Isaiah 46 · a question people ask
Who is speaking in this chapter?
The chapter never says "says the LORD", and the WEB has no "the LORD" in it at all. It opens quotation marks at 46:3, "Listen to me, house of Jacob" (46:3), and opens them again at 46:5 and 46:8, as it does when one speech runs on into a new paragraph, and it closes none before the chapter ends. The speaker says who he is: "for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me" (46:9). He speaks of "my counsel" (46:10), and of "my salvation" and "my glory" (46:13). Verses 1-2 stand outside the quotation marks, and they speak to an unnamed "you": "The things that you carried around are heavy loads" (46:1). The chapter doesn't say who that "you" is, and these notes don't either.
The verses
“Bel bows down. Nebo stoops. Their idols are carried by animals, and on the livestock. The things that you carried around are heavy loads, a burden for the weary. They stoop and they bow down together. They could not deliver the burden, but they have gone into captivity. “Listen to me, house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, that have been carried from their birth, that have been carried from the womb.”
““To whom will you compare me, and consider my equal, and compare me, as if we were the same?”
““Remember this, and show yourselves men. Bring it to mind again, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. I say: My counsel will stand, and I will do all that I please.”
“I bring my righteousness near. It is not far off, and my salvation will not wait. I will grant salvation to Zion, my glory to Israel.”