Isaiah 42:8 and Glory Not Shared

Asked on Quora: What is the meaning of Isaiah 42:8?

Isaiah 42:8 can be taken at face value.

I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images. (NASB)

Unfortunately, certain churches tack onto it meanings that violate the context. Those must be addressed.

There are sects that make a big deal about God’s name. The Hebrew Roots movement makes a fuss over saying Jesus’s name in Hebrew or Aramaic, and the Watchtower (Jehovah’s Witnesses) make a fuss over God’s name being Jehovah.

But Christianity is not a religion of sorcery that ascribes magical power to words and their pronunciation. The term Jehovah is a great example.

The word translated LORD is the Hebrew word YHWH. The letters are all consonants. The Hebrew had no vowels.

Compounding the problem of the Hebrew word lacking vowels, Jews were forbidden from pronouncing it, for it was too holy; so the original pronunciation is lost to time. The majority of scholars believe it was pronounced Yahweh. Notice that the W is pronounced as in Water, not like the V in Victor.

A few centuries before Christ, instead of saying YHWH, Jews would substitute Adonai, which means Lord. Fast forward a thousand years, let Roman Catholic monks substitute J for Y and V for H to make it compatible with Latin, and add the vowels from Adonai to make JHVH pronounceable, and then let the first printed English Bible transliterate the word into Jehovah instead of translating it, and you’ve got a new “name” for God. And that new name is what some people are making such a big deal about.

Ironically — or hypocritically — the Jehovah’s Witnesses spend a lot of effort to reject all things Catholic, yet base their whole message on this Roman Catholic twisting of a word.

Most experienced Bible readers understand that LORD (in all caps) represents YHWH. The word means self-existent one or I AM. In Genesis 3:15, the NASB translates the word instead of substituting LORD Jewish style or the twisted pronunciation Jehovah. At the burning bush, Moses had asked God whom he should say sent Him to the Israelites in Egypt.

• God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

Why a descriptive name?

• No god created God, so there was nobody to name Him.
• There is no higher power with authority to give God a name.
• There is no need to distinguish the God who IS from all those other gods who ARE NOT.

Can you see why the meaning, and not the pronunciation, is what’s important? Any movement or sect that makes a big deal about the right “name” (which isn’t even the original Hebrew word) is heading in the wrong direction.

Hebrew scriptures frequently use a form of parallelism in which an idea is restated from a different perspective. You already saw that:

• I am the LORD,
  that is My name

The rest of the verse does the same thing.

• I will not give My glory to another,
  Nor My praise to graven images.

The two statements dovetail; you cannot separate them because they state the same thing from different perspectives.

This theme runs throughout scriptures, from the Ten Commandments… 

• You shall have no other gods before Me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…. (Exodus 20:3–4)

to the gospels, where Jesus claimed to be God:

• Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM." (John 8:58)

The Jews understood Jesus’s claim. Therefore, they took up stones to stone Him for blasphemy (verse 59).

• Tangent:  Roman Catholic lists of the Ten Commandments skip the prohibition against making likenesses and serving them. When you point it out, Catholics rely on the technicality that their images are not graven and that the weasel-word venerate is not the word worship. Graven images, however, generalizes to any likeness. I’d like to know how they carve out wooden and marble statues without graving them. And if praising, burning candles to, leaving offerings for, and praying to people through icons is not worshiping, nothing is.)

Certain sects have a difficult time accepting that One God can be three Persons. The Latter Day Saints (Mormons) demote Jesus to a child of the Father, born on another planet, and brother to the devil.

Oneness Pentecostals make out the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be One Person who, like a quick-change artist, changes personas and deceives us, by praying to himself, into thinking the Son is not the Father.

The Jehovah Witnesses demote Jesus to an angel who became or will become “a god.”

Argument from Science

Einstein showed that mass, energy, time, and space interrelate, and astronomy and physics show that the universe had a beginning. From this, we learn several ways that modern science confirms Bible claims that have stumped sects and heretics for millennia:

• If, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, then God must have created time and space.
• If God has creative power over space, then He can be omnipresent. He “stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in” ( Isaiah 40:22).
• If God has creative power over time, then He can know the future. Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done… (Isaiah 46:10).
• If God has creative power over time and space, then He can be omniscient. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13).
• If God has creative power over time and space, then He can enter His creation as three Persons.

It took nearly two thousand years for science to catch up with the Bible’s claims that:

• There has been, is, and ever will be, exactly one God.
  (Before Me there was no God formed, Nor shall there be after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, And besides Me there is no savior (Isaiah 43:10–11). This eliminates Jesus becoming “a” god or even the Savior, if the Trinity is false. Sorry, JWs and Mormons!)
• The Father is God
• The Son / Christ / Jesus is God
• The Holy Spirit is God
• The Father is not the Son
• The Son is not the Holy Spirit
• The Father is not the Holy Spirit 

To be precise, science does not teach the Trinity, but it shows that the tri-une God is possible. For learning about the Trinity, we turn not to science, but rather to God’s revelation of Himself.

Back to Isaiah 42:8: Others claim that the verse disproves the Trinity (that is, the “tri-une” nature of God), but they err. Badly. If the three Person are one God, then the sharing of glory, worship, or divinity among those Persons does not contradict the verse at all. 

Argument from Creation

Let’s back up to verse 5. (By the way, read the context. It’s a beautiful prophecy about Jesus!)

• Thus says God the LORD,
  Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
  Who spread out the earth and its offspring,
  Who gives breath to the people on it
  And spirit to those who walk in it,

Compare it to Isaiah 44:24:

• Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, "I, the LORD, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself And spreading out the earth all alone…

…and then compare it to John 1:3, which says of Jesus:

• All things came into being through Him [the Word], and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being

and Colossians 1:16–17:

• By Him [the Son] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (*) (See also Hebrews 1:2.)

So, within the immediate context of Isaiah 42:8, we have a claim that YHWH is the Creator, yet the same is claimed of Christ elsewhere. If the Trinity is a correct model, then the claims do not contradict. But if the Trinity is false and Christ was merely an archangel or a son born on another planet, then Isaiah 42:8 is false.

• Tangent: Colossians 1:15 uses the word firstborn. Those who deny Christ’s divinity ignorantly jump on that word to show that He was a born or created person. They do this despite the statement immediately following and the statement in John, which say that all created things were created by Him.
  
  They also do this in ignorance of the meaning of firstborn. The word does not mean first one born; it means preeminent one. If you trace the word throughout the Bible you will find that the word often applies to a leader even though he came later in the birth order. For example, as Israel devolved, different tribes bore the title firstborn at different times because God had reassigned leadership. Thus, the meaning indicates preeminence and does not indicate that Christ was created.

Argument from Shared Worship

Look at Isaiah 42:8 again. Glory received from man means worshipful praise, honor, and thanksgiving. Note the Hebrew poetic construction, using parallelism to repeat the same thought. I AM does not share His glory. And yet, Jesus never refused worship.

• After coming into the house they [the magi or “Wise Men”] saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. (Matthew 2:11).
• After Jesus walked across the lake, those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, "You are certainly God's Son!" (Matthew 14:33).
• Upon seeing the scars of the crucifixion in the resurrected Jesus, Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28)
• The Father Himself says, "And let all the angels of God worship Him [Jesus]” (Hebrews 1:6).

and the epistles predict universal worship of Jesus:

• [A]t the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10–11). Notice that glorifying Christ glorifies the Father. Also notice that Christ shares the title of Lord with the Father.
• In John’s vision, he saw a multitude of angels and saints saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing." (Revelation 5:12)

Argument from Shared Glory

You already saw evidence of Jesus sharing glory with the Father (Revelation 5:12). Jesus Himself claimed to share the Father’s glory, praying:

• Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was… Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:5, 24). 

(See also Hebrews 1:3.)  Note that Jesus’s words reinforces the argument from creation, as well.

Argument from God's Mouth

Even God calls Christ, “God.”

• But of the Son He says, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom. (Hebrews 1:8)

If the Trinity is false, then either Isaiah 42:8 is false, or Jesus, the angels, the saints in heaven, and His followers on earth were all blasphemers, and numerous passages throughout the scriptures are false. But if the scriptures are true, and Isaiah 42:8 is true then the Trinity has to be true. 

The Trinity is the only model of the relationships between God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that explains all the scripture’s claims. And since the three Persons are One God, their sharing of glory and worship is not an issue.

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Since I posted the bulk of this on Quora, I can't copyright it. But I will ask that credit be given where credit is due.