Isaiah 41:1

XLI.

(1) O islands. — See Note on Isaiah 40:15.

Let the people renew their strength... — The same phrase as in Isaiah 40:31, but here, perhaps, with a touch of irony. The heathen are challenged to the great controversy, and will need all their “strength” and “strong reasons” if they accept the challenge. In what follows we have to think of the prophet as having, like Balaam, a vision of what shall come to pass in the “latter days” (Numbers 24:20), and seeing not only the forms of the old empires on their way to Hades, as in Isaiah 14:9, but the appearance on the scene of the new conqueror.