- Name 60 of 70Thy Saviour
- HebrewMoshi'ekh
- In plain wordsThe One who rescues you and sets you free
- Where to find itIsaiah 43:3 and 43:11, a word to Israel in exile
Thy Saviour is a title God gave Himself in Isaiah 43:3, where He says For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour
. Thy is simply the old word for your. The Hebrew is Moshi'ekha, "your Savior," built on a verb that means to set free or bring out into the open. God was speaking to people who badly needed rescue, and He made the rescue personal.
A courtroom for captives
The later chapters of Isaiah speak to God's people as captives of Babylon. In Isaiah 43:14 God even names the city He will bring down for their sake. Jerusalem had fallen. Many of its people lived as strangers in a foreign land. Every power they had leaned on had let them down.
Isaiah 43 opens with comfort: Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine
(Isaiah 43:1). Then it turns into a kind of trial. God calls all the nations together and dares their gods to bring witnesses who can explain the past or predict the future (Isaiah 43:9). No one speaks up.
Then God turns to His own tired, defeated people and says something no one expected:
Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.
Isaiah 43:10
A witness is someone who saw something and can tell what happened. The captives did not look like strong evidence. But they were the ones God had rescued before, and He meant to rescue them again. Their story would be His proof. The next verse gives His testimony in a single line:
I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
Isaiah 43:11
Many saviors, and then only one
Israel's history was full of human rescuers. In the days of the judges, the people would fall into trouble, cry out, and God would raise up a leader to fight for them. Nehemiah later looked back on those years in a prayer: thou gavest them saviours, who saved them out of the hand of their enemies
(Nehemiah 9:27). Each of those leaders brought a season of peace. Then the judge died, and the people slid right back into trouble (Judges 2:18 to 19).
Human saviors were real, but they were temporary. They could win a battle. They could not change a heart, and they could not live forever. By the time of the exile, even the kings were gone. That is why the words beside me there is no saviour
landed so hard. God was not taking away a rescue. He was pointing to the only rescue that would last.
Moshia and yasha: open space
The Hebrew word for savior is moshia. It comes from the verb yasha, to save. Strong's lexicon, a standard word list for the King James Bible, says the root sense of yasha is to be open, wide or free, and from there, to be safe. In other words, to be saved is to be let out of a tight place.
That fits the way the Bible describes trouble. A person in danger is often pictured as hemmed in, squeezed or trapped. Being rescued feels like stepping out into room to breathe. David put it this way after God saved him from his enemies: He brought me forth also into a large place
(Psalm 18:19).
In Isaiah 43:3 the word carries an ending that means "your." God was not offering salvation in general. He was saying, I am your Savior, the one who will bring you out.
The same root runs through some of the most familiar names in the Bible. The name Joshua is built from it, and so is the name Jesus, which is the Greek form of Joshua. When the angel told Joseph what to name Mary's son, he gave the reason in plain words: for he shall save his people from their sins
(Matthew 1:21).
Key King James verses about God as Saviour
Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.
Isaiah 45:21
To declare is to announce. God says He alone told the future ahead of time, and He alone is both fair and able to save.
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
Isaiah 45:22
The very next verse opens the door to the whole world. The rescue is not just for one nation. All anyone has to do is look to Him.
Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.
Hosea 13:4
Hosea reminds Israel that God had been their Savior since the day He brought them out of Egypt. He did not become their rescuer late in the story.
They forgat God their saviour, which had done great things in Egypt;
Psalm 106:21
Forgat is an old spelling of forgot. This psalm shows how easy it is to forget the One who saved you once the danger is past.
Putting down your backup saviors
Most of us have something we lean on to rescue us. It might be money, grades, a relationship, being popular, staying busy, or a habit that numbs the pain. These things can give a little relief for a while, just like the judges did. Then they let us down, and we are back where we started.
God's words in Isaiah 43 are not a scolding. They are good news. You can stop asking a person, a paycheck or a phone to carry a weight only God can carry. You can also stop trying to be someone else's savior. Many parents, friends and spouses wear themselves out trying to fix a person they love. You can love them and pray for them without pretending you are their rescuer.
Think about the people in Isaiah 43 one more time. They were not strong or successful. Many of them had wandered far from God, and some of their trouble was their own fault. God did not wait for them to clean up before He called Himself their Savior. He spoke to them where they were, in a foreign land, and promised to bring them out. If you feel like you have made too big a mess to be rescued, that is exactly the kind of person this title was spoken to.
There is also a role for you in this name. The exiles were called God's witnesses. A witness does not need a speech or a degree. A witness just tells what happened.
- Be honest about what you run to when you feel scared or empty, and tell God you want Him to be your Savior instead.
- Look back over your life and name one time God brought you out of a tight place.
- Share that story with one person this week, simply and without pressure.
- Read Isaiah 43:1 to 13 out loud, slowly.
Isaiah sometimes paired this title with Redeemer, the name just before it in the book. The next name, My Light and My Salvation, uses a word from the same family. You can see more names like these on the names of God in the Bible page.
