Catholic Commentary
Creator and Redeemer: God Raises Up Cyrus in Righteousness
12I have made the earth, and created man on it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens. I have commanded all their army.13I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways straight. He shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward,” says Yahweh of Armies.
Isaiah 45:12–13 presents God as the sole Creator of all things and declares that He has actively summoned Cyrus, the pagan Persian king, to carry out His righteous purpose of liberating Jewish exiles and rebuilding Jerusalem. The passage establishes God's absolute sovereignty over all history and nations, asserting that Cyrus's victories serve God's redemptive plan rather than any Babylonian deity.
God raises up a pagan king to free His people because He alone, as Creator of all things, owns all of history and can conscript any instrument for His purposes of justice.
Isaiah 45:12 — "I have made the earth, and created man on it"
The verse opens with three parallel verbs of divine creative action — making, creating, stretching out (the fuller text of v. 12 includes "My own hands stretched out the heavens"). This is no incidental theological preamble; it is the warrant for everything that follows. Isaiah deliberately reaches back to the language of Genesis 1 to establish that the God who speaks to and about Cyrus is the same God who brought all reality into existence from nothing. The Hebrew verb bārāʾ ("created"), used here as in Genesis 1:1, is reserved in the Hebrew Bible almost exclusively for divine action — it denotes a creative act that no creature can replicate. By invoking it here, the prophet declares that the LORD's sovereignty over Cyrus is not the arbitrary power of a regional deity but the absolute dominion of the one Creator over His entire creation.
The phrase "created man on it" (ādām) is universal in scope. Isaiah is not speaking only of Israel; he is asserting that every human being, including Cyrus, owes his existence to the LORD. This demolishes any theological basis for Cyrus to attribute his victories to Marduk or any Babylonian deity — a claim the historical Cyrus Cylinder actually makes. The prophet is engaged in a direct polemic against the polytheistic cosmologies of the ancient Near East: there is one Creator, and therefore one Sovereign Lord of history.
Isaiah 45:13 — "I have raised him up in righteousness"
The pronoun "him" refers to Cyrus, named explicitly in verse 1 and addressed throughout the oracle. The verb "raised up" (hēʿîrtî, "I have stirred up" or "aroused") carries the sense of God awakening or summoning someone for a specific mission — the same verb used of Cyrus in 41:2 and 45:1. This is not a passive permission but an active divine initiative. God did not merely foresee Cyrus; He prepared, shaped, and moved him.
The key word is ṣeḏeq, "righteousness." In Isaiah's vocabulary, ṣeḏeq is far richer than mere moral rectitude. It denotes covenant faithfulness, right order, salvific justice — it is the quality of God's own action when He acts to restore what is broken and liberate what is captive. God raises Cyrus in or for righteousness: the mission of the pagan king is enrolled into the LORD's own righteous purpose, which is the release of the exiles and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. The remainder of verse 13 (not quoted here but essential context) makes this explicit: "he will build my city and set my exiles free, but not for a price or reward."
The Typological Sense
The Church Fathers, reading these verses through Christ, recognized in Cyrus one of the most striking Old Testament types of the Messiah. Just as Cyrus was "anointed" (the literal meaning of māšîaḥ, applied to Cyrus in 45:1, making him the only non-Israelite given this title in Scripture) by God without his full knowledge to liberate captives without price, so Christ is the true Anointed One who liberates humanity from the captivity of sin — also without price, also by God's initiative, also in righteousness. The connection between creation (v. 12) and redemption (v. 13) is itself typologically profound: the same divine power that brought the world into being from nothing is the power that brings new creation from the ruins of exile — and ultimately from the tomb.
Catholic tradition illuminates these verses with singular depth at three levels.
Creation as the Foundation of Redemption. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "creation is the foundation of all God's saving plans" (CCC 280). Isaiah 45:12 enacts this principle: God's authority to commission Cyrus and to redeem Israel flows directly from His identity as Creator. This is not merely rhetorical — it reflects the ontological reality that the God who makes has an absolute claim on what He has made. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, combating Gnostic dualism, cited precisely this unity of Creator and Redeemer as the heart of orthodox faith: the God of the Old Testament who creates is the same Father revealed by Christ who redeems (Adversus Haereses III.10). There are not two gods, one of creation and one of salvation — there is one LORD, and both acts flow from the same infinite love and power.
God's Freedom in Election. That God raises up a pagan king as His instrument scandalizes any theology that confines divine grace to visible religious boundaries. The Magisterium, drawing on this tradition, affirms that God's salvific will extends to all people (CCC 847; Lumen Gentium 16). Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, noted that the figure of Cyrus points forward to the universality of Christ's redemptive mission — the liberation He accomplishes is for all nations, not Israel alone.
Righteousness as Saving Justice. St. Augustine and the medieval scholastics, particularly St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100), understood divine iustitia not merely as punitive but as the ordered expression of God's love that sets all things right. Isaiah's ṣeḏeq — rendered as dikaiosynē in the LXX — is the same word Paul uses in Romans to describe the righteousness of God revealed in the Gospel (Rom 1:17). The raising up of Cyrus is thus a prefigurement of justification itself: God's righteous action that freely liberates the captive.
Contemporary Catholics live in a world that frequently seems governed by powers indifferent or hostile to faith — secular states, ideological movements, institutions that make no reference to God. Isaiah 45:12–13 offers not a naive optimism but a theologically grounded realism: the Creator who stretched out the heavens is still raising up instruments of His purpose within secular history, sometimes through the most unlikely agents. This should form in us a habit of discernment rather than despair.
Practically, this passage challenges the Catholic tendency to equate God's action only with explicitly religious channels. A doctor who restores health, a politician who advances justice, an artist who awakens wonder — none need name God for their work to participate in His creative and redemptive purpose. Our task is to recognize and cooperate with what God is already doing in the world around us.
It also speaks to personal vocation. "I have raised him up in righteousness" is a word about God's sovereign initiative in each human life. You did not choose the circumstances of your birth, your particular gifts, or the historical moment you inhabit — God has "raised you up" for a purpose woven into His righteous design. The call is to consent, as Cyrus unwittingly enacted what he could not fully understand, so we are invited to do knowingly and freely.