Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.
Let your thoughts be turned to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth: for when he was but one, my voice came to him, and I gave him my blessing, and made him a great people.
Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.
Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him, and made him many.
I called him alone - As I have made out of one a great nation; so, although ye are brought low and minished, yet I can restore you to happiness, and greatly multiply your number.
Look unto Abraham - What was figuratively expressed in the former verse is here expressed literally. They were directed to remember that God had taken Abraham and Sarah from a distant land, and that from so humble a beginning he had increased them to a great nation. The argument is, that he was able to bless and increase the exile Jews, though comparatively feeble and few.
For I called him alone - Hebrew, 'For one I called him;' that is, he was alone; there was but one, and he increased to a mighty nation. So Jerome, Quia unum vocavi eum. So the Septuagint, Ὅτι εἷς ἦν hoti heis ēn - 'For he was one.' The point of the declaration here is, that God had called one individual - Abraham - and that he had caused him to increase until a mighty nation had sprung from him, and that he had the same power to increase the little remnant that remained in Babylon until they should again become a mighty people.
51:2 Him alone - To follow me to an unknown land: him only of all his kindred. Increased - Into a vast multitude, when his condition was desperate in the eye of reason. And therefore God can as easily raise his church when they are in the most forlorn condition.