None Can Snatch Them from His Hand

… from his hands the one he has once taken hold of. 'For there is no one,' he says, 'who can deliver out of my hands. I will act, and who will turn it back?' (Isaiah 43:13). For I have brought about the calling of the nations, he says, that is, I have saved those who were going astray. And who will change this, or rather alter it so that it is not so?

That no one will snatch from the hand of God those whom he has saved, the Savior himself assures us when he says: 'My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand' (John 10:27–29). This is plainly what is written: 'There is no one who can deliver out of my hands.'

'Thus says the Lord God who redeems you, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I will send to Babylon, and I will rouse up all who flee, and the Chaldeans will be bound in ships' (Isaiah 43:14).

In the words we have just read he has woven no mean exhortation for those called from the nations to the knowledge of him. He has shown that he alone has knowledge of the things at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end, and indeed that apart from him there is no one at all who can save. Having set faith firmly in them by these words, he now turns his words to those of the blood of Israel, and tries to assure them that he is all-powerful and a worker of wonders, and that the natures of things yield to his nod. The very elements of the world serve him, and whatever he wills is brought to pass without fail, with nothing standing in its way.

For it was necessary, truly necessary, that those of Israel should have the fullest enlightenment, and the exhortations and reminders that would settle them in firmness of mind, since they had slipped into what is unlawful, and, inclining to other gods, had sacrificed to idols and to the host of heaven, as it is written (compare Acts 7:41–42; Jeremiah 19:13). So he foretells to them what will be, and very skillfully reveals beforehand the misfortunes of the Babylonians. He shows in advance that they themselves will be taken captive by the Babylonians, but he also proclaims in advance, as I said, that the Babylonians will suffer the most shameful things of all because of them.

Since the word addressed to them concerned the greatest matters, he must show the incomparable glory of his power and the surpassing greatness of his strength, saying: 'Thus says the Lord God who redeems you, the Holy One of Israel' (Isaiah 43:14). For to bring them to remember the things of old, I mean those connected with the redemption from Egypt, when a great multitude of wonders bore witness to his …