The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

by Karen Armstrong

Second Isaiah believed that the historic reversals of his time would enable both Israel and the foreign nations “to know that I am Yahweh.”50 These words recur again and again. This new exercise of divine power would show everybody who Yahweh was and what he could do. Motivated entirely by the desire to help his people, he had inspired the career of Cyrus, caused an international, worldwide political revolution, and cast down the mighty empire of Babylon. When Israel returned home, Yahweh would transform the wilderness into a lake, and plant cedars, acacias, myrtles, and olives to delight his people on their homeward journey. Could any other deity match this? No, Yahweh declared scornfully to the gods of the goyim, “you are nothing, and your works are nothingness.” Nobody in their right mind would worship them.51 Yahweh had annihilated the other deities and become in effect the only God, his vitality in sharp contrast with the lifeless, inanimate effigies of the Babylonian deities.52 “I am Yahweh, unrivalled,” he announced proudly. “There is no other god besides me.”53 This is the first unequivocal biblical assertion of monotheism, the belief that only one God exists.