Cyrus the Shepherd

Israel served as a microcosm of the nations of the world, so the resurrection of the nation from the “deep” of Babylonian exile is described by Isaiah not only in the terms of a “new creation” but also in the tenfold shape of a “new covenant.”

Originally posted in 2014, this analysis has been thoroughly revised and expanded (that is, slain and resurrected) for inclusion in Schema Vol. 4. 

After the persecution and rescue of Daniel at the beginning of the reign of King Cyrus (Daniel 6), the king made his famous decree (Ezra 1) authorizing the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Isaiah had predicted Cyrus by name more than a century before the king’s birth. Daniel would have been familiar with the prophecy, and, along with the other inhabitants of the province of Babylon, must have anticipated the end of Belshazzar’s tyranny.

Following the patterns given to Israel’s greatest shepherds—Moses (Priestly), and David (Kingly)—Isaiah 44:24-45:8 is a literary sequence that presents the building of the Jew-Gentile (Prophetic) oikoumene Temple as a new creation. However, this “new creation” is not structured after the sevenfold pattern that governs the construction of Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6:1-7:51). The pattern here is tenfold, which means that it is related to the architecture of the Ten Words. However, this new “incarnation” of Israel was a “resurrection body,” so the ten stanzas here more likely reflect the ten Table-and-Lampstand pairs in the “multiplied” Holy Place of Solomon’s Temple (a course of mediating priest-kings in the Land), and the ten water chariots in its court (an army of prophets prepared for holy war). So, rather than the forming of the house, this prophecy describes its spiritual filling.

Garden-Sanctuary – Ten Words (God’s command)
Holy Land – Ten Priest-Kings (Man’s obedience)
World Courts – Ten Prophetic Chariots (Rivers of life)

These ten stanzas concerning the ministry of King Cyrus would be the result of the Word on earth rather than the Word itself—bridal rather than Adamic. The same “word-and-response” relationship exists between the Law of Moses and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The latter describes the hearts and deeds of those who responded to the Law in the way that God desired, and were thus blessed rather than cursed in terms of the Covenant Sanctions. But the fact that the Spirit chose this particular form of the Bible Matrix to govern the text reminds us that the true source of the decree of Cyrus was not the citadel of the Persian empire but a higher court, the throne on the mountain of the Lord.¹See the discussion in “The Highest of the Mountains” in Schema Vol. 1.

The parable consists of ten “covenant-shaped” stanzas—five dyads—because it subtly works through the Decalogue.

Forming (Covenant Head)	COVENANT Past, Present, Future	Filling (Covenant Body)
I “I am Yahweh” No other gods	TRANSCENDENCE	II Confounder of the wise No false oaths
III He will raise the Land The Sabbath day	HIERARCHY	IV and rebuild the Temple Honor parents
V The nations subdued No murder	ETHICS	VI The gates opened No adultery
VII Hidden riches No theft	OATH/SANCTIONS	VIII Called by name No false witness
IX Yahweh the Creator No coveting house	SUCCESSION	X Righteous fruit No coveting household

The fivefold covenant sequence works from above, to beside, to below, and thus makes this decree a removal and replacement of the curse that fell upon Israel for the kingdoms’ failure to repent of the idolatry prohibited in the Ten Words.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Exodus 20:4)

So, in liturgical and social terms, this was indeed “a new heavens and a new earth,” a further prefigurement in miniature of the ultimate restoration of the actual cosmos. God had established the tribes of Israel upon the Land of Canaan as a “sacrificial model” of the Noahic nations who inherited the dry land (Genesis 10:25; 1 Chronicles 1:19). This explains why all of the prophets—up to and including Jesus and apostles—used “cosmic language,” that is, images from the physical world, to describe judgments upon the social order.²See Cosmic Language – Part 1 The same relationship—a kind of “quantum entanglement”—existed between the sevenfold physical order in Genesis 1 and the sevenfold social order in Genesis 2.³See Covenant Structure in Genesis 2. The prosperity of the Land (culture, including agriculture) always depends upon faithfulness in the Garden (cultus). The faithfulness of the prophets, including Daniel, in the “heavenly” courts of Babylon was now paying off in a restoration of the Jewish culture. But although this new order was less glorious in a physical sense, it was far wider and much deeper in its social significance and spiritual influence, serving as a kind of “halfway house” between the Old Covenant and the New.⁴For more discussion, see Jeremiah’s New Covenant.

The book of Isaiah speaks of a number of God’s servants, the most famous being the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53. But Cyrus is unique, not only because he was a Gentile (Jeremiah 43:10 refers to Nebuchadnezzar as God’s servant), but also because He was a God-fearer. Following the eras of Moses and David, Israel’s next great shepherd would be a king of kings.

TRANSCENDENCE
Authority: Who is the boss?
I

• The first stanza reverses the process of Creation by beginning with the Man and then creating a new world for him. Lord has already referred to the forming of Israel a number of times in the text by this point. The word has the idea of fashioning something from clay. It is “earthy,” referring to the creation of Adam (1 Corinthians 15:47-49). Israel was “shattered” like Egypt (Jeremiah 18) and a new Israel would be made not from the old broken pieces but from fresh earth.
• The womb is a reference to Israel as God’s firstborn, the Isaac, the Ascension Offering. The literary structure thus lifts Israel up from bondage (in this case Babylon, not Egypt) and places him on the Altar awaiting the holy fire as “breath” from heaven to bring him new life. That is why Yahweh appears again at the center of the stanza as the Lampstand, the burning bush in this Babylonian wilderness (Daniel 5:5).
• In Hebrew, the last line includes the word mayim, which means “waters,” so the final two lines allude to the creation of a new heavens and a new earth. Israel would be a Land washed clean, rising from the “waters” of the other nations once again to mediate on their behalf.

II

• Stanza 2 relates to those who take the Lord’s name in vain, serving Him with their lips but not their hearts. The sequence works through the various human offices which flow from the throne of God, a microcosm of covenant history.
• The frustrating of idle talk carries the idea of cutting lies in half, alluding to despatching serpents in the Sanctuary. The mention of diviners as opposed to priests reminds us that seizing God’s gifts in order to evade obeying His commands is considered to be sorcery. All those who desire knowledge without submission to God will be sent a “strong delusion” that confuses their plans and hastens their doom. The word “mad” literally means “to shine.” It carries the idea of a false glory, of boasting, which ties it to the “shiny” beast that bewitched Eve in Eden. In Arabic it also has the connotation of moonlight, and thus a nocturnal half-light. In Matthew 17:15, the demoniac boy is described as “moonstruck” (selēniazetai). The English word for these diviners is lunatics.
• Following the wisdom desired by kings, the word “knowledge” in line 5 is the word used in Genesis 2:9, referring to moral knowledge, the sound judgment of a prophet.
• Those who obey God from the heart will speak the truth, and they will be vindicated by God’s blessing upon their exploits. The final line refers to the commissioning of the saints among the nations at the end of the Old Covenant era, just as it is in the conclusion of the weekly Christian liturgy.
• The stanza also works as three smaller fivefold sentences.

HIERARCHY
Delegation: Whom has the boss put in charge?
III

• The commandments concerning the Sabbath and honoring parents relate to the curses upon the Land and the womb, that is, Adam and Eve. This “Land” stanza describes the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the cities of Judea as a new “dry land” rising from the Gentile “Sea.”
• The text works through the heptateuch but the poet cleverly uses the eightfold pattern of the Tabernacle to provide a fourfold “word-and-response” structure. The Hebrew word “built up” in line 4 (banah) sounds like the Hebrew word for sons. The same pun used in Genesis 16:2, when Sarai plans to use Hagar to “build” the household of Abraham, and also in Genesis 30:3 when Rachel suggests that Jacob sleep with her handmaid Bilhah. These all relate to Eve, later named the mother of all living, being “constructed” like a city in Genesis 2:22, which uses the same Hebrew word.
• The placement of “I will raise up” corresponds to the bridal “resurrection” theme of step 5 in the Bible Matrix.
• Ezekiel speaks of the nations conquered by Babylon as testifying from the deep. Israel was the only nation of the old order which would rise again, although in a different, more glorious and prophetic form. Thus, the last two lines allude once again to the waters below and the waters above, drying the land to bring an end to the Babylonian “flood.”

IV

• The combined “Land and womb” stanza mentions a priestly shepherd (a he) and a holy city (a she), a reminder of the roles of Abel and Cain. In Revelation 21, “the wife of the Lamb,” is the Church, the ultimate “new Jerusalem” comes down from above, a spiritual city whose light is the Lamb of God.
  

  And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. (Revelation 21:22-25)

  Isaiah is obviously working through the same pattern since the next stanza also describes kings and gates.

• Notice that the word “built up” is now in the Trumpets line, speaking of grown sons who are united as a holy host. The natural was raised up first (roots), then the spiritual (fruits), corresponding to the two altars in the Tabernacle.

ETHICS
Service: What do we have to do?
V

• The two central stanzas relate to the “kingly” sins of the flesh—murder and adultery. In contrast to murderous kings like Lamech, Cyrus would use the sword in his right hand as a tool of emancipation, a God-given means of justice.
• As in the previous stanza, where “all my pleasure he shall perform” refers to a lamb-priest who is worthy to rule as a lion-king, that position at the right hand of the Father is now made more obvious. The final fulfillment is, of course, the enthronement of Christ in Revelation 5.
  

  And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. (Revelation 5:3-4)

  Likewise, faithful Cyrus would “open the scroll” of a new covenant and bring a swift end to the lamentations of Israel.

• The double doors in line 6 relate to the freeing of the Israelite cultus (the Temple, where God judges), and the gates in line 7 relate to the freeing of the Israelite culture (the city, where Man judges).

VI

• How does this stanza relate to the sin of adultery? The “high places” are the idolatrous courts of self-exalting men, and the gates and bars of a city speak of “impregnable” rule, so this sequence—which works through the dominion pattern, alluding to the pillar of cloud in the wilderness—deals with the “intermarriage” between corrupt Adamic worship and corrupt Evian culture (Genesis 6). In that sense, Cyrus’ work was akin to the act of Phinehas in Numbers 25.
• Notice the progression from the cloud on the mountain to the bronze of Israel to the iron of the Gentiles. This is a veiled allusion to God coming down to judge Belshazzar’s Babel—tower and city.

OATH/SANCTIONS
Vindication: What do we get if we succeed?
VII

• The Word prohibiting theft related to Adam’s stealing of the “kingly” fruit in the Garden. What would have been given to him freely as a blessing at the hand of God was turned into a curse. The reigns of David and Solomon demonstrated that the riches of wisdom lead to the treasures of kingdom. But due to idolatry, the Lord had removed the kings of Israel and put His people in the charge of world emperors, that is, under a higher court. The faith of Cyrus before God had resulted in him being given not only discernment in the case of Daniel, but also the authority to gather the materials required to build a new temple. James Jordan writes:
  

  Cyrus is presented as a new and greater David, who gets the people organized to build the Temple. He provides material for them to build it. Then the building project is stopped, because of the sins of the people, just as David, for his own sins, was not allowed to build the Temple. The next significant king is Darius the Great… Darius is a new Solomon in that he gets the Temple built, he gets the walls of the new “holy city” built (which extend the walls of the Temple to the whole city), and his love of a bride is celebrated in a book, like Song of Songs.”⁵James B. Jordan, “Rethinking the Order of the Old Testament,” Biblical Horizons No. 80. It is worth noting that the same Persian king is named Darius, Ahasuerus, and Artaxerxes in the books of … Continue reading

• The location of “secret places” alludes to the work of the king in discerning truth—and the hidden hearts of men.
  

  It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. As the heavens for height, and the earth for depth, so the heart of kings is unsearchable. (Proverbs 25:2)

VIII

• The law against “false witness” prohibited an Israelite from committing perjury in order to bring curses down upon the innocent. This is what happened at the trial of Jesus. The point here seems to be that God has not only predicted the work of a future king but also testified of his name, which is unusual. The Persian name (Kūrush) may mean “far-sighted,” so revealing it this early might be a play on the name on God’s part, as well as a testimony to His complete sovereignty over human history.
• The mention of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, begins the theme of naming in the stanza. In legal terms, Cyrus would “stand in the gap” as an advocate for those in bondage.

SUCCESSION
Reunion: What is next?
IX

• The final two stanzas describe the “house and contents” of the world as things which belong to God and thus must not be coveted. The “house” stanza is about forming, in both creational and legal senses, and the “contents” stanza is all about filling the world with fruit—primarily the fruits of the Spirit. The Lord describes Himself as the ultimate judge who has the power over life and death. Notice the two-edged sword (redemption and vengeance) in the Conquest line.

IX

• God would bring a “Great Flood” upon the Land to consume all nations. However, He would open the windows of heaven once again to pour out a blessing instead of a curse. The final stanza describes a “new heavens and earth” in terms of sacrifice, like the Ascension Offering in Leviticus 1, but a sacrifice of praise instead of a sacrifice of blood.

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