. The idolaters are confounded; Israel shall not be ashamed - and not for a season but world without end, with a salvation that is everlasting. Then God grounds this lasting salvation in the kind of God He is, and the language returns to creation: For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else (v. 18). Notice the purpose woven into the making. God did not create the earth in vain - as an empty waste, a chaos left desolate - but formed it to be inhabited. He made it with a goal: that it should be filled with life, a home for the people He would dwell among. This is a deep word of hope. The God who took such care that His world should not be empty but populated and flourishing is not a God who abandons His purposes. The same intention that filled the earth with inhabitants stands behind the everlasting salvation of His people. He made the world to be lived in; He will not leave it, or them, in ruin. The verses keep their gaze on the wonder of what God did - created, formed, established - without pausing to explain how; the marvel is that He made it, and made it for life.
God then answers a temptation that comes easily to a people who have just called Him a God that hidest thyself. If He is hidden, is He perhaps also evasive - speaking in riddles, hiding the truth, leaving seekers to grope in vain? Not at all: I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that are right (v. 19). The God whose providence is veiled has been utterly open in His word. He has not whispered His revelation in some dark place, the way the oracles of the pagan world were sought in shadowy caverns and ambiguous murmurings. He has spoken plainly, in the light, in righteousness and what is right. And He has never told His people that seeking Him would be a waste - I said not… Seek ye me in vain. This holds together the two sides of the chapter beautifully. God's ways in history may be hidden, unfolding through unexpected instruments like Cyrus - but His word is clear, His character revealed, His promises trustworthy. We are not left to guess at a God who plays at hide-and-seek with the truth. The hiddenness is in the depth of His working, never in any reluctance to be found. Those who seek Him do not seek in vain.
Isaiah 45:20-25Look Unto Me, and Be Ye Saved
20Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. 21Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. 22Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. 23I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. 24Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed. 25In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.
God summons the nations to a kind of courtroom, and the case turns on a single piece of evidence: prophecy fulfilled. Assemble yourselves and come… ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save (v. 20). Those who carry around a block of carved wood and pray to it are without knowledge, for their god cannot save. Then the challenge: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? (v. 21). The proof that the LORD alone is God is that He alone announced these things long before they came to pass - the naming of Cyrus, the fall of Babylon, the freeing of the captives - and then brought them about. No idol ever foretold the future, because no idol knows it. And the verse gathers up the whole argument in a phrase that holds two truths together: a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. He is just - righteous, true, the upholder of what is right; and He is a Saviour - the one who rescues. Not justice without salvation, not salvation without justice, but both perfectly joined in the one God. This is the deepest answer to the dead idols of verse 20. They cannot save because they are not real. The living God both judges rightly and saves fully - and there is no other like Him.
On the strength of all that has gone before, the chapter rises to its great invitation, and it is the widest call in the book: Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else (v. 22). Everything narrows here to a single verb - look. Not achieve, not earn, not understand first; simply turn and look toward the one true God. And the offer goes out to all the ends of the earth - not to Israel only, but to every nation, every corner of the world, every person who will lift their eyes. The God who has spent the chapter insisting there is none else now makes that exclusivity the very ground of the offer: because there is no other God, there is no other place to look for salvation - but also, because He alone is God, His arms are open to the whole earth, and no one is beyond the reach of the call. It is salvation by looking, deliverance held out to anyone who will turn. The same God who names emperors and stretches out the heavens does not hide His salvation behind a high wall; He plants it in the open and cries to the ends of the earth, Look unto me. The simplicity is the mercy. A child can do it. A dying person can do it. To be saved, one must only look to the right place - and He has made unmistakably plain where that is.
Then God binds the future with the strongest pledge He can give: I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear (v. 23). When God swears, there is no greater name to swear by, so He swears by myself - staking His own being on the outcome. The word He speaks goes out in righteousness and shall not return - it will not come back unfulfilled, but will accomplish exactly what it declares. And what it declares is the end of all resistance to God: unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. The invitation of verse 22, Look unto me, and be ye saved, and the oath of verse 23, unto me every knee shall bow, belong together. The looking is offered now, freely, to all; the bowing is certain in the end, for all. Every knee will bow - some gladly, having looked and been saved; others at last, when there is nothing left to do but acknowledge the truth. The chapter closes on those who do look: Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and strength… In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory (vv. 24-25). Those who come to Him find in Him their righteousness and their strength; those incensed against Him are ashamed. The two destinies are set side by side - and between them stands the open door of verse 22.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 45 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Radak side by side - useful for mashiach (v. 1, the “anointed” laid on Cyrus), for the verb bara (vv. 7, 12, 18, the “create” of Genesis 1:1), and for ra in verse 7, the word the KJV renders “evil” that across the Hebrew Bible commonly means calamity, disaster, or adversity.
- Isaiah 45 ↔ Philippians 2 · Romans 14Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 45 to the New Testament - the LORD's oath that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear (v. 23) taken up and applied to Christ in Philippians 2:10-11 and quoted again in Romans 14:11, and the universal call Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth (v. 22) read beside the gospel going out to all nations.
- Isaiah 45 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 45 - the naming of Cyrus as the LORD's anointed in verses 1-4, the much-discussed pairing of “peace” and “evil” in verse 7, the potter-and-clay woes of verses 9-10, and the worldwide reach of the summons in verses 22-23.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Thus Saith the LORD to His Anointed
- Ezra 1:1-2the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia... The LORD God of heaven... hath charged me to build him an house.The commission of verses 1-4 carried out - Cyrus, God’s anointed instrument, freeing the captives to rebuild.
- Deuteronomy 4:35Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him.The same confession as verses 5-6 - the LORD alone is God, there is no other.
- Genesis 1:1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.The creation verb (bara) of verse 7 - the same word for God’s bringing-into-being at the head of Scripture.
- Amos 3:6shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?The sense of verse 7 - the calamity (ra) that befalls a city lies within the LORD’s sovereign ordering.
- Romans 11:36For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever.The truth behind verse 7 - all things, light and dark, flow from and return to the one God.
Woe to Him That Striveth with His Maker
- Romans 9:20-21Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay?The potter-and-clay of verse 9 taken up by Paul - the creature has no standing to indict the Creator.
- 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 same image as verses 9-11 - the people as clay in the hand of the Maker who is also their Father.
- Jeremiah 18:6cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand.The potter’s sovereignty of verse 9 - the LORD’s freedom to shape His people as He wills.
- Romans 3:21-22the righteousness of God... is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.The righteousness rained down in verse 8 - the saving righteousness of God revealed in Christ.
- Psalm 33:6By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.The making of verse 12 - the LORD stretching out the heavens and commanding all their host.
A God That Hidest Thyself, the Saviour
- Matthew 1:23they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.The confession of verse 14, “Surely God is in thee,” answered - God come near in person.
- Hebrews 5:9he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.The everlasting salvation of verse 17 - the eternal salvation authored by Christ.
- Romans 10:11For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.The promise of verse 17, “ye shall not be ashamed,” applied to faith in Christ.
- Genesis 1:28Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.The purpose of verse 18 - the earth formed to be inhabited and filled with life.
- Isaiah 55:6Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.The pledge of verse 19 - the LORD does not bid His people seek Him in vain.
Look Unto Me, and Be Ye Saved
- Philippians 2:9-11That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.The LORD’s oath of verse 23 applied directly to Christ - every knee bowing at the name of Jesus.
- Romans 14:11As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.Verse 23 quoted again - the universal homage that God swore to Himself, owned by all before God.
- John 3:14-15even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.The pattern of verse 22 - salvation for all who simply look to the One lifted up.
- Numbers 21:8-9if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.The look-and-live of verse 22 foreshadowed - the dying saved by turning their eyes to what God appointed.
- 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 exclusive ground of verse 22 - salvation in the one God alone, and in no other name.