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"She was delivered of a man-child" (Isa. 66: 7).
"Carried" (nasa). This word occurs several hundred times in the O.T. Scriptures, with
the meaning to bear, lift up or take away:
"Surely He hath borne our griefs . . . . . He bare the sin of many" (Isa. 53: 4 and 12).
There are however at least two occasions where this word is used in connection with
child-birth:
"Which are carried from the womb" (Isa. 46: 3).
"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that Thou shouldest say
unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child"
(Numb. 11: 12).
"I have made, and I will bear" (Isa. 46: 4).
It is written of the Lord, that He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be
satisfied. He not only brings to the birth, He carries all the day long, and will finally
accomplish all His pleasure. The key thought seems to be in the words:
"I have made and I will bear."
We must leave the reader to use this material while we pass on to other matters that
await our investigation.
Before we quite leave this passage which opens with the bowing down of Bel and the
stooping of Nebo, it may be well to remember that there are indications in other parts of
Scripture of this attitude of the Lord to the gods of the nations. Let us consider two such
examples.
At the Passover and the Exodus from Egypt, the Lord said:
"I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt, both man and beast: and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute
judgment" (Exod. 12: 12).
When the Philistines took the Ark of the Lord, and put it in the house of their god,
Dagon, we read:
"Behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the Ark of the Lord . . . . .
and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold:
only the stump of Dagon was left to him" (I Sam. 5: 3, 4).
Such, coupled with the bowing of Bel and the stooping of Nebo set forth the
overthrow at long last of every false hope and every usurpation of the Only wise God.
As we read this forty-sixth chapter of Isaiah we pass from the Almighty's ability to
`make and to bear', from birth to hoar hairs, to the extraordinary foreknowledge of this
same Almighty God, manifestly in prophecy: