Isaiah 45:1

XLV.

(1) To his anointed... — The name is none other than the Messiah, the Christ, with which we are familiar, here and here only applied to a heathen king. It has to be remembered that the words had not yet received the special application given to it in Daniel 9:26, and had been used of the theocratic kings, of Saul (1 Samuel 26:9; 1 Samuel 26:11; 1 Samuel 26:16), of the house of David (2 Samuel 22:51; 2 Samuel 23:1), and of the patriarch Abraham (Psalms 105:15). What is meant, therefore, is that Cyrus, the future deliverer, would be as truly a king “by the grace of God” as David had been, not only, like Nebuchadnezzar, “a servant of Jehovah” (Jeremiah 27:6; Jeremiah 43:10), but “fulfilling all his pleasure,” whom He grasps by the right hand and guides.

I will loose the loins. — Literally, I will ungird, either as a general symbol of weakening, or specifically for disarming, the sword being suspended from the girdle. The “two-leaved gates” are those of kingly palaces; the “gates,” those of cities, which will have to open to him. The words here, and in the next verse, may have been used with a special reference to the “hundred brazen gates” of Babylon (Herod. i. 179).