Isaiah 41 · a question people ask
Who is the one raised up "from the east" (41:2)?
The chapter doesn't name him. It asks, "Who has raised up one from the east? Who called him to his feet in righteousness?" (41:2), and says, "He hands over nations to him and makes him rule over kings" (41:2). Then it says who raised him: "I, the LORD, the first, and with the last, I am he" (41:4). Later the LORD says it again: "I have raised up one from the north, and he has come, from the rising of the sun, one who calls on my name" (41:25). In Hebrew raised up is the same verb in 41:2 and 41:25, and 41:2's east and 41:25's rising are one word, mizrach. What the chapter presses is not his name but who raised him and who said so first: "Who has declared it from the beginning, that we may know?" (41:26). These notes don't name him, and they don't set other passages beside these verses to do so.
The verses
“Who has raised up one from the east? Who called him to his feet in righteousness? He hands over nations to him and makes him rule over kings. He gives them like the dust to his sword, like the driven stubble to his bow. He pursues them and passes by safely, even by a way that he had not gone with his feet. Who has worked and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last, I am he.””
““I have raised up one from the north, and he has come, from the rising of the sun, one who calls on my name, and he shall come on rulers as on mortar, and as the potter treads clay. Who has declared it from the beginning, that we may know? and before, that we may say, ‘He is right’? Surely, there is no one who declares. Surely, there is no one who shows. Surely, there is no one who hears your words.”