Isaiah 41:25

הַעִירוֹתִי מִצָּפוֹן וַיַּאת מִמִּזְרַח־שֶׁמֶשׁ יִקְרָא בִשְׁמִי וְיָבֹא סְגָנִים כְּמוֹ־חֹמֶר וּכְמוֹ יוֹצֵר יִרְמָס־טִיט׃

25 I have stirred one up from the north, and he comes from the sunrise. He will call on my name. He will come upon rulers as upon clay, just as the potter stomps on shards.

הַעִירוֹתִי מִצָּפוֹן I have stirred one up from the north, הַעִירוֹתִי hifil perfect from עוּר "rouse, awaken" (Mp: a hapax form). This is a metaplastic (changing) form that sometimes appears to be from a root like ערה. The compass-point צָּפוֹן "north" is the direction from which almost all trouble would come to Israel, since armies (Aram, Assyria, Babylon) would travel along the curve of the fertile crescent before descending into Israel and Judah.

וַיַּאת מִמִּזְרַח־שֶׁמֶשׁ and he comes from the sunrise. וַיַּאת is another instance of the poetic verb אָתָה "come" (wal waw-consecutive imperfect). "From rising of the sun" is of course east, which isn't exactly a parallel term for "north" but in context is used in a parallel fashion. The Mp note on וַיַּאת says that it occurs 48 (מֹחֹ) times written with the א not to be read, and this is the only instance of this form. This is another way of describing a qere perpetuum, in which a common word is not marked with a qere but it is always understood (GK §17c).

יִקְרָא בִשְׁמִי He will call on my name. The BHS apparatus suggests reading as a passive nifal, and the Isaiah Scroll 1QIsª has a waw-consecutive imperfect, ויקרא. The LXX has a future passive, κληθήσoνται, which probably reflects the proposed nifal reading, and the Targum has אגברניה בשמי "I will make him strong in my name" (note the root גבר "strong, hero"). These all seem to be attempts to make sense of יִקְרָא. Taking the MT as we have it, the simple qal perfect says "he will call (on my name)," a typical Old Testament phrase for "preach, proclaim the gospel," as we have in Genesis 4:26 and 1 Chron. 16:8: "call on his name, make known among the nations what he has done." Note that the passive of this phrase הַנִּקְרָא בִשְׁמִי is a reference to God's election of believers (Isaiah 43:7).

Is this Cyrus? Cyrus wasn't a true believer, but he allowed the restoration of the people; in fact, humanly speaking he caused the restoration of Israel (cf. 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 and Ezra 1:1-3a). The Lord is the one who "moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia" to accomplish this.

וְיָבֹא סְגָנִים כְּמוֹ־חֹמֶר He will come upon rulers as upon clay, A סָגָן or סֶגֶן is a "ruler" or "governor." The term also occurs in the Aramaic section as סְגַן (Dan. 3:2-3, 27; 6:8) with terms like "king" and "satrap." חֹמֶר is clay or mortar, referred to in Job as a poor building material (Job 4:19; 13:12). The Mp note for וְיָבֹא says that this form occurs eleven times (1 Sam 4:3; Isa 26:2; 41:25; 48:8; Hos 6:3; Ps 24:7; 24:9; Job 21:17; Dan 11:7 [twice] and 11:15).

וּכְמוֹ יוֹצֵר יִרְמָס־טִיט just as the potter stomps on shards. Here the participle יוֹצֵר "former, fashioner" stands for "potter" or some kind of clay worker. He is depicted as treading (יִרְמָס qal imperfect) the "shards." טִיט is a derisive word for useless or broken pieces of clay, like those in Job 41:30 "jagged potsherds" or the semi-moist clay of Malkijah's cistern when Jeremiah was lowered in with ropes (Jer. 38:6). The Mp note for וּכְמוֹ indicates that this form occurs just twice (cp. Gen 19:15).

The speaker is God, who can truthfully say that he himself has delivered the gospel to his people. The warning: False teachers and false prophets are in the world today every bit as much as they were in Isaiah's time. “There were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them” (2 Peter 2:1). The gospel: God’s “divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3).

When people turn away from God, they reject the only path to heaven. Our blessing is that God has set us on the path and he has been merciful to us. Our task is to bring the world along with us. These two things, the blessing and the task, are what we keep in our hearts all the time as we “look forward to the day of God and speed its coming” (2 Peter 3:12). Our sins are forgiven, so we share that message of forgiveness with the world while we still have time.