Isaiah 43 Bible study: I have called you by your name

The chapter opens, "But now the LORD who created you, Jacob, and he who formed you, Israel, says: “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine." (43:1) (tap created, formed, redeemed). Created is bara', the verb of "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1), and formed is yatsar, the verb of "The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7). Here they are said of Jacob, and the LORD says them again of "everyone who is called by my name": "whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed, yes, whom I have made" (43:7). The Hebrew Bible has create, form and make together in one verse only four times: 43:7, 45:7, 45:18 and Amos 4:13. He calls himself "the Creator of Israel" (43:15), and Israel "the people which I formed for myself, that they might declare my praise" (43:21). Here is what almost everyone misses: formed comes once more, in "Before me there was no God formed, neither will there be after me" (43:10). Israel was formed; no God was.

Isaiah 43:10→leads toJohn 13:19

The chapter asks of the nations, "Who among them can declare this, and show us former things?" (Isaiah 43:9). Then the LORD says to his hearers, "You are my witnesses" (Isaiah 43:10), "that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am he" (Isaiah 43:10), and "I have declared, I have saved, and I have shown" (Isaiah 43:12). The chapter before has "I tell you about them before they come up" (Isaiah 42:9), and a later one, "before it came to pass I showed it to you" (Isaiah 48:5). At supper (John 13:2), after Jesus had quoted the Scripture "He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me" (John 13:18), words the chapter on Psalm 41 follows, he said, "From now on, I tell you before it happens, that when it happens, you may believe that I am he" (John 13:19), and a little after, "one of you will betray me" (John 13:21). Jesus doesn't name Isaiah, and no New Testament verse quotes Isaiah 43:10, so setting the two side by side is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, telling beforehand so that those who hear may believe "that I am he", not on the words alone. Some hear the LORD's words of Isaiah 43:10 in Jesus's "that I am he". Others read John 13:19 in its own setting, of what Jesus had just said beforehand about the one who would betray him (John 13:18, 13:21), without Isaiah. Neither reading says that John names Isaiah.

גָּאַלga'alsay ga-AL

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "redeem, act as kinsman". Strong's: "to redeem (according to the Oriental law of kinship), i.e. to be the next of kin". "Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you" (43:1), and "The LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel says" (43:14). Isaiah has this verb 23 times in Hebrew; its first is "but the redeemed will walk there" (Isaiah 35:9), and the chapter on Isaiah 41 follows it from the book's first Redeemer (Isaiah 41:14). The form of 43:1, I have redeemed you, is in one other verse: "Return to me, for I have redeemed you" (Isaiah 44:22).