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    so that all may know, from the rising of the sun
    to its setting, that there is none besides me.[a]
I am the Lord, there is no other.
    I form the light, and create the darkness,
I make weal and create woe;[b]
    I, the Lord, do all these things.
Let justice descend, you heavens, like dew from above,
    like gentle rain let the clouds drop it down.
Let the earth open and salvation bud forth;
    let righteousness spring up with them![c]
    I, the Lord, have created this.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 45:6 The nations will come to know that Israel’s God is the only God; cf. also vv. 20–25.
  2. 45:7 Create woe: God created and controls all aspects of creation (light and darkness, order and chaos).
  3. 45:8 The Vulgate rendering gave a messianic sense to this verse, using “just one” and “savior” in place of “justice” and “salvation,” phraseology taken over in the Advent liturgy, e.g., the “Rorate coeli.”

18     For thus says the Lord,
The creator of the heavens,
    who is God,
The designer and maker of the earth
    who established it,
Not as an empty waste[a] did he create it,
    but designing it to be lived in:
I am the Lord, and there is no other.

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Footnotes

  1. 45:18 Empty waste: an allusion to Gn 1:2, where the earth is waste and void; the same Hebrew word, tohu, is used in both passages. Here it points to devastated Judah and Jerusalem, where God wishes to resettle the returning exiles.

21 Come close and declare;
    let them take counsel together:
Who announced this from the beginning,
    declared it from of old?
Was it not I, the Lord,
    besides whom there is no other God?
    There is no just and saving God but me.

22 Turn to me and be safe,
    all you ends of the earth,
    for I am God; there is no other!
23 By myself I swear,
    uttering my just decree,
    a word that will not return:
To me every knee shall bend;
    by me every tongue shall swear,(A)
24 Saying, “Only in the Lord
    are just deeds and power.
Before him in shame shall come
    all who vent their anger against him.
25 In the Lord all the descendants of Israel
    shall have vindication and glory.”

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