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Jews put upon the words, and which was not corrected either by the Lord or by the
Evangelist.
We have already drawn attention to the fact that the normal rules of grammar were
broken by Moses when he construed a singular verb with a plural noun in writing
Gen. 1: 1. Here again, in John 8:, the subject is beyond the experience, the logic, or
the language of man to express. Had the Saviour merely meant His hearers to understand
that He was born before Abraham, a claim that of itself would be impossible to any
ordinary man, he would have been obliged to use the past tense of the verb, saying
"Before Abraham was, I WAS", but to say, "Before Abraham was, I AM" does not make
sense if uttered by an ordinary man. Here, the choice of words, ego eimi points to the
Deity of the Speaker. Can we imagine John the Baptist using any other language than
that recorded in John 1: 30 "He was before me".
Referring once again to Isa. 43: 10 we continue the subject of the witness of
Jehovah:
"Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me." The
immediate context of these words places `no strange god' over against `no God formed',
and in Isa. 44: 10 speaks of one `who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image'.
Calvin says of the words "Before Me there was no God formed"--`This contains a kind
of irony, as if it had been said that there was no other god that had not been made and
formed by mortals'. Had the passage stayed there, no difficulty would have presented
itself but it continues `neither shall there be after Me'. If this is taken to mean, that after
the revelation given by and through Isaiah, no one would ever make an idol any more, it
is manifestly untrue. Again, it does not say "After" a revelation, etc., but "After Me".
The full sentence therefore is:
"Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall (there) be (a god formed) after Me."
The Hebrew word yatsar `to form' is found 4 times in Isa. 43::
"He that formed thee, O Israel." "Every one that is called by My name . . . . . I have
formed him", "This people have I formed for Myself; they shall shew forth My praise"
(Isa. 43: 1, 7, 21).
From Isa. 44: 2 and 24 we discover that this word `form' can refer to child birth,
and before any of these lines were written Isaiah had uttered the great Messianic
prophecy:
"For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be
upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty
God, The everlasting Father (lit. The Father of the Ages), the Prince of Peace" (Isa. 9: 6).
"A child BORN . . . . . The MIGHTY GOD (El Gibbor Hebrew). Were such
momentous words written before or since? There can be no possible doubt as to the
intention of Isaiah here, or possibility of watering down this extraordinary revelation,
for in the next chapter the same prophet who had revealed the glorious mystery of the
First Advent, takes us to the Second Advent, and uses the same title: